David Crosby - Page 43 (First Minute)

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JonUrban

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Check this out. First off, you have to know the album and song. This is from the Crosby-Nash album (Their first). It's the first minute of the song "Page 43", in a 4.1 mix without the lead vocal. Very clear and interesting to me. It shows what can be done with the currently available tools you can get these days.

What do you think?

https://mega.nz/#!DE5GXAqZ!ZxTuLmyCFTB5q_nqFVVzQSEKyhJRF4OPKydRe-hZzso
PS - The file was too big to post on the forum, and since I don't control it anymore, I had to use MZ. If you play it from there it might play in stereo which defeats the purpose. Oh well, sucks. If you can download it and play it in 5.1, that's what you want to do.
 
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Yea, c'mon Jon. Spill the beans!

Here's the deal. Garry, as you know some songs lend themselves to these results, other do not. This was one of those "oh wow" moments, which is why I bothered to post it. Sometimes you just do this stuff and smile because it all comes together.

So, here are the steps for those who want to expand on this process:

1) Start with a pure Penteo 4.1 upmix using Reaper

2) I then extract the front channels from the 5.1 mix and save them to a stereo file.

3) I now use iZotope RX7 on the front channel wav file and remove everything except the vocals. I save this as a stereo VOICE ONLY file.

4) Then I do the same process, RX7 on the same front channels of the Penteo 4.1 to extract everything EXCEPT the vocals. I save this as "No Vocals"

5) For "Page 43", I now paste the "No Vocals" front channels into the fronts of the target 5.1 file, overwriting what Penteo put there, leaving the .1 and the rears the way they were. I now have a 4.1 file with the Penteo rears and LFE, and the extracted "No Vocals" in the fronts.

THIS IS WHAT YOU HEAR IN WAV FILE IN THE FIRST POST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


6) Now, with "Page 43" after listening, I found that the drums were dead phantom center, which I thought would conflict with the vocals when I patched them in, so I removed the drums from the Front Right, again with RX7.

7) When I played this back, I wasn't happy with that result because the drums were less prominent now. So, I went back to the originally extracted front channel wav file and extracted only the drums, which gave me a stereo file of only drums. I then took one channel of this extraction, and merged it with the existing Front Left channel that still had drums in it. By mixing the drums only into the existing channel with the mix set to give a slight priority to the clipboard info (drums only), I ended up with the left channel having the drums with a bit more umph.

8) Once I was happy with that, I then took the VOCAL ONLY extraction that I did earlier with RX7 and patched it into the center channel of the 5.1 core file. Played with the levels a bit and voila!

It's not hard to do, it just takes time. It can be very rewarding when it works, and very disheartening when it does not.

Bottom line is that the Penteo 4.1, to me, is the best upmix option out there right now, and if you do that and leave it as-is, you will usually have an excellent upmix.

If you go the extra steps like I did on this tune, you really have to be sure that the material is worthy of the time and effort. If something is brickwalled or just does not give you good results with Penteo/SM2/SPECWeb, well it's not going to sound any better once you pull it apart with RX7.

AND.......................it's a personal preference. 90% of those who like upmixes would be happy with the default Penteo. I am most of the time. It's just when I feel like going that extra bit that I get this involved.

And really, it does not take anyone with great talent to do it. I am no whiz at this stuff. Mostly I stumble around and occasionally find a blind squirrel nut, so any of you guys out there with the right hardware and software can do anything I can do, maybe lots better too.

The fun comes from doing it and having it come out well. I thought "Page 43" turned out special, which is why I posted it here in the first place. It's a great example of what some moron at home with a PC can do and what makes me mad at times is when the professional people do a shitty job on a real release, be it a conversion or an upmix, and the local folk here can actually do a better job.

It's bad enough our surround passion has come down to our own ability to upmix because WE CAN'T PAY FOR THE REAL THING EVEN THOUGH WE'D BUY IT ALL IN A MINUTE IF IT WAS AVAILABLE.

Anyway, end of old man ranting at cloud................
 
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Awesome Jon. Thanks for the info.

You are right. Anyone can get some great results with Penteo (and I'm not diminishing anything you are doing, of course!). I love to hear what can be achieved with a bit of added manipulation! (I'm saving up for Izotope RX Advanced...)

Buying Penteo and using it has given me so much pleasure. I have some really great (upmixed) surround albums now that I love. I would never have any of these if I waited a life time for a real surround mix (and my life maybe too short to wait anyway :))

Hopefully other QQ'ers give this a go too!
 
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