remastering MP3

VST, AU, AAX, CLAP, etc. Plugin Virtual Effects Discussion
Post Reply New Topic
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

After harddisk crash I have some of my songs only as MP3 :( Any thoughts on how to turn them into decent WAVs? Would remastering help and if so - what should I focus on in terms of frequency etc?

Post

It depends on what bitrate you mastered your MP3s at. If you mastered your MP3s at a high bitrate, say 192kbps or higher, then nobody is really going to be able to tell that your new WAV is in fact an MP3. But if your MP3s are 96kbps or something, then you'll be able to tell straightaway (or you will if you're sad like me) :hihi:

Lower bitrate MP3s can sometimes make high frequencies sound a bit funny. Also you might lose some spatial positioning in the mix if your MP3s are really low quality, like 64kbps or lower.

If the files are good quality then just export them again as a WAV in a good editing program. I think Audacity is perfectly good for most tasks like this (I use it to convert my WAVs I export from Cubase into MP3s) and it's free, too. If the files are high enough quality to start with then you shouldn't need to remaster them; if they're not, then maybe some high frequency EQ might be called for. Difficult to know without hearing the files!

Good luck with it, anyway.

Oliver
"Have you been living under a rock bro?
Guys with puppets get CHICKS!"

Post

apan wrote:After harddisk crash I have some of my songs only as MP3
That sucks. I bet you decided to make regular backups from now on :)

--HansM

Post

Hmm.. Thought you lost the whole high end of your wav, when you converted it to mp3.. Even 320kbps..

Post

Well yeah, I suppose yes you're right :oops:

but what I was getting at is that the higher the bitrate, the better off you'll be cos the less information will have been lost.

the track on my site is up at 96kbps, 128kbps and 192kbps. The difference between the 96 and the 192 version shows what I mean (not trying nto hijack the thread, just trying to illustrate the point :wink: )
"Have you been living under a rock bro?
Guys with puppets get CHICKS!"

Post

bitrate is 128, so I guess I´ll try some high end eq...thanks, odavy. And yes, I´m the king of backups now.

Post

In my experience 128 is far too low to preserve decent high end. Might be the encoders I've used, but I doubt it.
Every day takes figuring out all over again how to f#ckin’ live.

Post

don't really know how you're going to repair the 128k hi-freq *flange* ...

i used to do some serious imaging stuff prior to encoding (i.e. mono sub120hz, widening around 1.5k-4k and narrowing above 4k) and m/s compression to avoid encoding artifacts to some extent ... so my exports were halfway decent at this bitrate (when required).

but hey ttoz is selling his virtos pack, and there's some sort of *freq-resynthesyzer*. you might check it out.

Post

just listened to one of the songs in my monitors. high end sounds like someone has chewed on it...indeed seems unfixable to me but I might look up the ttoc pack. thanks

Post

EQ won't help but you can try using an exciter to give you some high end back (maybe with an LPF in front of the exciter to cut out some of the fizz first). I've done it a couple of times with low-bitrate compressed audio & had good results. Don't expect miracles, of course.

Post

ReFX had an exciter that was good for this :wink:
It was called Spectrix I think, but I can't remember the link.
That Virtos freq-resynth thingamajig sounds interesting, is there a demo version of it ?

Ok, just googled, heres the link
http://www.obertone.com/vst.html

Post

Try www.virtos-audio.com/products/download/band extrapolation. I'll try it on my mp3-songs. Will also look up spectrix. Thanks

Post

sorry, I ment www.virtos-audio.com then click prod/downl/band...

Post

Make sure that you unpack it to a .wav before doing any editing at all to it. Never directly edit an .mp3.

Post

This Virtos thing looks nice :love:
Oh by the way be carefull Spectrix eats CPU like nothing else :!:
A little offtopic: How good is the DeNoiser, is it better than Waves ? (mostly for removing noise from tape)

Post Reply

Return to “Effects”