Platinum Notes Question
Hey guys so I just learned of Platinum Notes. It sounds like a sweet deal my main concern is that is remakes your files with the new sound, which is good. But if I load those new songs with the refined sound into Traktor won’t I lose all the beatgrids from those songs?
Are you talking about beat grids that you have adjusted?
Mixed In Key + Platinum Notes = Sonic Bliss
One thing to note is that PN will need to reencode your files and IIRC it produces MP3’s. Just to keep that in mind. I have bought MIK and I am very dissapointed with the product. But lots of people swear by it and one day it might even work for me.
yes i’m talking about the beatgrids i have adjusted
Ive always wondered this as whast the outcome of reencoding a 320kpbs mp3 into a 320kbps mp3? Do you not lose quality and ineffect it isnt a 320kbps mp3 anymore as its been reencoded.
This is also the case for fixing mp3s that drift in ableton ?
It would be pretty gutting to do all this fixing and tweaking to find when you go and play out on a big system your mp3s sound shite.
I’ve been wondering this too. I can only offer an educated guess that you do lose some quality by transcoding 320kbps → 320kbps but with Platinum Notes making other sound quality improvements, the pro should outweigh the con. I’ve browsed a few audiophile sites before and many of them argue that 320kbps VBR is indistinguishable from 320kbps CBR. In fact they think people who insist that 320 sound better than 256 (for example) are just being plain ignorant and fooling themselves into thinking ‘bigger is better’.
I think PN makes a copy of the file as an uncompressed .wav and modifies that, so your original is as it was. i could be wrong tho i don’t use it just MIK + soundforge
From the site, which also explains all the optimization steps in detail:
"After processing, Platinum Notes creates new files. Your original files are never overwritten.
To write new files, we licensed the MP3 encoding patent directly from Fraunhofer Institute and Thomson Multimedia. Platinum Notes stores results in 320 Kbit MP3 or uncompressed WAV files."
I talked to a friend, who is a coder at a company that develops video codecs, and he said this process will obviously introduce artifacts (just like if you are transcoding from ogg to mp3). That being said, some people apparently run PN twice over their files to get “even better” results. However my friend is not so impressed with the entire concept of PN, but several people seem to be.
BTW: I assume PN only works with mp3 (maybe also wav).
Since they do not offer a trail to test, its kinda hard to know if the USD 98 are worth it. Due note that they are planning to release PN 3.0 soon. A few months ago they were talking about a May release, not sure if that is still relevant.
Further talking this through with my friend. He thinks most of what PN does should probably also be doable with audacity. Since there is support for batch processing, one could probably set up a solution where one scripts the entire rip from CD as wav, process in audacity, export to mp3. Just food for thought if you are willing to get your hands “dirty” with some scripting and testing.
Yes i think thats right but you cant gain any quality back from an MP3 by changing it to a wav so when the wav is recompressed the file will lose more quality.
Can audacity work directly on the MP3 without having to reencode when save ?
I think this is how soundforge works so you could more than likely do it in soundforge to.
Gav
Yeah, Audacity will work directly in the mp3
how come platinum notes cant do this? surely these people who run platimum notes on there files twice are totally defeating the object of the program. All seems a little odd to me.
I get the whole processing a WAV to WAV to MP3 but if someone goes MP3 to MP3 to MP3 thats a lot of reencoding on a file and surely the quality gets worse not better.
EDIT > when i say WAV i mean a rip straight to WAV from Vinyl or CD i do understand that the fact that its a WAV it could have been an MP3 originally and makes no difference to the quality once its been an MP3.
Well, I think it is because Platinum Notes works on an automated structure whereas Audacity is completely manual. So, Platinum Notes will regulate and normalize everything so every track is working with the same standard, whereas Audacity needs to be done by you, so it doesn’t matter as much.
That’s just a guess, mind you. I could be completely talking out of my ass, and if someone with more knowledge can correct me, feel free.
hahaaha i love typing stuff then uncertanty kicking in , thing is i normally just delete it , i give you credit for just goin “ah fook it i dont care this post is goin all the way to the end!!!” 
if audacity is anything like Soundforge you can completely automate everything i think. I wish i could script and program, oh and know exactly what it is that platinum notes does to the waveform… i dont want much 
Well, Audacity can be automated, but you need to code the whole thing yourself, as mentioned above. I can’t do that, as my college years were spent staring into a pond and reflecting upon stuff (English lit major)
oh well. Something will be figured out. From what I’ve seen, though, the Mixed In Key and Platinum Notes forums are really positive and helpful.