At 04:29 PM 5/28/2003 -0600, Lee Elliott wrote:
>> And should I need an MP3, I make it from the WAV file, since I've
>already tweaked it in Cool 
>> Edit until it (quite often) sounds better than the original CD did.
>No problem.
>
>I am curious what you would commonly do to a ripped song in Cool Edit.
>I have the software and have never treated a commercial track.

Aside from the glories it does to LPs and cassettes, it's invaluable for
fixing the twin problems of mastering: songs mastered too low (common on
older records) and songs mastered too high (common on current records).
Use Amplify for one and Clip Restoration (attenuated -2 to -6 dBs,
depending on how gacked up the mastering engineer was during the cutting)
for the other.

I also use the Amplify function as a kind of one-button normalization that
makes sure everything's about the same level volume-wise without
compressing anything or futzing with the music's dynamic range.  Tip: on
the Amplify screen, I almost always uncheck the box that says "Lock
Left/Right."  For no good reason that I can see, a lot of records are
mastered just slightly lopsided, and when I'm listening to them on my
Walkman, I always think "Am I going deaf in one ear?"  Unlocking Left/Right
means that both channels amplify to 100% rather than one channel staying at
96% or whatever.  Unless there's an obvious sonic reason for one channel to
be louder than another -- you get that a lot in jazz records, where the
rhythm section is in one channel and the soloist is featured much louder in
the other -- I don't see the point in leaving it locked.

S