What would you do to punch up the audio in this track?

[webidextrous]

I'm trying to make this audio come through clearer to the listener. Right now it feels like it's an underwater concert. I'd like to make it brighter, but preserve the bass. How do I do it? I've played with many variations of Filter Curve EQ and I've boosted the db as much as I can without clipping. But I can't seem to get the right combination.

https://soundcloud.com/rob-watson-47/th ... le-shuffle

[kozikowski]

Sounds like AM radio. I don't think you get there from here. That's been AM Radio Transmitter compressed and no musical tones over 5000Hz. I'm guessing. There doesn't seem to be any way to download any of the music to test it.

There are expander packages that can simulate the original performance volumes, but I don't know of any tonal packages that run in the subjunctive. "This is what the trumpet tones would have been had they actually been there."

Koz

[webidextrous]

Thanks. It was actually a professional recording done at a university jazz concert in 1993. I have no idea how it was mastered. All I have is the resulting tape. When I ran it through SoundCloud's mastering algorithm, it actually made a really nice, equalized, boosted track, but I'm not up to paying their fee for the mastering if I can do it in Audacity. What I might do, then, is use Effect > Loudness Normalization to get it up to the point where the peak waveforms are just barely clipping. That at least seems to get it louder.

[kozikowski]

Got it. 7000Hz. Really, Really Good AM radio.

There's not a lot of bass there, either. Any attempt to boost the bass gives honky cardboard box sounds.

Try Effect > Bass and Treble at these settings.

Screen Shot 2020-08-30 at 8.12.46 PM.png (57.05 KiB) Viewed 125 times

That's not completely awful.

Koz

[kozikowski]

I can cheat a bit, too. I have a bass doubler in the listening system, so I can sorta simulate putting the bass tones back. I have one of these for my music keyboard, too. It does wonders with the organ stops.

Koz

[kozikowski]

Effect > Loudness Normalization

That was on my list to try. Actually, there appears to be a missing tool. Fletcher-Munson loudness compensation. I wonder how that got left out.

Koz

[Trebor]

I'm trying to make this audio come through clearer to the listener. Right now it feels like it's an underwater concert. I'd like to make it brighter, but preserve the bass. How do I do it? I've played with many variations of Filter Curve EQ and I've boosted the db as much as I can without clipping. But I can't seem to get the right combination.

Create a duplicate version of the track, (Ctrl+D).
Apply inverted RIAA-equalization preset* to the duplicate.
Play the original & duplicate tracks together,
adjust the gain sliders of each track to taste while playing.

[* RIAA is a preset in Audcaity's equalizer ].

[webidextrous]

Thanks again for all the suggestions. After many tries, I figured out a way to do it that seems to work really well for this particular cassette tape. I used the Graphic EQ effect like this:

Screen Shot 2020-09-12 at 3.22.54 PM.png (354.13 KiB) Viewed 79 times

And then I did some necessary Clip Fix.

That resulted in some nice and clear sound across all frequencies.