The thing with the audience is, you need some audience noise, otherwise it just sounds sterile. I'm not saying get a boot where all you hear is some moron next to the taper shouting "PINK FLOYD!!! WOOO!!!!!!!!!!" all night long, but sometimes the clapping and singing along and the cheering is what gives the show its ambiance. A well-recorded show will sound just as clean and fresh as an official live album, while still retaining the hallmarks of a bootleg.

Part of that comes from reading about show you're interested in and finding out what others have to say about the quality/clarity of the performance.

I'm not saying I don't want any audience noise, I just want it edited. Just to make sure these morons are wiped off.

It's impossible to remove all audience noise without damaging the actual music you're getting the boot to listen to. Although good editing programs can minimize it to the point where it's not as noticeable, in the instance of some loud obnoxious screamers near the taper.

I think she was fantasizing. It's impossible to remove audience noise without damaging the song.

I'm not talking about removing ALL the audience noice.
I'm talking about official releases versus bootlegs. The official recordings are from the miked up performers on stage while audience recordings are from tape recorders in the middle of the chaos during a show.
It's a huge difference, soundwise. I have sensitive ears. I don't like to listen to a show where some idiot is screaming MONEY!!! louder than the guitar solo.

What am I reading?

It's perfectly possible to remove audience noise without damaging a thing. It's possible to remove just about anything you want without damaging anything else. All you need is some not so cheap technology.
Listen to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska album. It's not 100% clean, but almost all of Bruce's tape recorder's white noise was erased for the release. And that was thirty or fourty years ago.

A studio recorded album is not the same as a bootleg, recorded on analog cassettes with cheap microphones, either. I didn't say it was impossible to remove some of the screamers around the taper if they're really obnoxious to the point of obfuscating the singing or playing, but you can't remove all of it it -- I've talked to several people whose side job or hobby is cleaning up boots and then putting them out on torrent sites or on the Echoes hub or Yeeshkul, places that are Floyd-centric. They said that you can take some of the more vociferous people and "drop" them several rows or sections back from the taper, but you can't completely eliminate them.

No, it's not! You will eventually damage it! It definitely depends on how you record it aswell.

Well, it obviously depends on how dominant your background noise is. If you have more noise than actual music (so to say) it is indeed quite hard or impossible to get rid of the noise. Concerning things like audience noise on a good record, or tape noise on a bad record, it's relatively easy to do this (although it takes quite a lot of time). Look up "Fourier transform" on Google or Wikipedia or whatever.

Will do.