Audio Update: All Praise To Stewart

[filkertom]

Stewart, the Mastering Department Manager at Oasis CD, that is:

Hi Tom,

I just loaded and listened to your master. All in all, it sounds
good. Though, I did hear some high frequency "fuzz" in some tracks.
Especially, in the tracks that contained vocal narration; like track
27. I could hear noise "pumping" along with the voice.

I tried different spot EQ's, low pass EQ, noise gates, and downward
compression, through the frequencies causing what I heard. While I
was able to partially remove the noise, I couldn't cleanly remove the
noise. At least, in my opinion, without adversely affecting the
vocal sound quality. Even a minor 1.0db low pass filter, at 15KHz
removed too much high end detail and air. So, I'd suggest not making
any changes to the master. The master sounded clean enough that it
would be perfectly acceptable as-is.

Notice that this isn't even the whine, which he really didn't hear.

We agree that the likeliest culprit for the Mysterious Audio Whine is a combination of factors which have created electrical noise. I'll be shifting the positions of various pieces of hardware, getting shorter cables, and switching from fluorescent lighting to incandescent while I'm recording.

(At least I feel better about not being able to catch the specific problem of the MAW. The "fuzz" he refers to in the narration tracks -- i.e., the intros to the various bonus tracks -- is something that I actually thought was in my voice. Apparently not. Which is good, because it means that, in future recording, I can somehow get rid of it.)

I think that's about all I can do. For those of you who are really put off by the MAW, I'm sorry. E-mail me and we can work something out.