What I did today.

As I mentioned before, we got some new music and dance moves for our workouts. But the Step CD is just not quite up to par: While the previous step sounded good, and both the old and the new Weights programs sounded good, the new Step sounded like audio goulash. Just a big echoey mess of a mix.

So I told Jeannie that I could maybe do something for her. She graciously let me borrow the mix CD provided by the workout designers, and this evening I tweaked it.

Here's what I found. First, the mix tended toward big bassy trance remixes which really demand a lot out of your sound system. House and disco music on the other hand, is more spare, and can sound decent on most any machine. The source material was just too "boomy" with huge reverbs and those "hollow" trancey kick drums that are all low end and no punch.

So I applied some EQ to the mix, rolling off the lowest frequencies, and then compressed the rest of the mix slightly, emphasizing the low-mid (which is where the "punch" needs to be on their sound system, and smoothing out some of the sharper edges on the high end. Through judicious A/B comparison, I figured out that the original was actually "mastered" using the Apple Logic Multipressor "POP" preset. Now, re-compressing a re-recompressed track is just a pretty hopeless case, but it was worth a try.

I have a fresh CD burned for them to try tomorrow - maybe this mix will cut through a little better. Even if it's just a bit tighter, I think they'll be happy. And if it doesn't make a difference, I'll just suffer for 10 more weeks until volume 64 comes out!

And that makes me the king of all nerds - demanding to re-eq a workout CD because the fidelity over the gym speakers isn't up to snuff.

But it was fun!