[Hampton 1971]

Hello,

I came across this thread looking for info on Hampton bootleg. For those interested in its quality, I'd like to quote the work from 'theface07' on Zomb Torrents web site. He's done an arduous job trying to improve the Sonic Boom release. In conclusion (and in his opinion):

1. Sonic Boom is the best release from Hamton '71 venue.

2. Its quality is far away from perfect.

Judge by yourselves (words directly from 'theface07'):

Quote

LINEAGE: Unknown Master source > ? > EMPRESS VALLEY "SONIC BOOM" LIBERATED CD > EAC > FLAC (LEVEL 8) > WAV > ADOBE AUDITION CC 2015.0  (Remastering) > FLAC 8

TRANSFER/EDITING NOTES:

This recording, taken from the most recent commercial bootleg release of the 1971 Hampton, VA performance on the Empress Valley "Sonic Boom" 4 disc set, is quite likely the best sounding incarnation available at the time of this upload. Having said that, it is FAR from perfect and presents a lot of problems itself due to the strange nature of the stereo mix. I decided to omit the mono discs since they sound very similar to previously released versions of this performance. The stereo discs, however, do present a slightly better sound fidelity compared to what was previously available. The big problem of course, is the fact that John Paul Jones' bass takes up the entire left channel! I can understand why the folks at Empress Valley may have done this, in order to produce a bit of perspective in creating what is really a pseudo stereo recording. It's not a fake stereo recording, akin to the various electronically reprocessed albums from the 60's where one channel is a carbon copy of the original mono signal, albeit typically slightly lower volume and quite often with some delay, echo and/or reverb added. The left channel was truly distinct from the right in the Sonic Boom stereo discs but did not represent an adequate stereo mix and instead, relegated the boomy, somewhat distorted low (bass) frequencies to the left channel exclusively.

My first task in remastering this recorded was to achieve a better balanced stereo image by mixing in about 72% of the right channel into the left channel. The original left channel bass audio was left at 100%. It took a lot of trial and error to come up with this number, taking into account a desire to achieve a good balance between the left and right channel, bring the other, non-bass elements of the right channel more to the center, while making sure the recording stayed in phase. I believe this has been achieved with satisfactory results to my ears.
Secondly, the frequency range/response of the overall recording was quite atrocious with an abundance of low end and mid range frequencies, masking a lot of the mid to high range audio. I therefore dropped the levels around 125 Hz by about 4.7 dB and 200 Hz to 1 kHz about 3 dB. I also added a slight boost around 8 kHz of about 2.2 dB.

Due to the significant cuts in level to the low and mid range frequencies, the overall level of the recording was dropped significantly. This, however, was a desired effect since the original right channel audio was unnecessarily boosted to the point of audible distortion. I don't know why Empress Valley did this. It was a bit of a hack job as far as mastering is concerned, which looked like it was done by a kid who didn't know any better! How they can demand hundreds of dollars for a recording with such poor mastering is beyond me. I suppose as long as hardcore fans shell out the cash, they will keep doing it. Anyhow, the right channel was close on being brickwalled on a lot of tracks.
The last, and most arduous and slow process in remastering this recording, was attempting to remove a lot of the auditory anomalies present throughout the recording. This included but was not limited to clicks and clips that plagued every single track. I therefore went through each track and isolated and hand picked the most audible clicks/clips and removed them using the wonderful heal tool of Adobe Audition. This was a painstaking process, especially since there were so many clicks/clips which had to be zoomed in on and removed one by one. Of course, there's no way I could remove them all so there are still a lot of these artifacts present albeit many less than on the source material.

Moby Dick was a track in particular that was very bothersome. For some reason, this track (the right channel specifically) was brickwalled, producing a lot of noise and distortion for the bulk of the song while Bonzo is playing his extended drum solo. Due to the extreme nature of the noise and the sheer volume of anomalies and artifacts present, I mastered this track the same as the rest but did not bother removing any of the clicks. If someone wants to give that a try be my guest but because they are so loud and obstructive, it will probably be hard to remove them without negatively affecting the sound of the drums.

This remaster took a long time and a lot of work to complete. I just hope somebody out there finds it an improvement over the source material!

Best regards!