School Musical (Best Settings)

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Since it is recorded from the back of the room, you will mostly want to take out things rather than add them. Here’s what I would do:

1) Normalization. Bring the levels up to optimum level, as close to maximum as possible without clipping
2) Noise reduction. Being far from the sound source, the signal-to-noise ratio is probably not ideal. Some light noise reduction improves that
3) Compression. Even out the levels some so that there’s less difference between the quietest and loudest sounds
4) Equalization. Recording from back of the room will skew the sound towards bass as well as reverb. Can’t really do much about reverb, but you can probably bring down the bass (which gets emphasized in the reverb) and bring up the vocal frequencies. Check out if a suitable preset for this exists
5) Stereo enhancement. The method depends on whether you have mono or stereo recording. I don’t recall the exact options you have in Audition (I primarily use Cubase), but for stereo something like “stereo enhancer” for mono source “mono to stereo”
5A) Additional Stereo enhancement: You don’t want to add reverb as you will already have more than usual recording from back of room. To further enhance stereo separation you could use different equalization for left and right channels to emphasize different instrument ranges in the stereo field

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer