Cleaning up Mp3z

I notice a TON of mp3s I get sound pretty weak.
Generally, they’re REALLY mudded-mid-tone sounding and most EQs can’t
compensate enough to make them sound better.
I’ve noticed this quality of sound in internet mp3s and even some CDs.

Well, I figured a way to make them sound better using the David Sky
Nyquist “Classic EQ(15)” plug-in and Audacity.

First off, you should know some things about how an EQ (Equalizer) works:

  1. Equalizers can increase the volume of certain “bands/groups” of frequencies.
    For instance: 1500Hz-350Hz
  2. Equalizers can also LOWER the volume of certain “bands/groups” of frequencies.
  3. While equalizers raise/lower a band of frequencies, they will also be raising/lowering
    other frequencies by smaller amounts to prevent audio clicking/tores.

Part 03 is REALLY important as not many people are aware of this fact. Think about it
like a string that is taped loosely at either end on a table. When you push up on a section of
the string, the parts of the string that are closest to that section will also push up while
the parts of the string that are furthest from your finger will push up less.

This is like an EQ’s affect on the entire frequency of a sound.

That said, I’ve had pretty good success using the following levels:

00025 Hz: 0.0
00040 Hz: 3.0
00063 Hz: 2.0
00100 Hz: 1.0
00160 Hz: 0.0
00255 Hz: 0.0
00420 Hz: 0.0
00640 Hz: 0.0
01000 Hz: 1.0
01700 Hz: 2.0
02560 Hz: 3.0
04250 Hz: 4.0
06850 Hz: 5.0
10200 Hz: 6.0
16000 Hz: 0.0

As you can see, the upper frequencies are raised, but we create a “smoother” “bump” in
the frequency spectrum by also raising frequencies groups directly below the target
frequency, thus preventing the audio from “getting all wack”.

If you find that these levels produce too much hi-tones, try decreasing the amounts, such as:

00025 Hz: 0.0
00040 Hz: 2.0
00063 Hz: 1.0
00100 Hz: 0.0
00160 Hz: 0.0
00255 Hz: 0.0
00420 Hz: 0.0
00640 Hz: 0.0
01000 Hz: 0.0
01700 Hz: 1.0
02560 Hz: 2.0
04250 Hz: 3.0
06850 Hz: 4.0
10200 Hz: 5.0
16000 Hz: 0.0

I like to just use whole numbers (for some reason). Also, you probably want to decrease
the volume of the track by -5.0 to prevent audio from being clipped (cut out at the top/
bottom of the graph) before applying the EQ filter.

Audacity 1.3.14 has an equalizer effect that is a lot better than David’s “Classic EQ(15)” plug-in.
Check out the features here: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Equalization
Audacity 1.3.14 can be downloaded from here: http://audacityteam.org/download/