Mastering from mp3 source: any tips?

[scoring4films]

Stuck with some average quality mp3's that a client insists on releasing (long story). Other than paying particular attention to the artifacts in the sides, what else can be done in this situation?
So far I've lightly trimmed the highest highs, to lose a bit of the harsh/ugly top end. This seems the lesser of two evils, partly because the material is solo classical piano, which typically doesn't have much going on in the top octave anyway.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

[gussyg2007]

Nope your ****ed !
You can't master whats not there !
Occasionally have to remix from an mp3 vocal same thing ,can never ever get the vocal to sit in the mix

[Richard Black]

Solo piano on most MP3s has a really nasty attack for which I've never found a cure, and I've tried pretty hard. I fear this may be one of those jobs where you simply have to explain to the client that you can't polish a turd.

[Cheebs Goat]

Originally Posted by Richard Black

Solo piano on most MP3s has a really nasty attack for which I've never found a cure, and I've tried pretty hard. I fear this may be one of those jobs where you simply have to explain to the client that you can't polish a turd.

Think of the fun to come once this job is done. Now the guy rips his newly mastered CD to his iPod... A classical piano mp3 converted and then ripped back to mp3... :p

[mrlouie]

some of the problem might be you not liking to have to work with a mp3.. in your mind you keep saying well if it was 24bit it would sound like this and that.

you asked the client for a better source, he said no use that.. thats it forget its a mp3 pretend its 24/96k and do whatever you think makes it sound better.

if after he doesnt like results then you can come back and talk about the source you have to work with and how its limiting what you can do. he's probably gonna like what you do.

since your name mentions you score films you may like this story..

i had to master a score album for a major film, composer comes in hands me 2 discs to work from, he says i did all the sequencing/crossfading of songs myself, one disc is how i want it the other disk is not crossfaded just in case...

i check both disc, they are 16bit/44 audio cds he made in the laptop. i ask do you have any other files i can work from 24bit? tape? (this is a major project i know it got mixed atleast 24bit/44 if not high res) he says no this is what i have been working with to do sequencing (he lives in a far away country flying back next day) is it ok? I was like "sure its fine just checking" that was it never brought it up again, mastered score from crossfaded audio cd.

Heard back from label saying he was very happy with how it sounded, no changes. Later that year his film score won the biggest award you could think of.

When people listened to his score album especially those judging it for that award, they didn't say "hey i think the source of this was an audio cd" they just hear the beautiful music he composed.

louie

[scoring4films]

thanks for the story louie. Although it's on a much smaller scale, this project has a somewhat similar story. The material I'm working on has already been released on CD and is the most popular in the artist's catalog. His customers rave about it. This despite the fact that he made the master CD by importing all the tracks into the iTunes app and burning a CD there, with iTunes configured to automatically convert all tracks into mp3's on import.
I guess the fizzy artifacts in the top end aren't as noticeable if you're not listening back on Genelecs or the like.

[macc]

Originally Posted by mrlouie

you asked the client for a better source, he said no use that.. thats it forget its a mp3 pretend its 24/96k and do whatever you think makes it sound better.

if after he doesnt like results then you can come back and talk about the source you have to work with and how its limiting what you can do. he's probably gonna like what you do.

+1000

I've had to do entire albums from 128kbps MP3s that were already smashed (hip hop, fwiw). To be totally callous about it, you can't lose. On the one hand you get almost complete liberty to really do whatever you feel will make the record sound its best, and on the other you get license to blame the source if they don't like it

As Mr Louie says, they will probably like what you do. One could possibly argue that it is exactly the first factor that means you won't need to worry about the second thumbsup Working with pure freedom very often makes for the best results, n'est pas?

Good luck!

[Misja]

Originally Posted by scoring4films

Stuck with some average quality mp3's that a client insists on releasing (long story). Other than paying particular attention to the artifacts in the sides, what else can be done in this situation?
So far I've lightly trimmed the highest highs, to lose a bit of the harsh/ugly top end. This seems the lesser of two evils, partly because the material is solo classical piano, which typically doesn't have much going on in the top octave anyway.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Ok a few tips that might help. MP3 doesn't like squashed. It has no room to handle that. Also make sure the highest peak is no more than -0.3 Db believe it or not but MP3 handles peaks different then any other digital medium. Never make it peak is the whole idea, And when it is for myspace or face book or yada dada use Lame to encode it. Then used this way i don't think you have to revise the master. If not squashed. MP3 doesn't know how to handle one big peak lasting 3 minutes or so. DBFS 10 or 9 should be fine.

Misja