The Missing Octave(s) - Audacity Remastering to Restore Tracks

[Marvel]

26 minutes ago, DrWho said:

If you're blaming 95% of the source material, then I simply need to point out that your system needs fixing.

 

Most cars are what need fixing...

[Marvel]

I finally checked a CD I bought a couple of years ago. Hard to listen to at home, just made me nervous and tense. Five... count them, 12345... of the tracks are over 0.0 dbfs. And you would think my system isn't set up? I bet the tape/file that was the final mix wasn't over 0.0. 

 

I have older albums that sound fantastic at home. I have many new ones that sound great at home too, but I would guess they aren't over 0. I know some aren't because I have checked them.

 

 

[garyrc]

2 hours ago, DrWho said:

 

Call it what you want, but they sound better mastered the way they are. The problem is you have a playback system that doesn't sound good with that kind of source material. Call it accuracy if you will, but I simply call it "sounds bad". The interesting thing is that source material sounds great on other systems. So where you're slaving away trying to undo your system, I'm blissfully listening to a very non-fatiguing experience. How could that be?!? Maybe there's more to sound quality than the few metrics you're so focused on.

Mike, what components do you have?  What is your room like?  Treatments?  Room correction software?  Last time I heard, I think you had Klipsch Chorus.

 

I never have stridency with Blu-rays, get it quite rarely on SACD, DVD-A, or "audiophile recordings," but do hear it from time to time with CDs.  I wonder if that is because of producers or executives demanding EQ and compression on some CDs, but not on disks headed to audiophile homes, or when the public may be familiar with a good theatrical mix.

 

I use the system listed in my signature, with Audyssey and enough bass boost to provide something like the preferred room curve Harmon has researched.

[DrWho]

I do most of my listening these days on headphones and earbuds, but my main system is very custom: 2-way Chorus with Othorn sub, and system manually EQ'd. Room acoustics are above average with almost no room modes. It's a very humble system with its own set of warts.

 

My point is that if you tweak the system to sound very acceptable on all these "horrible recordings", then you're going to find that "great recordings" don't stop sounding great (if not better). It's not required to be an either or thing. Granted, there will be variance in production quality for audiophile listening, but there is something wrong with your setup if any of the greats are unlistenable.

 

Our systems should be bent around the music we love, not the other way around.

[Khornukopia]

I sometimes buy two sets of concert tickets, so that at intermission I can move into seats closer to the stage and get a second perspective of what might be considered "the same listening experience". It helps me keep an open mind about sound quality, and an appreciation for other people's different opinions.

 

 

P.S.   I do not use my camera while the orchestra plays. One of the pleasures of attending the philharmonic is that the audience is so respectful of the musicians and of everyone in the concert hall.

[mikebse2a3]

On ‎11‎/‎8‎/‎2016 at 2:12 PM, DrWho said:

So why does it sound good enough in the car, but bad enough at home? Ever stop to consider the reasons behind that apparent paradox?

 

Sure have and it's not a paradox but in reality many Car systems and their environment have colorations/limitations that are at best tuned to give a somewhat pleasant sound by homogenizing/coloring the sound in a manner that can make many poor recordings passable. For the most part car systems and their environment have many limitations that prevent them from being able to have the resolution that a high quality home system can have. 

 

On ‎11‎/‎8‎/‎2016 at 2:12 PM, DrWho said:

If you're blaming 95% of the source material, then I simply need to point out that your system needs fixing.

 

No one said 95% but you Mike and if you tell me 95% of the source material you play sounds good then either you have a very limited selection of recordings or "I simply need to point out that your system needs fixing".

 

 

On ‎11‎/‎8‎/‎2016 at 2:10 PM, Chris A said:

Mike: start another thread and talk about this subject.  I'm sure that you'll enjoy the freedom to move that thread in any direction that you wish.

 

Chris I apologize and after this I see no point in continuing to respond to Mike in your thread since he can start his own.

 

 

 

miketn

[tromprof]

On 11/8/2016 at 2:39 PM, Marvel said:

 

Most cars are what need fixing...

 

I hate listening to music in the car, to my ears all recordings sound equally bad there. As a professional musician who spends a lot of time driving to gigs I reserve the car audio system for books on tape. The home system is for music.

And I truly don't understand the argument against re-EQing recordings. We have all experienced the ups and downs of the quality of the sound of various recordings.  If the fault was our system all recordings would sound bad, just like in my car. Not all musicians are created equal, just as all sound engineers are not of equal quality.

[Don Richard]

Autosound as a reference? It seems like the noise floor would obliterate any sound quality differences from any source.

[DrWho]

On 11/9/2016 at 4:13 PM, mikebse2a3 said:

No one said 95% but you

Hey, I'm not the one systematically going through my entire music collection to add smiley face EQs to make all the FFTs look the same.

 

On 11/9/2016 at 4:13 PM, mikebse2a3 said:

....in a manner that can make many poor recordings passable

I used to adhere to this mindset - probably because I spent too much time on these forums. But think for a second about the philosophy behind such a perspective.....and then put yourself in the shoes of some young kid new to the audiophile world that has been enjoying great music and wants to step things up to the next level. You are now going to tell him that this "better system" sounds worse because his source material and musical preferences are the problem? And you guys wonder why this is a dying hobby? I could only imagine the reaction if I put one of our microphones in front of a few singers and tried to explain that they sound worse because this microphone is "better" and therefore more revealing of their flaws. Now that's a sales pitch the young kid wants to hear!

 

What if we instead defined "better" by the actual subjective human listening experience instead of some arbitrary line drawn on a computer screen?

 

There's an old adage in the prosound world where if you're applying the same EQ to every channel (on a mixer), then your system isn't calibrated properly.

[CECAA850]

On Saturday, November 05, 2016 at 9:40 AM, DrWho said:

 Maybe try reading for comprehension next time.

 

Mike make your point but keep it nice.  No need to get personal in a technical discussion.

[Chris A]

I need to gauge interest in a more "automated" way to do the demastering found in this thread. If so, I can invest in that tool and provide a tutorial here.  If there's not much interest, I'll continue to use the techniques that I've shown above.  The catch: there is a cost associated with the VST plugin for use with Audacity (about $110US). 

 

The techniques that I've been using in this thread are still useful in that they work and they're free.  The downside is that it takes more practice/skill than using a plugin (...allegedly...) and it generally takes a more time to find those inverse EQ curves using the above technique--assuming that your ability/skill to create an inverse EQ curve using Audacity is at a beginner to average level of skill.  The promise of this semi-automated approach is a significantly higher probably of producing a good result, even for the most difficult tracks (assuming that you have a good reference track to compare against for the type of music that you're demastering)--and much less time spent learning and practicing the technique.

 

Any interest?

 

Chris

[Marvel]

Chris, what's the VST plugin that you mention?

 

Bruce

[Chris A]

I haven't determined the best option on matching-EQ plugins, but the one that I used for the dollar figure is MAutoDynamicEQ.  I hope to find a cheaper one, but that one seems to be the lowest price that I've run across and has at least reasonable reviews. 

[Wirrunna]

Just did a Google search for   MAutoDynamicEQ    and found this link http://soundbytesmag.net/meldaproductionmautodynamiceq/ . Fascinating reading, I think I understood about a quarter of it. Baffled by all the TLAs.

As an old fart I can remember concerts when there wasn't even a mixing desk, the performers just turned their own amps up or down themselves.               

[Chris A]

Thanks John. That's pretty much what I was looking for above.

 

That's a pretty good tutorial on using MAutoDynamicEQ to match individual voice or instrument tracks for later mixing, and it pretty much sums up the techniques described in this thread, except using a plugin to find an inverse EQ curve to match one track to another track.

 

In the case of demastering as described here, the goal is usually "pro forma" in terms of the desired result: a monotonically decreasing amplitude vs. frequency.  What I haven't discussed yet is phase.  Phase has value, particularly from 1-6 kHz where phase of harmonics is critical to achieving "clarity" (see slide 4-ff). I believe that this is the reason why a demastered track begins to achieve greater sensitivity to very small changes in EQ when it is pushed back to a 1/f decreasing SPL curve overall (for most tracks having reasonably full instrumentation and especially with percussion). 

 

Since the EQ used in most DAWs use minimum phase filters ("IIR" filters--just like passive and most active loudspeaker crossover and balancing filters--and the type used exclusively on all mastering workstations up until recently,i.e., all of your favorite music has had IIR mastering applied), when a mastering person pushes a slider up or down on a mastering console or DAW, he's not only is pushing the EQ around, he's also pushing the phase around, too.  And phase above 1 kHz is critical to the clarity of the resulting sound.  So as soon as he boosts high frequencies relative to lows (particularly irregular EQ boosts above 1 kHz), the entire track sounds much less clear and much less transparent.  Micro-detail vanishes.  Truly unmastered tracks always sound better, i.e., before mastering is applied.

 

So when you demaster a track by pushing the EQ back to what mixdown tracks had on them before mastering, you're pushing the phase back to where it was, too...!  If we pick a nominal 1/f (-17 dB/decade) cumulative SPL curve as the target, once that condition is re-established the entire track's sensitivity to very small EQ changes magically reappears.

 

Wow...and the mastering guys thought that what they were doing was supposed to make things better: it doesn't...it makes it even worse. 

 

It turns out that the place to fix resulting EQ is at mix time.  If you wait and try to EQ after all the tracks are mixed, all you're really getting is various levels of enriched mud. 

 

Chris

[Evolo]

Hi Chris

 

Thanks for all of your informative posts.  It has been a great way to improve those 1970's recordings that I love but sometimes sounded a little ordinary.

 

Your recent post about alternative software sent me off looking.  I came across Har-Bal - http://www.har-bal.com/ .  Its not a simple automated process but I find it faster than Audacity and the final result sounds quite a lot better.  It might be worth a look.

 

John 

 

 

[Chris A]

Thanks John, I'll take a look. 

 

Anything that can automate the process of achieving inverse EQ is something of interest.  Currently, the higher the skill of the person doing the demastering EQ, the better the results.  Having something that would cut the learning curve down would increase the value of the technique(s).  This tool looks like it is more of a time domain algorithm than frequency based.

 

Welcome to the forum!

 

___________________________________________________

 

Lately, I've been demastering many of my "audiophile quality" 44.1 PCM stereo tracks and have found that even "reference demonstration discs" have oftentimes severe amounts of mastering EQ applied. 

 

For example, one of the favorite discs advertised as one of the most used demonstration recordings by a competing horn-loaded loudspeaker company is Tears of Stone (1999):

 

 

 

After repairing the clipping on the tracks and removing power line noise on some tracks, there was a lot of midrange (200-1000 Hz) mastering EQ--enough that it was a real eyebrow-raiser.   After demastering, the entire album sounds much more natural and pleasing, losing that close-microphone exaggerated transient effect of amplified acoustical music that is so fatiguing and very difficult to listen to at any volume level.  I wouldn't use this album for loudspeaker demonstration at least without significant demastering applied.  The female voices are clearly the draw here, but the extreme over-exaggeration of acoustic guitar and penny whistle transients IMO destroys the hi-fi listening experience. 

 

I've also demastered the seven Flim & the BB's studio CDs, as well as the eight Mannheim Steamroller Fresh Aire albums, and others such as James Newton Howard & Friends, Tracy Chapman, Cincinnati Pops/Erich Kunzel Time Warp, John Lee Hooker The Healer, etc., etc. 

 

This most recent demastering exercise has given me many new insights into these albums after owning and listening to some of them...perhaps for as long as 4 decades or more.  It's difficult to describe the listening experience catharsis now, listening to these newly demastered recordings.

 

Chris

[Chris A]

On 4/7/2017 at 4:21 AM, Evolo said:

 I came across Har-Bal

So I assume that the function that you're using is "harmonic balancing", and not so much the dynamics processing and loudness matching functions.  Was there a reason why you settled on this application over the others on the market?

[Evolo]

Good question.  I didn't look that far really just had a reasonable look at MAutoDynamicEQ.  I liked that Har-Bal was a stand alone package.  It seemed to be ideally set up for re-mastering previously completed tracks, as per some of the videos and instruction manual demos on their site.  The developer also seemed tuned into the issues of the Loudness Wars.  As you mention, the harmonic balancing is what I was after and the promises of empathetic equalisation appealed.  And price didn't seem too bad considering the number of CD's and vinyl rips I eventually want to get through. 

 

There is also a feature called Reference and Segment Referencing.  I haven't really tried it yet but it seemed to be similar to the process that you mentioned of saving a preferred filter and automatically applying that as required or as a starting point.

 

Once you get used to the histogram that is also good for setting levels.  You can also vary the dynamic range with this function.  Last night I tried increasing the dynamic range on the debut Boston album that I had just finished.  It did take it up one db level but it impacted the sound, not sure what was happening there, maybe went too hard, more to discover...  I also think my 5+ year old desktop is struggling with the processing.  I did read somewhere that the software needs a modern processor.

 

It takes a while to get the hang of, but I suppose on reflection Audacity was the same.  The tutorial videos are a little dry but are a valuable resource for working it out.  I am definitely finding I can get a much clearer sounding result and in much shorter time than Audacity, although I must admit I used to be endlessly fine tuning with Audacity but it was hard to get it just right.  I think it was the muddiness that you referred to earlier.

[Chris A]

I've found that once the overall track EQ is fairly close to a 1/f curve, and the fine tuning commences (on really difficult/highly "mastered" tracks, this is usually the day after the coarse EQ demastering), I find that there are basically two typical frequency bands for fine tuning:

 

1) Adjusting 100-200 Hz downward to take away the muddiness (or adding in a bit more in this band if the mix sounds too thin), and,

 

2) Adjusting 6-10 kHz up or down very slightly to adjust brilliance and presence.  On tracks that are fairly flat in terms of 1/f smoothness, I use an adjustment EQ filter that tilts the entire spectrum up or down by ~2-3 dB (high frequency vs. low frequency level) successively until the overall brilliance is just right.  This technique works well on music tracks with full instrumentation, like rock bands and full orchestra performance, etc. 

 

Small ensembles of instruments lacking percussion and a frequency overlap in instruments (like a female voice and bass only, flute and viola or double bass only, etc.) usually wind up with non-flat cumulative EQ curves due to the gaps in frequency band power response. 

 

Sometimes adjustments to the midrange (200-1000 Hz) are required to regain an overall balance of leading voices to the accompanying "rhythm section". 

 

I think the bottom line is that playing the track at near concert volume on your rig that's been carefully EQed flat is critical.  In mid-2015, my subwoofer amplifier gains were inadvertently turned down by one notch on each amplifier, and the playback levels used were a bit too low (a long story).  Now, I have a pretty significant number of tracks that I need to re-equalize to turn down the extreme low frequency (below 70 Hz) to achieve balance. 

 

Lessons learned: record the settings of your setup amplifier gains carefully so that if they somehow change, the calibrated amplifier gains can be restored again before any tracks are demastered. 

 

Chris