How To "Remaster" Older Audio?

[Despair]

I know there's a topic on remastering audio from records/cassettes, but that's not exactly where my audio is coming from.

Let me first say that I've been using 1.2.6 up till now, and just got the 1.3 beta today as well as a bunch of the plugins if those are useful in any way.

On a video game site I go to, a user released what they called a "remastered" version of a few sega/nes soundtracks with "24-bit-quality remastering." (in the case of the sega tracks)

The "remastering" when I first heard it made me think that the whole track had just been redone in higher quality, after a few listens I realized that really all he did was increase the volume without lowing the quality and add some better bass to it. Keep in mind, I only know the basics (copy, cut, trim, paste, amplify, fades, etc.), no FFT Filter or Equalizer type stuff.

I was interested in doing similar "remastering" to a few game tracks I had recently ripped, so I asked how he went about doing it and didn't quite get an answer I was looking for. He directed me to a book on remastering audio, to which I said that if audacity had the ability to do the edits he did, I didn't know how to go about it. To which he replied:

"If Audacity allows you to chain VST effects, then yes you can do some things with it, but it's like when I used to remaster in Sound Forge... it does the job but you can do more if you use a professional DAW/sequencer such as SADiE, Digital Performer, Ableton etc."

So, frankly, I know nothing about how to go about this. I searched for tutorials and came up close to empty. I know "remastering" varies between tracks, so really I was hoping somebody could give me a quick run through of how to go about it and a generalization of how the plugins/edits work.

Thankyou in advance.

[whomper]

well... to me RE-mastering is redoing the mastering from the original stems again IMHO. what your source is talking about i would just call more editing on a finished mix. And none of it would fit my idea of mastering as much as it would be called mixing.

There is no set answer to what you should do to "improve" your tracks to sound "better" to you. YMMV and others may or may not agree that it is better after you diddle it.

you may or may not be able to improve how what you have sounds. depends on what you have and what you want to do. you can convert to 24 bit or even 32 bit but you won't gain anything in quality that was not in a 16 or 8 bit file already. you might prevent making things worse if you use a lot of f/x though as the extra bits will prevent the data bits from losing accuracy as you diddle the file.

personally i don't consider ableton to be "pro" DAW. I draw the line at sonar producer or similar. But what matters more is what you can do with what you have not what you call it.

What do you want to do ? remove noise, add bass, add reverb, tame the highs, compress, normalise, something else?

You can certainly apply these things one at a time with audacity.
Call that REmastering if you want to. I don't see why you need to chain anything for your project. Or even why you need VSTs.

Tell us what you want to do to your file and then ask a specific question if you don't see how to do it.

[kozikowski]

"Re-Mastering" is an advertising phrase designed to make you buy the same music the second time or lead you to believe there is quality where quality didn't used to be. And yes the phrase is normally followed by the phrase "from the original studio tapes."

I have a Music CD that on the second listening, has groove noise and an occasional cat hair. It was "remastered" from a vinyl record. Nowhere on the label does it say that.

You can change the music. Audacity has any number of tools to let you do that. Particularly if you got your music from a tinny game sound system, you can do wonders with the equalizer tools.

The first thing we're going to ask is what you're listening on. What is your sound system? If you're using a "computer" sound system, we recommend a good pair of headphones to start. You don't want to be the guy that spent hours rebalancing a sound track only to get it onto his neighbor's killer sound system which revealed all the noises and bass distortions which were there all along but he couldn't hear them.

We had two "computer" sound systems at work with different talents. One came out of the box with 20% harmonic distortion and the other featured highs, lows and no mids. At all. Both of those systems "had an accident."

And yes, it's good to know where you're going. There is no "Professional Audio Filter" even though I did design one for April Fools. You don't even have to know all the buzz words and catch phrases. Do you have a similar track you like? "Make this track sound like that one."

We'll take it from there.

Koz

[Despair]

What do you want to do ? remove noise, add bass, add reverb, tame the highs, compress, normalise, something else?

You can certainly apply these things one at a time with audacity.
Call that REmastering if you want to. I don't see why you need to chain anything for your project. Or even why you need VSTs.

Tell us what you want to do to your file and then ask a specific question if you don't see how to do it.

Well, the soundtrack that my source gave out was of Streets Of Rage, which, if you don't know it, was a more electronic based soundtrack. Granted, all sega tracks are since it uses a senthesizer chip, but this was a more....techno type album with lots of high points and a bass that you could atleast slightly hear.

His "remaster" really just toned up the loudness of the sound, added a heavier bass and maybe kept the highs from distorting or clipping. I hope to do atleast something similar with the tracks I plan to edit, but I'm unsure where to start. I mean, I can try to increase the bass or remove clipping or normalize and fiddle with the numbers, but I don't really know what these things mean. The only 1 i do is obviously bass, but I can't tell what's an appropriate bass other than "that's too much"

You can change the music. Audacity has any number of tools to let you do that. Particularly if you got your music from a tinny game sound system, you can do wonders with the equalizer tools.

The first thing we're going to ask is what you're listening on. What is your sound system? If you're using a "computer" sound system, we recommend a good pair of headphones to start. You don't want to be the guy that spent hours rebalancing a sound track only to get it onto his neighbor's killer sound system which revealed all the noises and bass distortions which were there all along but he couldn't hear them.

We had two "computer" sound systems at work with different talents. One came out of the box with 20% harmonic distortion and the other featured highs, lows and no mids. At all. Both of those systems "had an accident."

And yes, it's good to know where you're going. There is no "Professional Audio Filter" even though I did design one for April Fools. You don't even have to know all the buzz words and catch phrases. Do you have a similar track you like? "Make this track sound like that one."

We'll take it from there.

Koz

I'm really not sure if a sega soundchip counts as "tinny" or not.

My "sound system" just consist of the computer speakers and headphones really. I usually listen through my edited tracks on both, as well as the sound system in my car (yeah, not the best thing ever, but the best I have access to) to check for distortions or problems.

Now a "similar track" is something I can do. Just let me know how to get it to you guys. The only other problem is that the way he edited was essientally for a "techno-style" type album, and most of the ones I would like to edit are the same way. There is 1 album that is a little more "ambient-based", which would be the Ecco soundtracks, if you know of it. A few songs do have bass, but I'm unsure of how much to add, if any. They also usually have higher frequencies, though, both types of albums do, it's just the bass and other sounds cover the highs somewhat in the "techno-style" albums.

Thankyou both for the help.

[kozikowski]

There is a very restructed ability to post attachments here in the forum, but it's limited in size and even less useful if you need to post large WAV samples.

There are web file hosting services which will allow you to park larger files for distribution against the hope that you're going to run out and pay them money for a bigger host.

I don't know who we're recommending. Maybe one of the other elves will drop in.

Koz

[Despair]

There is a very restructed ability to post attachments here in the forum, but it's limited in size and even less useful if you need to post large WAV samples.

There are web file hosting services which will allow you to park larger files for distribution against the hope that you're going to run out and pay them money for a bigger host.

I don't know who we're recommending. Maybe one of the other elves will drop in.

Koz

http://www.sendspace.com/file/s6aznf

Zipped file uploaded to sendspace. I can put it somewhere else though if sendspace doesn't work for you.

The files were vgm renders which supposedly mimic the actual sound chip used for the sega system. The tracks are then recorded. The site where I got the renders suggested winamp, and to transfer the vgm's into wav's, then import in audacity for whatever file type I needed.

My source's tracks were done in flac, seeing as I didn't have the new lirary codecs for audacity, I used winamp>WAV's then audacity, exported everything in 320 mp3.
While looking at it today with the "show clipping" option checked, I noticed there's a lot of it in the source's tracks. Though I can't tell if he didn't know, or simply didn't care.

Anyway, there's a file from each of the albums I'd like to edit. The Streets of Rage tracks are present in those original vgm's I mentioned, as well as his edits. Further down the line is Gunstar Heroes, quite similar in sound, probably a little more "techno-based" though. Then there's Ristar, which is slightly less. And the odds in the group are from the two Ecco games, more "ambient" in nature.

So I guess if you're willing, just point out a few things I could do to "make them more like this" and I'll play around with it.

[kozikowski]

Hitting maximum, while technically is not a problem, almost always means distortion on volume peaks.

It may not if:

-- You Amplified or Normalized a show to the default value of zero.

-- You are managing computer generated music which can be controlled to go straight up to the zero distortion point and not go over.

You can mostly tell if you're in trouble by magnifying the offending peaks to make sure they don't have little flat spots on them.

Koz

[Despair]

Hitting maximum, while technically is not a problem, almost always means distortion on volume peaks.

It may not if:

-- You Amplified or Normalized a show to the default value of zero.

-- You are managing computer generated music which can be controlled to go straight up to the zero distortion point and not go over.

You can mostly tell if you're in trouble by magnifying the offending peaks to make sure they don't have little flat spots on them.

Koz

That I do know, so I just stick with amplify. So what would you suggest for turning the original tracks into ones more like the "remastered" tracks?

[whomper]

first eq down not up. eg if you want to boost the bass then lower the other freqs downwards not the bass louder. but if you do increase some freqs then first amplify it all lower so the eq does nto push you into clipping. why not try eqing the bass first since you mentioned that. see if you can make that part sound like what you are looking for. then start adding the other f/x. you can normalise the final to be as loud as you want but leave room while working on it so you dont clip with any of the things you do to it.

[Despair]

first eq down not up. eg if you want to boost the bass then lower the other freqs downwards not the bass louder. but if you do increase some freqs then first amplify it all lower so the eq does nto push you into clipping. why not try eqing the bass first since you mentioned that. see if you can make that part sound like what you are looking for. then start adding the other f/x. you can normalise the final to be as loud as you want but leave room while working on it so you dont clip with any of the things you do to it.

Alright, I tried out like you suggested and I do believe I have the bass more or less the same as the "remaster's," but there's some static or white noise or something that's in the vgm rips I have (and they're in-game as well), but aren't in the 'remastered" version. Consequently, the "remaster" sounds more well done and I'm unsure what to do with it. There's no spot of just noise for noise removal, high/low pass filter's cut out the high parts or the bass, and I had been using the compressor to try to drop the highs (which it still hasn't dropped them enough), but it didn't cut out the noise either.

I'm guessing he removed the noise or static or whatever, compressed/normalized/equalized/something similar then upped the bass. That's pretty much how the wave looks in comparison to the original, bigger bass, lower highs, and the static sound is gone. I suppose he could've done some other edits to it, but if there are any, they're either too small for me to tell or they fit in with one of the others. The odd thing is the pretty high amount of clipping, lack of highs, but the sound doesn't sound distorted. I'd guess that's where the static is coming from but it's present at the beginning which is practically all bass....there are a few highs in there though so I guess it could be present, but I'm not sure how to cut the highs enough to get rid of it.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/7tcql2
If you'd like to take a look.