Remastering an Album

Report · Feb 02, 2019

I am trying to remaster a commercial album. I am editing WAVs of the songs. The album was mixed and mastered loud and shrill. I would describe the sound as ear grating. Before I’m half way through the album I experience ear fatigue. My goal is to remove the harsh edge to the sound but I am not technical and really have no idea what I’m doing, working off a couple YouTube videos and google attempts.

Here is a sample of the original waveforms.

First I applied light declipper, with gain between -4 and -8db. Everything else default. Then I apply FTT and tried to identify the frequencies causing the grating sound. They seem to be in the range of 10-24KHz, so I created a very basic curve that follows a more natural frequency response. Overdoing can make the album sound muffled, but somewhere in the -12 to -18 range seems to be the right area to still retain the tone but remove that sharp edge.

I’m not trying to completely remix the album, just make it a little more ear friendly. I messed a little with notch filter, but the combination of effects I chose to accomplish my goal simply enough but I want to make sure I’m maximizing the potential of a few simple tweaks. One thing that’s frightening is the order of effect. Check out the difference.

Top: Declipper > FFT’s waveform looks more natural and the sound seems to be louder and punchier. (Same settings as picture #2)

Bottom: FFT > Declipper has a flatter waveform and does sound a bit more consistently restrained.

Anybody have any simple tips or guidelines for doing something like this?

Report · Feb 02, 2019

TheRedTeres wrote
I am trying to remaster a commercial album. I am editing WAVs of the songs. The album was mixed and mastered loud and shrill. I would describe the sound as ear grating. Before I’m half way through the album I experience ear fatigue. My goal is to remove the harsh edge to the sound but I am not technical and really have no idea what I’m doing, working off a couple YouTube videos and google attempts.

Firstly, how are you doing your monitoring? If you don't have a known reference standard of some sort, then anything you do is only referenced to what you can hear on your particular system - and if that has tendencies in the 'harsh' direction, then it's going to be really easy to over-compensate. And if it's loud, then turn the volume down.

My particular tip, when it comes to commercial releases, is to leave them alone unless there's something very seriously wrong with them. Yeah, they may sound crap to you, but they are the way the production company - who would certainly have access to professional mastering facilities - intended them to sound.

Starting from scratch, and with no experience or, presumably, a decent pair of monitors, the chances are that you won't actually 'improve' anything, whatever you think you've done. But if the results sound okay to you, then that's fine - what you are doing won't actually do any particular harm. And yes, when the loudness war' was at its peak, there were quite a few albums released that were hammered to within an inch of their lives, but judging only from the waveforms, that doesn't look particularly awful - I've seen a lot worse than that. Yes there will be differences of opinion amongst different mastering labs as to final curves, but it's very unlikely that any of them would agree that a massive HF roll-off was the way to go. I strongly suspect your monitoring...

Report · Feb 02, 2019

Thanks for the reply Steve. I’m not super technical with audio and am doing this as a hobbyist more than anything. As for monitoring, I’m using a pair of Sennheiser headphones with the DAC built into my computer. My setup is probably not ideal for editing sound, but I’m also trying to apply the effects very conservatively because any improvement will make the album easier to listen to. In this particular case, turning it down isn’t quite enough to make it less aurally offensive.

Report · Feb 03, 2019

May we know the name of the offending album?

Report · Feb 03, 2019

Alice Cooper - Along Came A Spider. For Alice Cooper fans, the production and the team behind it are kind of notorious for shutting out his touring band and playing on most of the songs themselves, but in general for not elevating the material the way Alice’s lifelong producer Bob Ezrin does time and time again. I know that most normal people would say “if it’s so bad, just don’t listen to that album.“ Well, Alice Cooper fans aren’t always normal people.