Today, Sound & Vision Magazine posted a review on three pieces of audio software that claim to remaster the output of your iTunes:

Sound & Vision Magazine: Remastering iTunes

To get right to the point - DO NOT use these plug-ins in an attempt to “enhance your iTunes experience”.  As a musician, producer and audio engineer, I find these plug-ins to be blasphemous; almost insulting.  But even to the unschooled listener, they diminish your ability to appreciate the unique sound of each record, and moreover, they will likely fatigue your ears.  I will do my best to explain in layman’s terms how these plug-ins work and why they are bad:

Multi-band compression - This means that they separate the bass, mid and treble of an audio signal and compress them each individually.  Why this is bad: Many people claim that music today is fatiguing to the ears.  The reason that is so is because of compression (audio compression, not data compression like an MP3). Modern music is heavily compressed.  The “loudness war” has been a point of contention within the music industry for over a decade now.  With music already being super-loud and fatiguing to the ears, why would you want a plug-in that will make it even louder and more fatiguing?

EQ - After compressing the discrete frequency ranges of the audio, they adjust the volume of each section of frequencies to their likeness.  Why this is bad: Ever notice how R&B, Soul and Gospel records tend to have silky-smooth high end and a nice pronounced bass.  Yet a modern rock record tends to have less bass and a crunchy mid-range.  That’s not accidental.  Records that are professionally mixed and mastered have been intentionally given a tone by those who worked on that record; the producer, mixing and mastering engineers.  Passing music through these plug-ins changes the sound the record was intended to have.  Additionally, they make anything that goes through them sound uniform.  Not only is this equatable to cranking the contrast on the Mona Lisa until the colors look fluorescent, it’s like doing it to every piece of art in The Louvre so their tones and colors are all the same.  What’s more, these consumer audio plug-ins notoriously boost the bass and treble while cutting the mid-range.  But every schooled listener knows that the mid-range is where all the details are.

Distortion - Not the kind you think.  Many one-size-fits all mastering processors add what is called ‘third harmonic distortion’.  There’s really no way to explain this in layman terms, but what it equates to for the listener is an added “sparkle” to the sound.  Why this is bad: Third harmonic distortion is an old trick-of-the-trade, used in many professional grade signal processors like the Aphex Aural Exciter or T.C. Electronics Finalizer.  There is no way these consumer grade plug-ins can execute this effect to the level of the above-said processors, which are extremely expensive.  But more importantly, this effect was often used to give certain elements, like lead vocals or solos, a “special” sound, that separated it from other musical elements in the mix.  If the effect is applied to the entire mix, it’s like looking for a needle in a… well, stack of needles.

What these plug-ins are good for:

There is a time and place for everything, and for these types of plug-ins, it’s events.  These plug-ins are good for any event that will have a lot of people and continuous music.  Weddings, clubs, concerts (canned music in between sets) and even house parties.

Ever been at a party or event where Jay-Z’s 99 Problems is followed-up by Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.  Everyone was rocking-out a minute ago, but now you can barely hear the music above the noise of the crowd.

These plug-ins will definitely rectify that problem.  The multi-band compression I described earlier makes sure that anything that runs through it will not only be the same loudness, but will have the same amount of bass and treble from track to track.  No matter what you run through it; Elvis to Eminem, The Beatles to Black Eyed Peas, Frank Sinatra to Foo Fighters.

If you’re not actively listening to the music, then I say no harm, no foul.  Otherwise, steer clear of these signal processors, if you know what’s good for you.

-Rob Harkness, Barn Productions