Your Feedback: Muppet Central Radio on Live365

[Smy Guiley]

The Muppet Vision instrumental tunes were donated to the station earlier this year. Unfortunately the songs were never available on CD.

Most of the unreleased tunes (not on CD) I have mastered one-by-one from the best source material that I have whether that be LP, cassette or VHS. I've been working on some new songs that will be airing in 2004 by the way.

Our Christmas music will begin in the rotation this Friday and continue through Christmas Day. We will play Christmas music non-stop for five days from December 21-25.

COOL! Actually, I just found "Christmas Eve On Sesame Street" today at a junk shop for 50 cents, but it's a bit scratchy. Oh well, like my daughter will care! I'm just glad to have found it...Anyway, I imagine there's probably no hope of a high-bandwidth station at least FM quality, is there? I'm guessing you'd have to re-convert every file and upload them again. Otherwise, it's nice to throw the station on and just let it go. I'm always surprised by several of the selections (pleasantly, that is!) I use iTunes to listen, and it's very smooth.

later
eric

 

[Phillip]

Anyway, I imagine there's probably no hope of a high-bandwidth station at least FM quality, is there?

Maybe in 2004. Stay tuned...

 

[jediX]

How are you mastering them?

 

[Phillip]

Can you elaborate on your question? It can mean several different things.

Are you referring to the file format or software being used?

Or do you mean the actual process of conventing an LP, cassette or video audio to a digital form that ends up being streamed?

 

[jediX]

What I mean is, how are you mastering the sound? Say you have a video...do you connect a vcr to your computer and then run the captured WAV through some sort of program? I'm using Cakewalk Home Studio 9 right now for recording and it works quite well, but I just can't get decent quality out of VHS or cassette audio. Hope this makes sense...

 

[Phillip]

Every source is handled differently depending on it's condition. For cassettes and VHS, hiss and misc background noise is always removed. The source is normalized. Then any kind of necessary tweaking takes place depending on how "rough" the source file is. If it's in mono, some stereo effects will be added. Most of this work is done in Cool Edit Pro. I archive the WAV's, then use 192 kbps MP3 to work with on a basic day-to-day basis.

 

[jediX]

How much is that program? Cakewalk HS9 has those features but they just don't cut it. Can it clean up video audio, too?

 

[Phillip]

Cool Edit was recently bought out by Adobe and has been renamed as Adobe Audition. For right now, the Adobe version is just a rebranded version of Cool Edit 2.0. You can probably still find trial versions of Cool Edit 2.0 to download on other sites.

http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/main.html

Keep in mind, for severe audio problems it takes time to clean them up. There are some really bad tracks that I have had to spend 30-60 minutes on for each of them in order to get the most out of it. It takes some time to really master all the features of the software but it's worth it. Removing a lot of clicks and pops from records is a whole other sciene in itself. It can be done, it just takes some time and experience.

When you say Cakewalk HS9 has the features but doesn't cut it, what exactly are you trying to fix about the source material? Since it sounds like you are using a VHS tape as the source, likely you are having issues with tape hum/hiss. Is there a bit of silence (even a milisecond) somewhere in the source?

When worse comes to worse, save this example of the noise you want to remove then carefully remove 95%-100% of it everywhere in the track. Again, I don't know what your source is, but this is typically the first area that needs tweaked from a video master. You just have to be careful not to remove any of the real audio content from the file.

 

[jediX]

(Yikes about the price...maybe I can get it cheaper through the school)

CWHS9 has some of its own filters, but they can't handle very much static. I'm just trying to take the 'hiss' out of and up the treble on some vhs tapes -- the equalizer in cwhs9 works great for the equalization but doesn't cut it when it comes to static and noise removal. Anyway, I'll try and explain my setup.... My video card (a radeon all-in-wonder 9000) has an input block, so I connected a vcr through composite cables into that...so I basically that takes care of the line-in connection.. Then I just select that as my input source on cwhs9, hit record, and viola. Normalize the captured sample, clip it to what is needed, and run it through the light noise remover & equalizer. There's always my plan b, which involves recording the audio as dvd-quality mpeg which involves running it through the Radeon's (rather effective) sound clean-up.... Gaah...so much work

 

[guysmiley4ever]

Disco Frog!!

Woo Hoo!! I was listening to Muppet Radio last night and heard the Disco frog song!
That is awesome! I haven't heard that one in years!
I just fainty remember a scene that went with it. Argh, I wish I can remember all of it. Don't know if I saw it on Sesame street or Muppet show.
I remember Kermit singing and dancing, I think background singers too...and wasn't there a strange looking frog (disco frog) dancing around then it danced away.
okay, can't clearly remember, but I love that one and really enjoyed hearing on the Muppet Radio. Play it more!
thanks!