Mastering audio with mp3 as a source

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stuif
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Stuif

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Hi all,

I've been asked to master a dual CD (27 songs from 27 bands) for a low-butget organisation down here. The thing is that it should not cost anything and thus shouldn't consume too much time for me. Yesterday I heard that the songs will be made available for me online, so I asked how they want to put 27 wav files online? They responded that a majority of the songs are in mp3 or ogg format. WTF!

I do know that the majority of the songs are recorded by folks like us, homerecorists.. so I asuming the variation in soundlevel and -quality will be enormous. All this means that it might be pretty hard and for sure time consuming to output 27 wavs that sound decent and fit together somewhat reasonable.

I'm thinking to tell them that I'll need wav's to start with and preferebly on CD, not from online (at leat 1 gig to download.. damn!)..

What would you do in a situation like this?

Thanks for any ideas you might come up with.
 
I'd sit them down and ask them what their definition of "mastering" is. Make sure there is an equality between their expectations and yours, and that they are not expecting you to do a dollar's worth of work for a dime.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
I'd sit them down and ask them what their definition of "mastering" is. Make sure there is an equality between their expectations and yours, and that they are not expecting you to do a dollar's worth of work for a dime.

G.
Click to expand...

Good point.. They think its no more 'than making the levels fit together', but most likely do not realize what has to be done to make that happen. especially with 27 totally different tracks..

I'll start with that.. and that I'd need wav files on CD ;-).
 
I'd beg them to encode it to FLAC.
But with 27 bands, I'd be amazed if you can get that kind of co-ordination.
 
tarnationsauce2 said:
I'd beg them to encode it to FLAC.
But with 27 bands, I'd be amazed if you can get that kind of co-ordination.
Click to expand...

That's an Idea.. I believe all (but 4) of the songs/mixes are already available at the organisation.. I've no idea if they made the MP3's themselves or that they received mp3 as 'master'. Anyhow, I'm supposed to do this for (nearly) free, so I shouldnt be bothered with coordination and stuff.. Just gimme the wav's and I'll do what I can for them. We'll see.. mp3 is defenetly not worth trying to master I'd say.. (?) I mean: how much time would it cost to undo the damage that the mp3 did to the original? Why waste time on this.. Or is it perfectly doable?
 
An unmasterd mp3 converted to a mastered .wav wouls not sound good.

Generally speaking the artifacts created when compressing to mp3 are quite low when compared to most of the audio (s/n ratio). But if you add compression, limiting, EQ, etc... you will actually make the "mp3" artifacts sound more intense. (ie louder artifacts).

If they absolutely MUST use MP3, have them use the highest constant bitrate (>300kbps), sampling frequency >48k, and use MP3Pro if they have a checkbox for it, no joint stereo, no narrowing of the stereo field, etc.

Otherwise you might be held accountable for a shoddy sounding master, but it's the sourse file's fault.

Again, use FLAC if you can (it is free)... the file size would be smaller than a maxed out quality MP3 file. And be completely lossless.
 
Just when you think you know some stuff, along comes FLAC.
What is FLAC? :confused: :o
 
EdWonbass said:
Just when you think you know some stuff, along comes FLAC.
What is FLAC? :confused: :o
Click to expand...

Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)

Follow this link, read, and know.

:D
 
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