Poor quality comedy album recordings

[Phil]

I just purchased my second poor quality comedy album (first Phil Mazo's "Pervert" then Andi Smith's "Homeperm") from iTunes. Both sound exactly like bootlegs. They're borderline inaudible as you need to strain your hearing for 60 minutes.

Any idea how these crap recordings get produced and why they're then sold? I've recorded my own podcasts in the past and learned how difficult it is to record high-quality voice (background noise, high-quality mics etc..), but if stupid me could figure it out, I'd think the pro's could as well. Or maybe it's an iTunes issue, like a bad encoding or something (I doubt, it sounds more like poor quality equipment to me)

Any ideas? I feel bad for these comics who got kinda ripped off here.

[drieux]

I'm guessing that people eager to get an album recorded find the first person who promises that they can produce a solid product using just a mediocre microphone, a few patch cables and whatever free software they downloaded earlier that day. I would be surprised if the comics weren't just as disappointed in it as you were.

With all the software and resources, getting an album recorded and distributed is much easier these days, but it's also much easier to make a crappy-sounding record that is impossible to listen to.

[Phil]

I would be surprised if the comics weren't just as disappointed in it as you were.

That's a shame being their debut album and all. If I were the comic and heard that quality afterwards, I'd have scrapped it and tried again, you can't sell garbage like that.

[drieux]

I'm sure they get amped up, they book a show and sell tickets as "Recording my debut album! Come be a part of it!!" and by the time they sit down and hear the actual product, they're crushed but already in it too deep - it doesn't exactly come off as professional to have to answer the question regarding what happened to that album recording as, "Oh, it didn't sound very good, so I'm going to have to do it again."

I think most pro recordings are done with several microphones JUST for crowd noise, not to mention a solid onstage mic and a team of hardworking crew folks handling the setup and monitoring what's going on - and then they record several shows and edit them together. In the case of up-and-comers, what I've typically seen is the best way is to try and find somebody who can produce quality on the cheap, they set up their gear before the show and the performer books for one show in a venue they're comfortable with and tries to get as many people there as possible. This means a lot of trust in the person handling the recording, and if they're working cheap you just never know - depending on the night, the venue, tech issues, mic problems, crowd interference, blah blah blah, something can go wrong and you can end up screwed.

What I mean by them being disappointed is, they acknowledge that the recording could be better, but I assume they're still proud of the material and the fact that they do have an album with their name on it. The first time I ever had a shitty recording of myself doing ten minutes I was proud as hell.

As you know from your podcasting, recording isn't as easy as one would imagine. And in this case, we're talking about people also having to find a venue that is cool with them recording, get a friendly, excited crowd and advertising the show as their chance to be on a comedy album and all that other stuff. If you're recording your own podcast in your living room or you're making songs that you wrote yourself and playing all the instruments yourself, you have greater control over the elements in question.

I've tried doing live recordings of bands and comedy, and in almost every single case there was something I had no idea about or chance to prepare for that made all my efforts completely futile. But every one of those made me more prepared for the next time, although I would still hesitate to say I was in any way qualified to be paid to do it.

[Shane]

I'm really surprised that Andi Smith's album is poor quality, she basically started rooftopcomedy.com and they have a lot of quality stuff on there. It was also recorded at Go Bananas, the club I go to a lot, and the manager there has recorded a bunch of cd's (like one for Jimmy Dore and one for Kevin Brennen) and they're all good quality, so maybe it is something with itunes.

[isoS]

I just listened to a couple of clips of Mazo and Andi Smith in iTunes, and in Andi's case it's pretty clear they didn't have a board feed. The room is miked, so the audience sounds good, but you're hearing the comic through the house speakers, which makes her sound farther away. It's not necessarily bad, but it's a little jarring since you're used to hearing the comic up close and clear, with maybe some reverb from the PA laid over the stage mic. In Mazo's case, I think the EQ (either of the recording or of the house board) is just slightly off -- there's a lot of high end and not enough low end. This could also be due to the stage mike used to record. Or they used a lav to get his vocal instead of a board feed -- lavs tend to sound more tinny like that.

[terror firma]

you guys sound like don cheadle in boogie nights (especially in the deleted scenes)!

i haven't heard these albums in question, but comics will quite often record their sets on a regular basis, usually not worrying too much about sound quality. it's quite possible that, in these cases, the comic just figured that they had a really great set that night and decided to sacrifice sound quality for a good performance.

[Ivan]

Ben Bailey's Ben Bailey Boulevard. I love the man and his comedy, but he needs to use that Cash Cab money to put out something that doesn't sound like it was recorded in the back row of a Zeppelin concert in 1974.