Enhance Audio Quality
My friend recently gave me a .mp3 file of a recording he and his band made for their upcoming album. Unfortunately, it seems to be a file from myspace with poor quality. In the car, it just sounds quiet and doesn't have the pop that most songs do. Is there anyway to increase the way it sounds, or at least make it sound a little bit better. I'm not expecting CD quality or anything, just something a little better. I've tried GarageBand to no avail. What software can help me? Thanks
Comments
Garageband has some effects in the Edit menu.
To increase the overall volume, duplicate the track and then copy and paste the song on to the new track, or try the Compressor effect to lower the louder sounds and leave the lower ones as is, thus allowing you to play it louder and hear the fuller sound. The compressor will really help you be able to listen to it in the car. If you have, for example, a soft vocal with strong drums, you often can't hear the vocals well without blowing out the windows; compressor will help even this out so you can hear both well and keep your ears intact.
Visual EQ can help bring out certain frequencies and lower ones you don't want. Play around to see what sounds best.
If there is noise you want to cut completely, you can use the noise gate.
To fix pops, etc., you may need another app. The one I use most often is Amadeus Pro, which is pretty useful (I record in Soundtrack Pro and do most of my editing in Amadeus). It also has a very good noise reduction function that can really help clean up bad audio.
Last, Garageband has a Normalize on export function (wish it were in the app as an effect).
One thing to watch is the signal strength meters. Never, never, never let them hit red as this means the sound will be distorted and sound horrible.
It takes a little playing around, but you can do some really nice things with Garageband. if you need more, Amadeus Pro is great. There are some free apps but I haven't really played with them so I can't recommend or warn you about them.
Good luck.