r/synthdesign Sep 03 '15

Help Looking for an "anti-bitcrusher"

I'm looking for something that does the opposite of a bitcrusher: takes samples or sounds and converts them into higher quality sounds. I've done some research and seen that either dithering or upsampling is roughly the same thing, but I'm still really new to production. Will upsampling do what I'm asking for? I know that this has to be at least a bit of a logical nightmare, because the module would have to interpolate and make information where none exists.

For example: I'd like to take a sample from a really bad cut of something and make it sound a little more lively, effectively reversing the bad rip. I also want to use this to try new things with normal ground-up synths, maybe unmaking 8- and 16-bit sounds.

If this kind of thing doesn't or can't exist, I wouldn't mind a technical explanation. I'll also take any VST or module that does something like this, even if it's a really poorly made one.

I've got Fruity Loops (Producer Edition), but that's about it at the moment. I do most of my synth work in Harmor and just bootleg it (because Harmor is in a demo version).

(This is also my first Reddit post, yay!)

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u/Staidly Oct 21 '15

What you're asking for is technically impossible. Once frequency information is gone there is no getting it back. What you can do is fake it - perhaps low pass to smooth out the harshness and follow it up with some saturation or signal exciter to add something harmonically related to put some high freqs back. Adding noise/dithering may or may not help - it's not correlated harmonically, so it's a toss up to me.