Can you toy with a badly mastered album in a sound editing program?

Sorry if this has been posted before. If I had a CD that was mastered WAY too loud for my taste, would reducing the gain of all the tracks in a sound program like Audacity reduce the quality of the recording? Conversely, If I have an album mastered way too quietly (Buena Vista Social Club HDTRACKS version) would increasing the gain of the entire album to match my preference be a bad idea? Am I destroying the quality of these recordings by playing god?

 

Damage which is done, you can't make undone. Though, if you've got a digital file which is digitally clipping, you can restore the peaks. Take for example the 2001 remaster of 'Milk & Honey' by John Lennon & Yoko Ono. Clipping to the point of every peak in the music audibly distorting, but with a declipper tool like iZotope RX it's no problem to make it listenable again.

Too quiet masters are great, because you then still have all freedom yourself. If it are just separate pop/rock tracks (not classical or another genre with songs sequencing into each other), I would normalise every song separately, and then apply a light limiter. I do this all the time for my iTunes library.

 

I've done a lot of remastering using Sound forge and plugins, with good results.

It all depends on how much you want to play around with the tracks, and if the results are to your liking.

Good luck.

later
-1

 

To a limited extent.

 

Thanks for all the feedback, I was pretty insecure about toying with all my flac files. So long as no quality is lost when gain is reduced or increased I guess I'm good to go

 

If all you're doing in Audacity is increasing or decreasing gain, you might as well just play the CD and tinker with the volume knob.

 

I think you may (or may not!) like ReplayGain/R128 if you listen to your music with compatible software.

Of course it's not going to fix all the problems of modern mastering, but it looks like you're mainly trying to play all your music at a similar loudness level, and ReplayGain/R128 is a way of achieving this.

It doesn't satisfy everyone's needs and tastes, though. It doesn't restore lost dynamics, but it saves your ears from the usual "IT'S LOOOUUD" and "it's quiet" thing between different masterings.

 

For those interested in this, 4 years old, still alive: John Lennon Signature CD Box - Sound Quality

 

This is the specific problem ReplayGain was designed to solve. I use iVolume. I adjust entire albums as a unit so that transitions still sound musical.

 

How long does it take to get the hang of audacity?

 

I'm sure Audacity will do a lot of things, but I didn't find it particularly intuitive and didn't use it for very long. I found the Goldwave editing software to be much more to my liking. YMMV.

 

You can screw with it but there will be limitations on the sound since its been mixed.

 

True. I feel like I can make a bad mastering better, but it'll never be audiophile. I can obviously make it quieter, but I can also take the rough edges off. I'm not opposed to re-EQing a bad sounding recording either or using noise reduction (although I try to use the latter sparingly).

 

Would Goldwave be able to make something like this more listenable?

DR4
Album details - Dynamic Range Database

 

I do EQ and stuff like that to suit my tastes. Sometimes I cut and remix parts or just sample parts.

 

EQ is a fine art and takes a lot of experience and tuning to do correctly. It's a bit of a mine-field trying to 'fix' bad masters and any EQ'ing after the mixing/mastering stage usually leaves a lot to be desired. It's doable but usually frustrating and involves a fair bit of work to do 'seamlessly'.

 

Seriously?
Of course not. The point is to not have to play with the thing every song to get it sounding right.

 

I can't say off hand. But if you'd like to email me a track from it I'll experiment and see what I can do. I'll send you a PM.

 

What i want to know is how much digital tinkering you can apply to a track before losing musical information. If i just reduce the gain, am i losing any musical data?

 

You can perfume a pig....

 

Audacity > Clipfix > Equalization presets that are to your liking (I have one that sounds similar to my TT stylus)

Works well. Sometimes.