Removing environmental factors of a recording with deconvolution technique and its potential uses

Abstract

The introduction of the first commercial digital audio workstation in the 90s has changed the focus in the recording business from large-scale studios to more digital-based approaches. One by one all the unique aspects of a recording studio have lost their importance to a degree, examples can be noted as reverberation chambers, editing tools, mixers, hardware tools (e.g. compressors, limiters, preamps, etc.), amps, room acoustics —can all be simulated in plug-in form for the use of a wider demography. There is an increasing demand for improved modeling and emulation of the hardware setup as mixing in your room is now being the preferred method for recording. The recording environment is one of the biggest contemporary problems of this era of the rising trend in home recordings. Problems like bad room reflections, bad room mods, bad microphones, cheap preamps, and interfaces are all included in this so-called "bad recording environment" of the home recording artist. Buying good microphones, preamps, and treating a room to improve your recording environment are all expensive solutions, hence this study seeks an alternative solution with a deconvolution technique. The impulse response technique is widely used on direct input (DI) signals of guitars to simulate amps and microphones, because DI signals are recorded without any environmental interference, it is easy to dress them into a recording environment. If there is a way to record an acoustic sound source without its environment as a "dry signal"; using the impulse response technique on this recording for changing its environment would be very easy in theory. Aim of this study is to use a deconvolution technique to remove a recording from its environment to attain this so-called "dry signal" so that it would be susceptible to be processed into a better recording environment.