when you have to polish a turd
 

Hi there. Just looking for some tips.

Any suggestions for improving the sounds of an MP3?

In this case... I'm doing a "mastering". I put in quotes because I'm not a mastering engineer, but I've done my share of rough mastering with pretty good results for my humble setup. just doing for a buddy that has $0 to spend on a proper mastering guy and its fun for me.

Story:

• Band records proper demos in protools years ago
• Drummer has all files in computer
• Drummer has a meltdown, trashes his computer, and moves to the sticks
• No one in the band thinks to make backups at any point
• Now all I have to work with is some mp3's that were dug out of past emails

I realize an mp3 is an mp3 and there is no way to replace the data that is compressed and lost in the process of conversion.

But aside from the obvious stuff you'd do with any track, would guys do anything differently if you knew from the get-go you'd be working off mp3's?

Thx so much in advance for any tips you may have.

best,

-c

Re: when you have to polish a turd
 

Well, I realize you have the broke-starving-musician budget (!);
But for others who may read this and be curious,
there is a genius company out there called Zynaptic,
and one of the voodoo tools Denis makes is called Unchirp;
and it does a remarkable job of combatting the chirping and twittering artifacts of mp3’s,
and general over-limiting.
e

Re: when you have to polish a turd
 

The manual of Scheps Parallel Particles says that the AIR control can sintesize high frequencies by analizing the content below.

Re: when you have to polish a turd
 

Hmmm..never heard of this one. Its a bit pricey and I don't often run into situations where I'd need to use it. But it sure looks interesting.

Re: when you have to polish a turd
 

There's MP3s and then there's MP3s. Do you know, for example, what kbps rate was used when the MP3 was created? MP3s created at 128kbps may have some artifacts and such, whereas those created at 320kbps might be fairly clean, if the original track was pretty clean. I'm not sure there's any right way to go about it. You will probably just have to experiment with different settings and such and see what sounds best.