Can I make MP3's sound like WAV's?

[dr_baker82]

Hey!

 

I have some recording from about 10 years ago I want to remix in Logic. Unfortunately the old stem files were saved as MP3's.

 

Is there anyway to boost these with a convertor (I know I can convert the MP3's to WAV's but is it worth it?) or use a plugin to lift the quality of these to try and regain some of the quality lost by not saving them as WAV's?

 

Any tips or help appreciated

 

D

[involver]

Nope. MP3s use lossy compression so they do not contain some of the audio information. This cannot be undone. You may be able to use EQ and other mixing techniques to make them sound a bit better though.

[ski]

There's a (now) old saying: "garbage in, garbage out". Sounds harsh, but it's the undeniable truth. Whatever material is lost in the process of creating MP3's cannot be gotten back. It's the same as taking a TIFF or RAW picture and dumbing it down to a low quality JPG. There's just no way you can get back the information lost to compression.

 

The best you can do is to take your MP3's, bounce them out as WAV, and then do a re-mastering job on them.

 

Additional advice: never save exclusively to MP3 except for reference mixes or "final mixes" intended for playback on MP3 players. And for stems, there's no reason in the world not to bounce them out as WAV or AIFF.

[logic8mine]

Yeah, there's not a medium I can think of that you can add quality or fidelity to a file, photograph, movie, etc... Of course, I'm only a user since Logic 8, but when I need mp3's, I've always had it the habit of checking more than one box during bounce (.wav + mp3)...

[dr_baker82]

Thanks for the info. They were saved as MP3's in the dark old days of having a tiny hard drive and not really know the full benefits of saving original files in a lossless format.

 

Oh well. All I can do is try rerecord them I guess or maybe double some of the parts with software instruments.

 

Thanks again!

[camillo jr]

Hopefully, your MP3 files were saved at the highest available bit rate, IE, something close to 320 kbs. In stereo MP3 files especially, the side channels suffer the most. If you've ever separated an MP3 file via mid-side processing, you'll hear the side channels contain a distinct warble, compared to the mid channel. The lower the bit-rate, the worse the warble.

 

That being said, you can certainly do things like EQing, compressing, sending to FX and so on with these files.

 

Yeah, it's unfortunate that there isn't an audio equivalent to Photoshop's bicubic interpolation, which adds "in between" pixels when you're increasing the size of a photo. I've also seen some uncanny results where rather pixely images were resized and smoothed out with a program called Genuine Fractals. Maybe someday someone will take that on with audio. But currently, when you change an MP3 file to a wave file, you haven't really changed the sound or resolution at all.