Fixing smashed mixes

[googacky]

I've been working with a rap client and a few of the beats he brought me are limited to the point of distortion. It's a shame and frustrating because it's pretty good stuff and it's not sounding as good as it could do to a technical issue on his end. Apparently this is the only state that these beats exist in at this point, so going back to his master and not smashing them is not an option. I figure that I'm pretty much screwed here, but if there's anything that I can do to make these tracks a little more tolerable, I'd love to be enlightened.

[sonicmook56]

Try the un-compressor plug..

j/k. Your probaby going to have to live with it.

[lyman]

not sure if it's aesthetically in-line with the project, but why not exploit the fact that the beats are squashed to your advantage. fuck with them, compress 'em more, add some distortion, re-amp them through a marshall or something. it could be cool, and it's more fun than fighting something you can't change. just a suggestion.

[Mix413]

I've experienced this also. There are generic beats available online that rappers download to use for their tracks that are severly brickwall limited to zero and clip very badly. There's pretty much nothing you can do about it.

I've done projects with rappers who have created their own beats in their home setups that are a nightmare in terms of distortion, overcompression, cheap grainy reverbs and overall harshness. The inability to understand proper file export methods has often left us in a position where we can't remix or fix the backing tracks and have to use the existing stereo mix and record the vocals over that. Sometimes the mixes are MP3s which makes it even worse.

It's a shame because some of the vocal performances were quite good.

[dokushoka]

You could try:

Automation to bring back some dynamics (doesn't fix/hide distortion though)

Intentionally making things even more "trashy"

Overdubbing more percussion over it

SPL transient designer to bring back dynamics

[jmoose]

I'd start by dropping the level to something more manageable to gain headroom, say -15dBfs and then try anything & everything but the kitchen sink. Either frequency selective or broadband expansion can bring back a little bit of the dynamics. Beyond that you can try to embrace the crapiness and process it further with more distortion & effects. A wise man once told me if you can't make it sound good, make it sound interesting.

[googacky]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not so worried about the lost dynamics because the stuff is pretty aggressive, but the audible distortion is a bummer. I'll mess around with it and try embracing the crappiness. I should start a workshop for rappers with home setups.

[Rob Tavaglione]

Take a drum machine or sequencing keyboard and try to program beats that are as close as you can get them to the original patterns. Only do this on kick and snare, however. Filter a good bit of the high end off of them and then, very lightly mix those into the distorted beats. It may be subtle enough to get you some punch and clarity without being obvious. If this is too noticeable, then add these new layers only on key sections of the song (just choruses, just intros and breaks) and call it "art". Best of luck to ya

[Mark Alan Miller]

Waves C4 can be used pretty effectively to 'uncompress' (any multiband expander, actually - even some 'denoising' algorithms can be.) YMMV, but I've 'uncompressed' a couple of killed-beyond-recoginition mixes a little bit that way.
If you've got crackly distortion going on, try a de-click or de-crackle algorithm too...