# How do you?



## Leekle2ManE (Jan 26, 2012)

Mp3's are lossy and will never match flac or CD.

There, that is out of the way. But when it comes to mp3s, what do you do to clean up or 'fix' bad recordings? Getting mp3 tracks from Amazon or iTunes I have seen all sorts of poor recording from barely audible to gains so high that 90% of the track is clipped. Generally, I use a mix of Normalize and Compression (based on peaks) in Audacity to fix gains and inconsistent volumes within the tracks. I have even gone through some old songs like the Beach Boys' tracks and fixed the massive spikes caused by the singer popping his lips too close to the mic. I am just curious if anyone else has methods or tools they use to make an mp3 sound better?

And yeah, I am kind of done buying mp3s online. I am going back to buying CDs and ripping my own high quality mp3s.


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## Lycancatt (Apr 11, 2010)

as a recording and live sound engineer, I've come to accept that too many variations exist and its simply not worth my time to remaster stuff. if the artists and engineers were happy with the result, I can live with that, and often do. this is not to say I wont fix things for certain needs like volume leveling for playlists for public places where big spikes or quiet stuff doesn't work, but for personal use I just use what I'm given and if its terrible I don't listen to it again.


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## Bayboy (Dec 29, 2010)

Best of luck on that. Did the same thing and its hit or miss. Bought the mp3 album and it was ughh. Finally found the CD after months of looking, and guess what? Ughhh. Got the 320 of another, then found the flac thinking it was going to be miles better. Didn't hear a thing. Yes, there's some truth to the mp3 vs flac vs hiring the band to ride along with you on trips, but the main issue starts back at the studio. Getting flac or even CD _is not a promise_ that the recording will be better. Mp3's really suffer when they have been compressed, you burn your buddy a regular audio disc, then he compresses it again for his storage, and on and on. Best way to avoid it is of course, buy the CD, but still not a guarantee against ****ty production.


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## bbfoto (Aug 28, 2005)

Bayboy said:


> Best of luck on that. Did the same thing and its hit or miss. Bought the mp3 album and it was ughh. Finally found the CD after months of looking, and guess what? Ughhh. Got the 320 of another, then found the flac thinking it was going to be miles better. Didn't hear a thing.
> 
> Yes, there's some truth to the mp3 vs flac vs hiring the band to ride along with you on trips, *but the main issue starts back at the studio*. Getting flac or even CD _is not a promise_ that the recording will be better. Mp3's really suffer when they have been compressed, you burn your buddy a regular audio disc, then he compresses it again for his storage, and on and on. *Best way to avoid it is of course, buy the CD, but still not a guarantee against ****ty production.*


Agreed. All very good points.

Unfortunately, there are A LOT of recordings of great music and performances that were just very poorly produced...sub par recording, mixing, and/or mastering, etc...especially in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s. Even if you had great songs, it was and still is very difficult and expensive to produce quality recordings. It could be due to a lack of proper equipment, lack of experience, or lack of budget...any number of reasons.

The analog tape machines of the day were incredibly good, but they required constant maintenance, cleaning, and precise alignment, setup, and bias adjustments by very experienced techs before each tracking or mixing session. There were a lot of minute details and variables that all had to be just right in order to produce excellent recordings.

Then, when those tapes were sent off to another facility for the next process (from recording to mixing to mastering) the other tape machine had to also be PERFECTLY setup and aligned. There were variables as simple as IPS speed differences, which could change the tempo and/or pitch. Not all engineers were/are musicians and pitch variations could often be overlooked. Usually that would be caught by the mastering engineer, but it wasn't guaranteed.

I've purchased CDs of a few somewhat obscure artists that ended up being obvious transfers from their vinyl LPs, simply because that's the only media it was ever released on and the master tapes have been lost, destroyed, forgotten, or amazingly thrown out during studio renovations or shut downs. :/

I've read at least two different stories by separate engineers who had gone to buy equipment from a studio that was closing their doors and liquidating everything (microphones, mixing consoles, Studer/Revox tape machines, outboard rack gear...) only to find the employees or clean-up crew simply dumping all of the master tapes in the trash dumpster!  I can't remember who, and/or what recordings were recovered, but one of the engineers went back to salvage what he could because he had worked on some of the recordings earlier in his carreer, or at least realized the importance of them!

Sometimes master tapes were simply misplaced or lost in the shuffle between the original tracking engineer at his/her studio facility, the mixing engineer (at another studio facility), the mastering engineer (at yet another facility), or the record label itself, etc.

A lot of creatives in the music business were & are very poor businessmen, very unorganized, and didn't have the staff or desire to keep detailed written records of the various hand-offs. Obviously, many, many studios & record labels have come and gone throughout the years. There used to be HUNDREDS of major commercial studios in L.A. alone, but now there are probably 30 or so...and A LOT of those have changed hands multiple times and have gone through multiple renovations. It's easy to see how things could get lost in the shuffle.

In addition, it wasn't uncommon for a touring band to record a few songs for an album in L.A., then 2 or 3 more in San Francisco or New York, and the others in the U.K., Berlin, Europe, etc. Physical media was shuffled around quite a bit, even well into the digital age because wireless transmission was still very slow & expensive.

Other times, the recordings were made on low-quality analog tape to save money, and/or the master tapes were stored improperly to where they degraded and were useless. So those recordings are completely lost except for the final LPs, 45rpm, or 78rpm vinyl that was released to the public. And for a long time vinyl was written off as a useless or at least inferior format, so the master pressing discs and/or the lathe-cut lacquers were either disposed of, not properly cared for, or completely forgotten about. 

Of course, the entire Apple iPod/MP3/Napster era did its lasting damage as well...don't get me started (even though I'm guilty here as well).



WOW, Sorry for going so far off topic! I just think that it is interesting to know at least _some_ of the reasons that only poor recordings exist for certain artists or labels.

There's only so much you can do to "fix" poor, brick-walled, or lossy compressed recordings. It depends on the particular deficiency.

The absolute best software available at the moment AFAIK is *iZotope RX*. It's actually quite amazing what can be done with it if you know what tools to use & how to use them. It's basically the modern equivalent of Photoshop but for audio. But like Photoshop, to get the full versions that have the most powerful tools, it ain't cheap!

Here's a link. There are written and video tutorials on the web site and on YouTube, etc.

*iZotope RX*

And yes, for being a free program, Audacity has some amazingly powerful tools and plugins if you know how to use them. Unfortunately, polishing a turd will only get you so far!  And it's usually A LOT of work for very little gain overall. 

.


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## Leekle2ManE (Jan 26, 2012)

I get that there's only so much you can do with a poor recording, though bbfoto's long spiel was rather insightful. 

A recent acquisition of mine that sparked my frustration was when I picked up the old License to Ill album from Beastie Boys. After getting it, I opened each track in Audacity just to check for clips and adjust gains if needed. I then added it to the thumb drive I use for my car. While driving down the road one of the tracks came on and I could barely hear it over the road noise even though I had the volume up a bit. I slowly used the Compressor function with 'Based on peaks' selected. This has worked for me in bringing down the spikes while boosting the quieter stuff. I finally got it to the point where volume-wise it matches other tracks on my thumbdrive, but it still seems to lack some of the bass I remember from CD (which could just be my faulty memory ay work).

When I was editing the above mentioned Beach Boys, I really got the impression that I was dealing with poor recording practices or bad (compared to today) equipment. Every time Brian Wilson uttered a word that started with a B, P or T, there was a massive spike in the waveform which made adjusting gains to avoid clipping a real pain. I had to zoom in, select just that spike and use Amplify with negatives to bring those spots down. A true Audiophile might be able to hear a difference in those split seconds, but I don't hear it.

There's a lot of tools in Audacity that I don't use or don't know how to use. I've dabbled with some and even split a song into multiple wave forms based on frequency in hopes of boosting low end, but when I compiled them back together I ended up with a clipping mess that sounded weak in every aspect except the bass, which I had only boosted by 2 db. But I mostly only use the Normalize and Compressor (in small increments) to volume match other tracks.


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## Holmz (Jul 12, 2017)

I am not brave enough to click the link.


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## Holmz (Jul 12, 2017)

gileskirkland said:


> View attachment 230265
> 
> 
> Scary indeed :laugh:


Sometims caution is a good when people with few posts start posting obscure links. Glad you got a laugh out of it.


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