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[Marko]

Some of these mp3's I've been turning out this week have a very irritating problem.

Whenever the singer hits a word with either an "s" or a "t" in it, those sounds are really badly accentuated, like a badly tuned radio does at times.

Is it possible to smooth those out using an editor (MC or otherwise), or maybe via an mp3 encoding filter? If it is possible and you don't mind replying, please bear in mind that I might need an "idiots guide" kind of response:)

[Autoelph]

First off, are these files you are encoding yourself? If so, then yes, the quality can be improved on the encode side. Try using bit rates 192 or higher and check the high quality mode. If this doesn't do it for you, check out MPC, OGG or APE formats.

Second, if these are already encoded and you don't have the source disc, then no, they cannot be fixed. You might find some audio editor plugin that can mask it, but those tend to add more noise and deplete the quality more than the initial noise itself.

[Marko]

Hi there Autoelph, thanks for the reply.

I've got the original .wav files here. They also have these explosive "s" and "t" sounds. I encoded to mp3 using the following lame settings...

-b 192 -m j -h --resample 44.1 --lowpass 19 -q 9

[Autoelph]

Ah, gotcha, the originals pop on the esses and tees. There are some high-end solutions. I do a lot of audio work on my DAW's, and certain plugs can do some powerful things, but the software I use costs some serious money. As far as encoding, they are all going to make it a little worse, but in this case you may just want to use a higher bitrate. If you want to get serious about editing, cleaning and processing your files, you should look into Sound Forge from Sonic Foundry (www.sonicfoundry.com) and Waves plugins (http://waves.com/). These will read wavs and mp3s (and many other formats), enhance, clean and maximize audio signals, burn CD's, rip to many formats and a whole lot more. But, of course, you may not want all that.

[Marko]

Had a quick shufty @ soundforge and it's a little outside my price range atm.

Here's a thing though.....
While not so bad elsewhere, this "s" "t" "ch" sound glitch is actually present in all my sound output, TV, cd's, mp3's etc. causing me to wonder if it's down to poorly configured sound drivers?
I have a SB audigy player soundcard using the latest XP drivers from creative's website.
Wierd huh? Before I recorded these wave files I never really noticed it, and now, I constantly listen for it, and when i pick it up, it irritates the hell outa me!!!
I'm going to trawl around the net for a few days to see if I can find any writings on this little annoyance, unless of course anyone here has any ideas/experience with regards to this?
I've got a VIA chipset on my mobo (KT266) and still running with the XP default installation drivers. Would installing the latest 4-in-1's have any effect on sound output?

[JimH]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=via+chipset+latency+problems

[Autoelph]

Aha!, yes the latency issues with VIA chipsets has been around for quite some time, about 4-5 years now since 98SE came out, I believe. Thanks Jim for pointing that out, I was starting to worry I was sending Marko down a blind and expensive alley (sorry, Marko, just trying to help).

Marko, hope this solves your problem, nobody should suffer bad sound like that.

[Marko]

No such thing as a blind alley for me autoelph, I'm grateful for any input at all. I've found that trouble shooting problems one of the best ways to learn about what makes things in the case tick.
JimH thanks for the tip.
Reckon this is my problem? I'm having a little difficulty getting to grips with what, exactly, the term "latency" refers to here. I've read stuff about "crackling" sound, and I do get this sometimes. Occasionally, when moving files around (across drives), there can be a faint crackling sound, but only during the file transfer. Lengthy file operations, such as archiving etc. do not cause crackling.
So far, I've not read anything that describes my problem and so I'm a little hesitant about installing system level drivers that might cause me more hassle, and still not fix the original problem. Here is a 112kb wav file, it's bob dylan saying the word "isis". The last "s" really gives a good impression of what I'm getting across the board. Is that caused by "latency" issues do you reckon?

ftp://foc.no-ip.com/isis.wav

[Autoelph]

Well, simply, latency is a delay in time. In the more complex world of computer sound, it takes on larger issues, yet it is this basic delay that can cause some very irritating problems. The wave you provided seemed fine to me, except at the end when it clicked, but that could easily have been your edit of the file, especially if you made an edit on an amplitude wax\wane rather than a zero point, but the esses sounded ok here.

I briefly read the article from the link Jim provided, and it seemed that your card combined with your VIA chip has issues. It's ultimately up to you, but you may want to try the patch.

[Marko]

Thanks for checking it out. It was indeed just a very crude cut from the original wave.
The esses sound fine for you? That's enough for me coz they most definately do not sound ok here.
@ the w/end, I'll uninstall some games, make a ghost image of my system drive and then play a little with the latest 4-in1's and and that latency patch.

I'll pop back and let you know how it goes.