Hey everyone,
I was just wondering how I would “master” this song. Its by Jethro Tull, but was never released on an album, but I love the song and want it to have a good quality sound. you can here it at: http://www.cupofwonder.com/sailor.mp3
Whoever releases Tull’s albums remastered other songs from this set, but not this one because Ian Anderson didn’t like it enough, but they fixed up all the others very nicely.
I think you will recognize what I want to fix about it, it isn’t dynamic enough, its a bit limited. Sorry if I sound stupid, but I don’t deal in Audio often.
thanks for the help.
-Andy
any Ideas?
Is this file the only copy of the tune that you’ve got access to? It’s very noisy and is encoded at only 22.05 KHz (half of CD-quality). Without having a better quality copy of that file, I don’t think you’ll be able to remove the tape hiss (which is very loud) nor will you be able to get any of the high frequencies back. If this is your starting position, it’s never going to sound good. You might be able to aim for ‘less-crappy’ though.
As is, it’s unfixable. If you have a better copy without the tape hiss, then the first thing to do is to reduce the bass, it’s really unbalanced as is. Even a simple EQ line that gradually cuts out the bass starting at 300Hz and going down to -20dB does a lot to get you where you’re headed. But beyond that your options will be very limited since it’s only a two-track recording.
I’d bet that the guy who originally mastered the other tunes from this session had access to the multi-track tapes (which makes mixing and mastering a billion times easier, and I’m not exaggerating). Without access to those multi-track tapes, you’re very limited in what you can do to fix it up.
Ok, well thanks for replying anyway. I hope they decide to release a nice version of this song soon, as it really is a great song…
I was going to suggest looking on YouTube, from where you could have recorded it with Audacity - but the version posted there appears to be the same low quality as the one you posted (and it labels it as a RARE recording).
From reading other web postings (Google:Jethro Tull + Sailor) it appears that the only known recording is probably a bootleg of a recording session that was never released - so the proper master tapes,if they ever existed and were kept, are gathering dust on a shelf somwhere, long forgotten and neglected.
WC