Focus 20170207 CTTE Day 1 Brilliance of the Seas Colony Club
Cruise To The Edge (CTTE) 2017, February 7 - 11
A Hairy Botch Recording and 2026 Master

CAF 96kHz32b IEEE float
FLAC 96kHz24b
FLAC 48kHz24b
--> FLAC 44.1kHz16b

Contrast:

Lineage:
Sound Professionals SP-CMC-4U (high SPL mod) -> Naiant PFA -> 20db XLR passive attenuator -> Tascam DR-44WL 96kHz24b WAV -> OcenAudio -> Reaper -> Media Monkey (tagging only)

Notes and observations:
This was my first Cruise to the Edge, and it was magical. Focus was the first band I saw and they too were magical.

Menno Gootjes was ill so the band brought back former band member Jan Dumée just two days before CTTE 2017 set sail. Some of the songs had a few rough spots, but Jan is a great guitar player.

I mastered this recording so that it sounded good to my old ears. It may be a little bright to your young ears.
If you want this recording in a different format I'll do my best to help. Just reach out.

Tracks:
1-01 band intros.flac
1-02 Focus I.flac
1-03 House of the King.flac
1-04 Eruption.flac
1-05 Sylvia.flac
1-06 flute solo.flac
1-07 Hocus Pocus.flac
1-08 band intro.flac
1-09 Hocus Pocus reprise.flac
1-10 Focus III.flac
1-11 Answers_ Questions! Questions_ Answers!.flac

The band are:
Thijs van Leer - flute, keys, vox
Pierre van der Linden - drums
Menno Gootjes - unavailable, did not perform
Udo Panakeet - bass

with:
Jan Dumée - guitar

Mastering details:
Both OcenAudio and Reaper use 64bit float internal representation for the audio data. The transfer between the programs is 32bit IEEE float PCM. Overkill for bootleg recordings? Sure, but I'm OK with overkill.

OcenAudio (destructive)
convert WAV to IEEE float 32b CAF (this is for import to Reaper)
reduce non-music peaks below highest performance dB, linear gain change, not limiting
adjust L/R to be roughly equal RMS and average power, normalize, and remove DC
limit/reduce amplitude clapping and "woo!" and "yeah!" sections, remove all references to Freebird when possible
additional minor clap and transient fixups that appear after Eq mastering

Reaper v7.x (non-destructive)
EQ and readjust for 0dB peaks (IK Multimedia TR5 Linear Phase EQ)
additional peak limiter on difficult transients (Cockos ReaLimit)
brickwall limiter (IK Multimedia TR5 Stealth Limiter)
render to FLAC, songs/tracks to individual files

Media Monkey
tagging and file renaming
batch conversion from master format to lower res FLAC for anything below 96kHz24b (my native library format)

Other Files:
Focus 20170207 CTTE Day 1 Brilliance of the Seas Colony Club.txt
Focus 20170207 CTTE Day 1 Brilliance of the Seas Colony Club 44.1kHz24b.ffp

About the software I use:
OcenAudio is a fantastic and very stable (destructive) audio editor that runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. I contribute to their project. I hope you will too.

Audacity very rarely, just for specific filters.

Cockos Reaper is a great and very reasonably priced DAW that runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It is the backbone of all my mastering work. I use the paid personal edition and love it. It has a bit of a learning curve, but it's worth the effort. If you need a DAW on the cheap please consider trying it out.

IK Multimedia various VST/AU plug-ins. I primarily use the Eq and limiting.

Media Monkey is a Windows only media library manager that I've used for many years now. I don't know what I would do without it.

Finally:
If you enjoy this recording please support this artist.