Point me in the right direction about EQ after the recording...

[Vigilante]

Hi again, been a while since I milked you all for info

Here is the deal, at church everything is EQ'd to come out the mains, it sounds alright there. But somehow the output of the mixer to our recorder sounds absolutely nothing like the mains. We're not sure if the recorder is screwing it up, or the mixer is not outputting the same signal as the mains out? Who knows? But the point of this post is, I'm interrested in playing with the recordings, trying to EQ them after the fact to get some better sound out of them, because it's almost embarassing. The tones are all muddled, nothing seems crisp, and some of the background effects from drums or whatever just get lost entirely over the louder instruments.

YES I KNOW that EQ is best to do before recording, lol, but in this case I must try to fix this up a bit after the fact. And for the most part my method works just fine, fine enough for me.

What I do now is very simple, I just open the MP3 in Winamp, using its 10 band EQ I set a nice little wave to bring up bass, drop mids, and bring highs WAY up. Each song slightly different but this wave makes it sound pretty good. Then I change Winamp to output to file and save the EQ'd version back to MP3.

Here is the problem, or maybe it's not a problem? The original MP3s are in a decent 192kbps bit rate at 44khz. Winamp settings only seem to go as high as 56kbps and 22khz (I need the sample rate to be a multiple of 22).
This is obviously less then desired quality, I would want at least the same 192kbps. Secondly, could I get a better sound from more then a 10band EQ?

So my question really is, assuming I MUST EQ a MP3 file after recording to get it sounding better, what would be a simple program or method of EQing the file and saving at decent quality? Is 10 bands enough? Is 56kbps @ 22khz good enough for the masses?

What would you suggest? And don't say get a new mixer or recording device, cause they are both new! I don't know the models off hand but I think the mixer is a 16 channel yamaha, recorder might be yamaha too, I think, not sure on that. And our sound guys are pretty well experienced in audio equipment.

And since I'm on the subject of mixing software, it would be cool to have the software increase the volume to max without clipping, cause some audio is recorded pretty weak. And have a few basic effects I could try like reverb. And make it simple to just play with the settings while the song plays, listening to how it sounds until it sounds good, then hit export and be done.
Oh, and very important to ask as well, what else could I do beside an EQ to give the audio some punch? Some other effect or filter I can run it through?

Thanks.

[noisewreck]

I hear Reason's mixdown button is just the ticket.

[noisewreck]

Alright, sorry, now that I got that out of my system...

You could try a wave editor program such as Wavelab or SoundForge. You can the use plugin EQs from any number of vendors such as Voxengo, Waves, etc. To bring the levels up w/o clipping you'll need a limiter. Finally for "punch" use a compressor.

[ryanlikestorock]

I think Itunes would encode the mp3 at a higher quality and it's a free program. Stick with 192 if that's what you've been given.

There are no rules. However, a cheap EQ isn't going to make anything sound better in the end. I'd suggest PSP Master Q. It's cheap and sounds amazing for the price.