The crispy clear sound on Queen Rock Montreal?

Queen have been known overdubbing their live maerial a few times.

At least all the livealbums and videos that were released when Freddie was alive, where corrected a little, as far as live vocal is concerned.

Rainbow 74,  nearly all are studio vocals.
Live Killers overdubbed and many vocals were "flown" from different concerts, since many shows were recorded
Wembley 86, Freddie corrected higher screams here and there later in studio (you can check this out from the radio broadcast whish is un-overdubbed)
This is usual and at least for the 1986, Freddie needed this, since the voice was not always in a top condition.

But the newer releases Live at the Bowl 1982 and Queen Rock Montreal 1981 don't have these overdubs for vocal, I would suggest. There are corrections. In Montreal, two nights were recorded, and Queen had the multitracks, so when they spotted some flaws, while re-mixing it a couple of years ago, they must have made correctons with some copy-pasting. The vocals could have been leveled also with some automatic pitc-correction, which is very easy to do while mixing with ProTools for example.

Milton Keynes is nearly untouched, apart from the well-known Fat Bottomed Gilrs -correction.  Maybe some pitch-sifter here aswell?

Freddie was indeed in a unbelieavable condition for the Montreal Shows if the vocal is purely live as it seems. The whole band was actually. From youtube you can check the live broadcasts from Caracas, Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires shows. The band is in a mint condition. So it just seems that they were on the peak of the quality of their live performance.

Still, to me the Rock Montreal seems to be just a little bit "too-good" to be true. All the instruments and vocals are very isolated and clear. That's well enough, since thay had the multitracks. But isn't this the case with "Live at the Bowl" aswell? Thay had the multitracks for that show aswell. Still the concert from 1982 doesn't sound so "clinical". The sound is more "live" and there are little hitches on the instruments aswell. With modern sound processing they should have been able to make that concert sound as clear and clinical as the Montreal show. Or that's what iI think.

What are your views. Could "Rock Montreal" be purely live (with some odd copy-paste stuff)??

I've mentioned before that I believe quite a bit of Montreal is overdubbed. I'm almost certain NIH has almost entirely been re-done by Freddie at some point. I've never heard him sing the song this way before, and anyone with a good ear could tell that the vocal on that song doesn't sound the same as most of the other tracks.

Bad Seed wrote: I've mentioned before that I believe quite a bit of Montreal is overdubbed. I'm almost certain NIH has almost entirely been re-done by Freddie at some point. I've never heard him sing the song this way before, and anyone with a good ear could tell that the vocal on that song doesn't sound the same as most of the other tracks.

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It's NOT overdubbed. I have the audience recording from the first night! Freddie's voice is stunning (he gets ALL the Under Pressure high notes)!

Montreal was an indoor venue whereas MK was outside. This also gives a clear difference in sound quality.

Roger mentioned that taking the bottom membranes from his drum set help give the drum sound a natural and cleaner quality to it.... could that be it???

I hate what they did with the drum sound on the MK release. The original sounds way more natural.

my understanding has always been that Live Killers has no overdubs and is completely live as performed, BUT the performances are taken from many shows on the tour and not just one or two shows. Therefore each song may be edited together from half a dozen or so shows, but is all live and not overdubbed.

Can anyone categorically confirm or deny this?

Cheers

Live Killers has overdubs. Read this http://www.queenlive.ca/lkanalysis.htm

Right, but the question is... did the overdubs come from other concerts or were they later recorded in the studio?  Until we hear every single concert, we'll never know for sure.  But it's likely that parts of Don't Stop Me Now and We Are The Champions were done in the studio.

Sir GH: "But it's likely that parts of Don't Stop Me Now and We Are The Champions were done in the studio."

This is  what I wanted to say :D

Montreal is crystal clear coz its not Montreal!

Rock Montreal has perfect sound use live magic as an example of how bad a live performance album COULD sound

They didn't use pitch correction. If you say such a thing you clearly have no idea what an autotune effect sounds like.

Listen to Paul McCartney's last live cd/dvd. It's horrible and it's extremely annoying listening to those robotic voices caused by the autotune pitch correction.

I really do know, how autotune sounds like, being a sound-engineer myself.

This time I'm only meaning the kinf of leveling or slight adjustments with autotune, with a very loose correction. Not to use it as an effect, but just to bring notes a little bit closer to the absolute note. Autotune runs on every record nowadays, even if you wont hear it. Autotune whiich Cher uses is just overdoing it for the hell of it and that's not what I meant.

Montreal being in a indoor venue is of course a good explanation. Would that alone make it sound so much different to, lets say Milton Keynes, a concert that was done 6 months later? Well that was outdoors for sure, but the equipment was pretty much the same. Maybe the thing is that the band was just at its prime as a live act in 1981.

92Funny wrote: Rock Montreal has perfect sound use live magic as an example of how bad a live performance album COULD sound Fair point, but Live Magic still sounds a hell of a lot better than the Live At Wembley 86/Stadium mixes!!!!