Love the music, hate the mastering?

[Primalsea]

I guess it must happen to all of us at some point, you buy a great album with wonderful music, but the mastering makes listening to it horrible, fatiguing assult on the lug-oles.

It happened to me recently and I had an idea which is not one for the purists, but it means that I can listen to my new albulm and enjoy it.

I’m a bit of a Beth Hart fan but the My California albulm was just too hard to listen to. I had already ripped it to my NAS drive so opened the album up in some free music editing software called Oceanaudio and used the spectrograph function. It was rather obvious that there was a lot of energy in the upper registers, right up to nearly 20 khz. The only other time I have seen a spectrograph like that is when my budgie decides to sing at the top of it’s ear piercing screech. The music seemed overly compressed too, with little difference in volume between anything you would expect to be loud or quiet.

I used the softwares expander function, which is the reverse to compression, just a little to help put some dynamics back. I also then changed the EQ by rolling off the higher frequencies until the spectrograph looked a little more kinder on the ears.

Once I done this for one song I just used the same settings for the rest of the albulm, but no reason other than time not to do each sone individually. Afterwards the albulm much was better to listen too, not perfect but certainly listenable.

Has anyone else tried anything similar?

[Firebottle]

I haven't but sounds like a brilliant approach. Hat's off to to you Paul.

[bumpy]

Just disconnect the tweeters :)

[Primalsea]

Just disconnect the tweeters :)

Haha! If only I had thought of that...

Here’s the link to Oceanaudio. You can see some examples of spectrographs. Red is quite high intensity. Yellow and white are very high and you would expect to see these colours at the bottom of the spectrograph, as this corresponds to bass frequencies where energy is highest. If you see yellow or white high up past a few kilohertz the music is likely to sound quite fatiguing.

Oceanaudio has a nice interface but you cannot batch process multiple files. Audacity is a bit clunkier to use but you can batch process.

[Andy Nogger]

Hi Paul,

if you're using Audacity have you tried Terry West's ReLife plugin?

Exactly how it works is a bit of a mystery, but it puts back a little of dynamics and reduces harshness.

Now free so nothing to lose by giving it a try. Not sure if this link still works:

http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?id=1732

Can't remember if Audacity will accept a VST as standard or if more fiddling about is needed.

Plenty of online comment, such as here:

https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=332429

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/mastering-forum/442879-relife-plugin.html

Like you I have also tried using upwards expansion, but the results were too hit and miss for me. Unless you chance on something close to the inverse of the original compression curve (which may be different for different frequency bands) it'll probably make things worse.

Good luck!

[Primalsea]

Not heard of that, thanks.

[Macca]

You can tweak it 7 ways from Sunday but if they have compressed all the dynamic range out of it in the mastering there's sadly no way back.

[Primalsea]

You can tweak it 7 ways from Sunday but if they have compressed all the dynamic range out of it in the mastering there's sadly no way back.

Yes, you are right - garbage in garbage out, so you will never be able to fix a bad production. I used it just to make an album of great music listenable. I enjoy the album for the music, but it will never be an audiophile experience.

[Alanbeeb]

I’m a bit of a Beth Hart fan but the My California album was just too hard to listen to....

Speaking of California, Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Californication, is the album that I'd like to rescue. I wonder if my venerable Behringer DEQ 2496 could help, as I think it has an expander function.

[Macca]

I have that album and I don't think it is as bad as people say, compression wise, but musically it isn't a patch on Mother's Milk or Blood Sugar Sex Magic. They are the only 2 Chillis albums worth having IMO. Although their first one is okay too.