Can Bad Recordings be Fixed?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

Can Bad Recordings/ masterings be fixed and made to sound good?

 

Maybe a little creative EQ for each track?  Decompression/Declipping? Maybe a better system does it for you (realizing the potential within) ? Color me warm with sonic sunglasses?

 

This topic was inspired by posts in another thread some of which are quoted below to kick things off.

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23 hours ago, PeterSt said:

The problem is that it is quite hard to tell whether a recording is a bad recording. I have too many examples of that seemingly being so, until years later I improved something and suddenly the bad recording became a good recording. Won't count for everything and all of course, but say that in the general scene we both will know (but exclude me from classical) chances are more than 90% that the bad recording is your (our) poor system.

 

23 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

I can accept that a bad recording can sound less bad depending on what you have tweaked. The risk is you color the sound to suit the recording type or otherwise gravitate to recordings that suit your colored system.If the goal is transparency, true transparency then bad recordings should be heard for what they are, not with sonic sunglasses.

 

OTOH I am exploring various ways of tinkering with bad recordings with some creative EQ or other track specific methods. NOT in making changes to my whole system.

 

19 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

No, I am not saying that; A bad recording is a bad recording.

But you tell me how you can definitely for 100% sure know that a bad recording is a bad recording ? (with the notice that a "recording" as such is seen by us through its pressing/mix/(re)master).

 

1. What we both will think is that a flat sounding recording is a bad recording.

2. Stuffed ears too few highs is a bad recording.

3. Booming bass is a bad recording.

4. Gray sounding highs must be a bad recording.

 

Ad 1.

Rolling Stones - Get Yer Ya-Ya's out. Turns out not to be flat at all. Somehow things can be done so that it expresses as much depth as the other albums.

 

Ad 2.

Deep Purple - Machine Head. In a very strange fashion the highs are buried. But miraculously a year ago they appeared.

 

Ad 3.

Heavy D. and the Boys - All albums. Were not playable for me. Remove the (system !) distortion from the bass (consider that 100% of people suffer from this) and all appears fine.

 

Ad 4.

Beatles - e.g. Get Back. If you'd hear it over here you'd put a lot of money on the perception of listening to a cover.

 

Don't confuse this with poor remasters which never ever will be OK. But also look at this example (of my experience) :

For many many years I have thought and said that Beatle's Love was about the only well-done remaster I ever experienced (the middle parts of the songs are "orginal"). With all my guts and experience I seriously was convinced that those middle parts of the songs remained untouched, thus equal to the originals, btw including above mentioned Get Back.

This stopped when I created the Clairixa USB cable. From then on, I suddenly heard a huge difference and the Love remasters suddenly were a total failure.

I assume you know it. And I also assume that those who know it, will not agree with me.

 

But what really happened was that the originals got better again, this time by means of an USB cable.

 

A few pages back I gave that list of "old hits", like from the 60's. I am confident that you won't believe me when I tell that almost all in that list sound like they were created today (but without today's compression). But might you believe me, then you won't believe me that 20 years ago this was just a pile of crap while 34 years ago Dire Straits sounded "perfect" through the same playback system (I only compare CD's).

 

The experience with Bill Evans is in a kind of other league because if you don't coincidentally have the version I have (and which appears super rare), it is a "poor recording". This, while if you see me screaming in that link about the (1959 !) quality, you wouldn't understand if you have one of those many other versions, including the totally failed Hires. So :

a. chances are fair that you have that other version and think it is a bad recording which is true;

b. chances are more fair that you think it is all crap anyway because too old;

c. the truth is that such an album sounds so good since a stupid playback software improvement, back at the time.

 

Btw, this thread is about the Lush cable, and with that too you hear people say more than once that old recordings got so much better.

 

17 hours ago, CuteStudio said:

 

 

Perhaps you are mixing (sic) recording with mixing and mastering? Today's problem is at the mastering stage and ruins almost all modern music - and therefore HiFi. Very little escapes unscathed. At the end of the day we can't all listen to good pressings of The Beatles, The Stones, Bowie, Dire Straits etc because some modern music is in fact very good, we just never know due to the damage done when it's mastered into a block on continuous noise.

 

Adele's 19 was not too badly mastered for the time, i.e. it was average to its peers. 21 was worse. 25 is even worse. For many artists like Adele the mastering gets worse over time, Adele just happened to have named hers conveniently to track the deterioration in quality.

The word 'Re-master' really means 'Modern master' which means heavily compressed and about half the time: actually clipped.

 

The way to definitely tell if you have bought a bad master is actually very simple: There are two easy methods:

 

1) Is it a modern pop record? A 99% chance it's been wrecked.

2) Open it in the free Audacity music player. If it looks like a brick shaped object it has been significantly damaged during mastering.

 

There is no possibility of making these recordings sound good by changing your system. The square edges of the clips can only be rounded off by reducing treble, at which point it's not HiFi anymore. There is a small point in your favour which many miss - quite a lot of HiFi makes a bad master sound even worse: so I agree the playback system has some role.

 

With heavy digital processing it is possible to make them quite listenable, but they will NEVER be the quality of a properly mastered track. The worst damage is actually that which creates the 'brick' shaped waveform but doesn't actually clip, because the data of the original peak heights is lost when they are all forced to the same level and that lost data can be vaguely inferred but is essentially the most significant bit of the digital waveform missing. I.e. People argue about 16bit because they worry about the last bit (bit15) not having enough detail but todays digital music has at least 6dB (bit0 !!) missing from it. It's a serious problem and no one will fix it.

 

This article describes the problem: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/imperfect-sound-forever.htm

Bear in mind that article is 11 years old now so quality today is significantly worse that the author is describing, each year quality falls further.

 

Sadly many listen to dreadful sources on their HiFi: Checking in Audacity would shock them from their delusion of 'bit perfect' CD quality sound.... for these reason I suggest that Theresa is correct: the source quality is key.

 

8 hours ago, fas42 said:

Peter is one of the very rare individuals who has also discovered the magic that lies within recordings that nearly everyone else has discarded as not being worth listening to - he is still hestitant about whether all recordings can be "rescued", but he can rest assured that it will be difficult to find anything that can't rise, phoenix like, from the ashes of crap sound .

 

Above he mentioned Deep Purple - Machine Head: I have an original, unfiddled with release - and this is an amazing album - blows all the audiophile "rubbish" I've heard 100's of yards into the weeds . So much to hear in it, with fabulous changes of pace and atmosphere. So, you see, it's very easy for me to appraise some unknown rig - if it can't extract at least some of the magic in this recording then it's stuck in first gear; it's trivial to be able to hear what a system is doing wrong, once you know what to listen for ...

 

6 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the considered reply.

 

I agree with Cute Studio's response.

 

I do take your point about it being difficult to definitely tell what is a bad recording vs just imperfect playback. It is a related issue to how do you tell if your system is neutral. In either case, short of being in the recording studio and comparing the versions, there is no other gold standard experience-based  way.

 

That said, I don't consider it is all that difficult to know that you are moving in the right direction, even if you don't know for sure if you have arrived.

 

If transparency/neutrality is the goal then virtually all recordings/masterings should sound somewhat different. Certainly not all sound the same in any one area be that warm and lush even if that is your taste.

 

You can also get clues by playing recordings on various different playback systems and see if there is a commonality for that recording eg sounding compressed and loud on all systems.

 

As mentioned by others, tracks can be analyzed and deemed poor recordings/masterings based on compression, clipping and other factors.

 

When previously bad sounding bad recordings sound better after a system change I would expect previously good sounding good recordings to also sound better but the impact may be more or less.

 

As for poor playback, again there will be a pervasive quality for ALL recordings.If you have gear reproducing the bass as flabby and loose, lacking articulation, definition, and speed.....it will be that way, more or less, on ALL recordings.If the bass is great on most recordings and poor on some, then relatively the latter are poorly recorded.That is NOT to say that they cannot be further improved. We are talking relativity and direction here, not absolutes.

 

 

It is not exactly unique for most audiophiles to experience/claim that a system upgrade/change has made a universal improvement in SQ.For me at least that equates with a *move* towards transparency and neutrality.

 

I am lucky to have a fine system and have striven for transparency, the system and room getting out of the way of the music. I have been startled at how good some old stuff can sound and for example, cliche or not, have been rediscovering old music from Julie London to Dire Straits. There is a lot of information hitherto not realized on some old recordings. Then, if your system removes every ounce of *superimposed* grain, noise,glare and other artefacts there are additional boosts.

 

I am talking about reaping the benefits of increased transparency and not further detracting with superimposed flaws. Not sonic sunglasses coloring the playback.

 

My prediction is that the best system on the planet *should* resolve and render a bad recording as a bad recording.Best sound will come from best recordings. People who say everything sounds great on their great system I believe are listening to euphonic colored sound, a facsimile of the real thing, not Hi- Fidelity, faithful to source. I have no issue with that, just not my cup of tea.

 

 

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

3 minutes ago, Fokus said:

Absolutely. The latest Kate Bush live recording sounds horribly dull when played on neutral speakers or headphones. Of all the recordings I have I deemed this one totally unacceptable. So  I have made my own remaster.

 

Would you mind sharing a little of how you did this and with what tools?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

4 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Decompression/Declipping ... yes! The experiments I did showed the potential, and I was merely feeling my way, purely explorative efforts. One pop track was just savagely compressed in the final mixing, and the parameters used in that operation could be deduced quite straightforwardly, from examining the waveform - applying the inverse of those parameters, in editing software that allowed uncompressing, did a nice job - there was no loss, from my POV, in the integrity of the track, but the massaged result sounded very much like a straight mix of the instruments.

 

What DAW did you use?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

9 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Reaper. Easily the most powerful I've come across, that's available to play with for zero cost.

 

Trying to mitigate the impact of compression without performing an undoing action with a high level of accuracy will be largely useless - all sorts of disturbing anomalies will be introduced. This is an exercise of performing serious analysis of the waveform, finding the patterns which mark the compression operation, determining what parameters were used in the software to create those patterns, and then applying an inverse operation. Using trival methods to try and 'fix' will yield trivial output, of little value for listening to, IME.

 

 

I am a great fan of audio and recording/mastering engineer Barry Diament and he also recommended Reaper for me to try some subtle Eq.

 

Generally Barry recommends *as I understand it* often only 1/4 to 1/2 dB changes with *low* Q ( wider shallower peaks) of around 0.66 equivalent to 2 octaves and generally fiddling with less turnover frequencies, which turnover frequencies depending on the result required.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

7 hours ago, gmgraves said:

That can be reversed using a com-pander like a dBX, IF (and boy is that a big IF) you know (or could figure out) the compression and release slope that the record company used to compress the album in the first place! Otherwise you're just guessing.

 

I still have a dBX from the 80's I think.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

27 minutes ago, fas42 said:

SeeDeClip ?!

 

I looked at that program about 6 years ago, when investigating my options for "fixing" tracks. I can't recall what the results were like, using the utility at that time - but ended up doing it "my way", back then. Perhaps I should have another look at the latest version ... ??

 

 I had a look at the website but to be honest found it confusing, the website that is. It appears unlike previous versions that modified tracks for archiving it morphed into a client-server thingy using your browser as a media player and analyzing and modifying tracks on the fly. No idea how but certainly happy to try it. Has anybody tried it recently?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

As mentioned previously Barry Diament recommended Reaper over Pro Tools and others. He was of the view that the DAW imparts its own sound to the end result and among other things favoured Reaper. He uses a bunch of more sophisticated tools.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

8 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

I have had a look at sandyk's offering, and to my eyes this looks like classic compression - of the sort that I looked at some years ago. Audacity reports zero clipping of the before, and technically this may be the case - but the dynamics have been savagely squashed, by about 10dB from eyeballing the waveform.

 

The SeeDeclip fix only slightly rectifies this, by about 1.5dB - I think I might have a go at refreshing my techniques, and try and do a lot better than this, on this particular posted track, . If I think I've got somewhere, I post it up, and invite criticism ... .

 

Very, very interesting to compare the 'corrected' versions. I already have Alex's (SandyK) SeeDeClip version downloaded.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

Okay I'll go first.

 

I compared the original and treated (SeeDeClip) files from Alex of Better be home soon.

The treated I thought was a winner, not night and day but, with impression of less congested sounding, the voice a little more separated and front, and the intro tending to bloom as in build a little more noticeably. That was matching volume by ear with the treated needing a boost of 2dB (2 notches on Volume).

 

With Volume levelling engaged on JRiver (R128) the differences almost disappeared, maybe in favor of the treated. I fiddled with "adaptive volume" etc but couldnt get a clear winner.

 

Now the obvious conclusion is that when volume was accurately matched = no difference. I am not so sure as I have never consistently used JR volume levelling. It seems to veil the sound somehow. It needs another 10bB up on the volume control when used and I suspect it is either messing with the sound or I am incorrectly using it. Overall I prefer the sound listening without it. Without it I prefer the treated version.

 

In the past when volume matching I have been satisfied volume matching with a sound level meter and that was concordant with my subjective impression of a match. Crude I know.

 

 

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

6 hours ago, fas42 said:

Just to mention, I'm making better progress that I thought I would!  It's been ages since I've done this, but it's coming back to me ...

 

Instruments are a big improvement, now getting the sweetness through - the 'recovery' is at a point where the variation between right, and not right, is in a fine balance - in the end, one gets the "right numbers", and none other are better - shouldn't be long!

 

There's quite a loud and strident section around 2 min in. Interesting if you can tame this

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

Hmmm, I slowed down a bit - had a heavy session with the dentist yesterday, and wasn't feeling brilliant for a while ...

 

Anyway, to get a feeling for what before and after waveforms can look like, here's sandyk's original version, attenuated by 7dB:

 

 

and the restored waveform, latest effort:

 

 

Pretty close to optimum, but I still want to play around with it a bit more; there's a slight volume pumping I want to eliminate.

 

Look forward to hearing it.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

The volume pumping is always the big problem when trying to expand compressed commercial audio recordings.

 

I did a quick google but was unable to get a relevant hit for volume pumping. Anyone have time for a quick definition?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

5 minutes ago, mitchco said:

volume pumping: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/409523-post7.html

 

As @gmgraves says, there is no way to know compression ratios. attack and release times, and the fact that (over) compression can be applied on individual tracks and at all stages of the recording, mixing and mastering process. More info, along with some sonic samples:

 

Thanks Mitcho, I will have a look at both links

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

2 hours ago, sandyk said:

I believe that Graham Wilkinson from Cute Studios (I hope I got the name right ?) did a fine job in developing a program that was able to make many annoying recordings of the time more listenable.

 

I would really welcome more input from him.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

21 hours ago, witchdoctor said:

I am using the Aftermaster Pro with bad recordings and yes, it does make them sound better:  

 

I hear alarm bells. Demo tracks sound louder. Do you know what it actually does (that's a question not criticism) ?

 

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the-aftermaster-pro-and-why-its-bullsh-t™.806030/