[AthenaZephyrian]

Found a plugin you guys may find interesting.

Search (ctrl+f) "relife" on the page. Use it with foorbar's VST adapter, and set it to 3-peak mode.

It seems to improve layering a lot, and reduces some of the roughness in vocals caused by dynamic range compression (instrumentals crowding in on the vocals, distorting them in very rapid, audible oscillations). It's not quite a "re-FLAC", obviously, but something like a "re-256kbps" plugin--even for modern music that is 256kbps or 320kbps, because much modern music, as we all, presumably, know is routinely pre-amped to the point of clipping.

Unfortunately, it causes random pauses. If someone wants to rework this plugin so it doesn't randomly cut out....you'd get a purple heart, medal of valor, your paper in the picture, and droves the opposite sex lining up at your door.

Or maybe just a ton of likes here on head-fi.

 

[Benny-x]

What is re-flac?

And, how does his work on FLAC files, only because you referenced .mp3?

 

[AthenaZephyrian]

What is re-flac?

And, how does his work on FLAC files, only because you referenced .mp3?

I was kidding. Re-FLAC as in "turn back into FLAC". It's probably useless for any FLAC file that hasn't been mastered by a drunk monkey--and those do exist.

 

[Benny-x]

Haha, I gotcha now. Sadly, there was an "unloudnessing" group back 5-10 years ago called "Unmasters" and they did re-edit about 10 albums, all FLAC, and essentially re-added dynamic range to them. The results were fantastic. Sadly, they made some great stuff, then totally disappeared.

So, when I saw Re-FLAC, I was thinking some advances had been made and we now had a VST plugin that might work like Unmasters did. Damn.

I wish Unmasters panned out. Even for cost, it would have been a gem to have them fixing albums on the reg.

So, sad story because you tricked me. Haha.

 

[AthenaZephyrian]

Haha, I gotcha now. Sadly, there was an "unloudnessing" group back 5-10 years ago called "Unmasters" and they did re-edit about 10 albums, all FLAC, and essentially re-added dynamic range to them. The results were fantastic. Sadly, they made some great stuff, then totally disappeared.

So, when I saw Re-FLAC, I was thinking some advances had been made and we now had a VST plugin that might work like Unmasters did. Damn.

I wish Unmasters panned out. Even for cost, it would have been a gem to have them fixing albums on the reg.

So, sad story because you tricked me. Haha.

It does actually work a lot like what you mention! It just won't restore it quite as well as simply re-recording or re-mastering from raw. It's a fabulous plugin, aside from the glitches...

 

[castleofargh]

many compressors will have an expander option (maybe some gating too). you can try to fool around with that and see if you can come close to what Relife does.
but keep in mind that like a compressor, you can achieve really cool results with one track and some settings, but then it might suck ass for every other tracks. from a math problem, you can't really reconstruct what was compressed without knowing the compression setting used. and we never do. in fact various compressors probably were used with specific settings on each instrument of a single song. so there is no getting that back. you just make quiet stuff quieter with your own settings. even scrupulous work done per track in a DAW will only have so much it can do as you only have that one stereo track instead of what the mastering engineer had to work with.
I'm guessing that's why not too many people bothered trying to do what at first glance looks like every audiophile's wet dream.