Here you can find reviews of different bootlegs CDs in alphabetic order. Bootleg CDs can be divided in three categories: live CDs, studio outtakes' CDs and home recordings. The live CDs are usually divided into audience recordings and soundboard recordings. Audience recordings are the recordings that people made on their own recorders while visiting the show. Soundboards are those recordings that were made directly from the mixing deck. The quality of this recordings usually depends on the quality of the tape and the equipment used to make these recordings. The main difference between soundboard recordings and official live recordings is in the track separation. Official live recordings have plenty of possibilities for further mixing, since most of the instruments are recorded separately. Which means you can adjust the level of each instrument after the actual recording. On the other hand, soundboards are usually mono recordings (very seldom – stereo or binaural), which means you can only adjust the overall level and some frequencies of the tape, but you have to deal with the mix which was adjusted on the mixing desk. Sometimes this may be the same adjustment that a certain musician had in his on stage monitor speakers or any other adjustment that the sound engineer decided to make.
