Distorted live recording - what to do?

[iamthe_eggman]

Well, I finally had my backyard concert this past Saturday - it went great! I'll post a more lengthy synopsis in the old "Backyard concert" thread.

Anyways, I made a recording of the concert using a MiniDisc recorder and a small Sony electret condenser stereo microphone (the box said that it's for recording meetings and conferences, etc.).

The problem is that I didn't have anyone manning the MD, so when I checked the recording levels, I set the recording volume on the MD too high. Therefore, all but the quietest parts of all the songs have some amount of distortion (I think that it's also called clipping).

I also have a recording of the concert with a camcorder, but the sound quality isn't too hot. The MD recording is really pure in the quiet parts, and the sound balance is pretty good, too.

So, my question is, Is it possible, by means of filtering or other software functions, to remove the distortion? I have heard that there are some powerful sound editing/recording programs, such as GoldWave, Propellerheads Reason, etc. that have diverse functions - would any of these be helpful to me?

Thanks for your help!

[PonyOne]

You could try editing out the distortion wit h acompuer program, but if it's just a screwe dup master, it may be hard.

I had the same problem with my MD recorder; whenever I did a line in, and put it on the "high" level it distorted and went nuts. Putting it on the middle or lower setting may help, an d if this still doesn't help, you may need to get a better mic, or just hook the MD into a mixer that has everything going to it and record it straight from that.

As cool as portable MD's are, sadly, unless you pay a lot of money for a pro model, it's more just deisgned to record pre-mastered copies or do interviews, etc. so if you'r etrying to record a concert, it's not all that great.

[trendkillah]

I seriously doubt there is any software that will fix distorted recordings like that.(don't shoot me if there is) Only thing I know of is click and pop removers.

Anyway, what I suggest you to try is getting an editing program in which you can easily redraw the waveform. I know this might sound weird, but it can work. I once used the drawing tool in pro-tools to restore a distorted kickdrum in an 8 minute song. Fun fun fun!! lol Took me a long time, but it did the trick.