Pink Floyd
Exhibition Stadium
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
September 21, 1987
recording source 4

"The Kevin Davie Memorial Series" - Release #45a

16 bit 44.1 khz version

Source: Taped by Kevin Davie with an unverified mic (likely a small plastic Sony stereo mic) & unknown recorder (with auto gain) > 2 Maxell XLII 90 cassettes
Transfer: (LeifH12345) 2 Maxell XLII 90 cassettes > Modified Sony TC-WE475 (Dolby off; azimuth adjusted) > RCA out > Sony PCM M10 @ 24/96 wav files
Mastering: (Audioarchivist) 24/96 master transfer files > iZotope RX Advanced 2 DeClick (M-band random clicks strength 4) > wav files > Adobe Audition 3.01 Automatic Phase Correction tool > wav files > Wavelab 5.01b (tracking, editing, plug-in host) [Waves Q10 Paragraphic EQ > D82 BBE Sonic Maximizer > Peak Measter] > mastered split 24/96 wav files > Foobar2000 (SoX resampler to 24/44.1, 95.2% passband 25% phase response no aliasing) > iZotope RX Advanced 2 (mBit+ dither to 16/44.1, ultra noise shaping high dither) > TLH > flac8 > Foobar2000 (tagging)


Setlist: 2:25:00

01 Echoes 16:01
02 Signs Of Life 4:26
03 Learning To Fly 5:04
04 good evening banter 0:33
05 Yet Another Movie 6:03
06 Round And Around (tape splice) 0:59
07 A New Machine (part 1) 1:39
08 Terminal Frost 5:55
09 A New Machine (part 2) 0:36
10 Sorrow 9:23
11 Dogs Of War 7:48
12 On The Turning Way 9:42
13 One Of These Days 7:13
14 Time 5:44
15 On The Run 4:19
16 Wish You Were Here 5:25
17 Welcome To The Machine 8:50
18 Us And Them 7:33
19 Money 7:17
20 Another Brick In The Wall (part 2) 5:08
21 closing remarks 0:51
22 Comfortably Numb 9:57
23 One Slip 7:11
24 Run Like Hell 7:23

David Gilmour
Nick Mason
Richard Wright
Jon Carin
Rachel Fury
Scott Page
Guy Pratt
Tim Renwick
Margaret Taylor
Gary Wallis


Mastering notes:
A lot of mic movement moments with bumps and grinds and what sounds like a cellophane plastic bag crinkling from time to time, but also some great moments of very unique audio capture. A lot of warts with some great music and more.

I suppose that Kevin got to the show a bit late and there's probably a big story as to why, but I can't tell it. I don't know it. The beginning of the show is missing, starting part way into Echoes. I don't know who Kevin went to this show with for sure, but I think it might be his sister Karin Davie. There are times when they chit chat a little, despite Kevin's systematic recording methods, but they don't talk too much. Everybody else kinda does, though! Haha. The live sound was some sort of quad / surround P.A. system, and Kevin's seats were near one of these rear / side speakers. There are always a lot of rowdy people mulling around up at the back of these huge arena shows, so Kevin's recording captures some of them but not too many all the time! His recording captures some elements from the surround P.A. that sound pretty wild and are usually buried in the mix. He did tell me on multiple occasions that there were some horrible moments on his tape of this show, but also some brilliant ones like the rear effects, and that he captured some really cool stuff he always wanted to play for me one day...

There's a tape splice in the first cassette, about 2/3 of the way into side A, where there's an audible glitch and a small amount of music is missing. I'm guessing that after the show was recorded, the tape broke and got patched together again. So, the transition between 'Yet Another Movie' into 'Round And Around' is missing a few seconds, and on the other side, there's a small glitch near the beginning of 'On The Turning Away' and you can hear a bit of tape damage, like accordion tape wrinkles for a few seconds. There's a tape flip in the middle of 'Sorrow' that misses a few seconds of music in the middle of the song. Kevin changed tapes during the intermission, and flipped again between 'Money' and "ABITW2' maybe missing an end note big finish for "Money' but only a few seconds. He paused the recorder for the break between 'Comfortably Numb' and 'One Slip' cutting out some crowd noise, and then paused again before 'Run Like Hell', trying to save tape and make it fit.

I've compared his recording to three other recording sources for this show that I've found multiple circulating copies from, so I'd call Kevin's recording source #4 for this show. Of the previously circulating versions as I hear them, one appears to be from a decent audience recorder, another is a pretty good audience tape, and one is from a vinyl bootleg of a distorted audience recording. Two of them have very badly split tracks, in that the songs and gaps between them do not flow continuously. They have these rough cuts between each track, hesitations in the sound flow, as if they were mastered poorly. I did several side by side (by side by side!) comparisons of the 4 sources to check for certain unique sounds in each one to verify that they are all from the same show yet are all different recordings. Kevin's recording certainly isn't the best one from this show, but definitely has some special moments in it that capture some alternate audio from the surround sound live mix that normally aren't heard so prominently...

I used Adobe Audition 3.01's Automatic Phase Correction tool to try and fine tune the azimuth of the tape transfer. Even though I know Leif adjusted the heads when he transferred Kevin's tapes, the cheap recorder he had at the time probably skewed the tape while he recorded it, making a perfect transfer nearly impossible. Leif got close, on average, but the APC cleaned up a few moments of drift that happened here and there, maybe when Kevin would take the recorder out to look at his tape remaining time or make a seating adjustment move or whatever, rolling the tape off perfect alignment as it was recorded. I also used iZotope RX Advanced 2 DeClick process to try and remove some of the mic crackling noises and some of the heavier applause. It reduced the intensity of the intrusive noise considerably but didn't touch any of the music. It removed approximately 10000 clicks per tape side, so it is much smoother than the original unprocessed version. I made myself some comparison difference files to hear what was removes / altered from the raw tape transfer, and I heard loud clapping between songs, much mic shuffling crackles, random ticks and pops, and some faint phase-y shifted music echoes that faded in and out from time to time. This means that it fixed some of the recorded tape skewing, and removed lots of annoying noises. But not all of them...

I tried to smooth out the EQ curve from the cheap mic and stadium sound that made a master recording with a big lower mids spike that I had to hammer down. Once that lower mids / upper bass peak was lowered, I brought up the upper range mids to highs a little bit and the lower deep bass, finally using the BBE Sonic maximizer to generally beef up the lows and highs some more. There is so much movement in Kevin's recording, from entering late and walking around the venue to get to his final seats, to mic re-re-re-positioning, the overall sound changes a lot, so I tried to make an average setting that improves things in general from start to finish, but that' didn't quite work out exactly as planned. The last few songs are much louder and brighter, as if Kevin pulled the microphone out from under the sweater blanket and chip bag or whatever it was and held it up high, so I tweaked the EQ a bit for each tape side's high frequency response to sound a bit more even in the finished version. I think that my EQ surgery needed to be done with the tinny empty sound of the master tapes, and at times nails it, but sometimes the recording is a fail no matter how much polishing is done to it! LOL Towards the end of the show, I think that Kevin must have switched seats, or taken the microphones to a better position, because the sound brightens up considerably for the last few songs. I lowered (or removed) some of my EQ that increased the highs for the beginning and middle of the concert for this end section (starts part way through Comfortably Numb).

There is certainly room to improve and clean this recording more if someone wanted to take the time to do so. I know that iZotope RX has spectral editing features that let you pretty much photoshop the sound and eliminate more of the microphone noises and people speaking over the music and other unwanted elements in the sound, but that can be very labour intensive, and, ain't nobody got time for dat! Well, at least I don't. There are a big number of things that I would want to fix on this recording with tools like that and in order not to get carried away with it, I choose not to even get started! LOL If you do, and want to take a crack at re-working these files from scratch, please get in touch so I can give you the raw 24/96 master transfer files to work with. Let me know...

So, here's one of Kevin's earliest recordings, I think. Surely one of the largest ones that he had done to date, and I'm guessing one that he learned a lot from - like mounting the microphone somewhere secure like a hat is better than holding it in your hand and stuffing it in your pocket with your bag of weed! LOL!!! No, I don't know what that crinkle crinkle sound is, but that's my guess! Haha! There's a lot of warts and scars and damned ugly sounding moments in this recording, but some pretty good ones, too! I hope you get some enjoyment out of it...

audioarchivist@hotmail.com

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