so I sampled something off youtube

[mc wayne]

not using any app, quite simply a hardware way, using my maudio audiophile 192 soundcard with it's ins-out sorted out. I got the sample but is there anything I should do to make it seem like it's better quality? do you think boosting the highs and light compression will help? I know some people who say you should never sample off YT at all but if the sounds coming out good.. why not?

[DZA]

You can't polish a turd

[Recessive Trait]

you should never sample off YT

sounds like you answered your own question.

if it's music, find a better source. if it's talking or sound, expect it to be low quality when you add it to your track. fix it up with an appropriate bandpass, or get a better copy.

[marshy]

Sounds stupid, but sometimes if you make the quality even worse with distortion etc. it makes it seem like that was the idea. Think 'Gargoyle!' that Doctor P used or 'Welcome to your doom!' that Reso used. They both could easily have been sourced from youtube.

[gnome]

I always sample off youtube...the qualitys shit but oh well low quality works sometimes

[Basic A]

Depends on what your samplng... I rather like sortin through youtube and face it dont lie to me as long as the song has all its cinematics and synths n shit in proper quality you dont care about youtube vocals or a single drum hit or two... I wouldnt get smashing a whole break from youtube over a tune but I guess thats a der... situation...

if its really that noticable just treat the bejesus out of it... I notice reverb on vocals ends all quality discussion, flange it, like marshy siad distort it, slight delays, ect.

[relik]

You can't polish a turd

This...get a Netflix account or something and rip from DVD.

[meer]

as long as you don't leave it out by itself, it's doubtful anyone will notice.
If the sound is low quality because it had a low samplerate (the high frequencies above a certain point are gone) try distorting it to crap, highpassing the distorted sound at the nyquist frequency and then adding it back to the original sound. It can add a bit of lost 'air' or w/e.

using crappy samples out of necessity is way more interesting than using pristine samples out of insane perfectionist technical wankery.

[back2onett]

yeah I'd say boost the fuck out of the highs and maybe cut the mids a little bit (brings more attention to the highs) also avoid any compression if possible (youtube will have compressed it to death anyway and you don't want to squash any remaining dynamics). so yeah I'd say you can polish a turd, but do you really want a shiny shit?

[MidnightMassDubstep]

never use really important factors sampled from youtube e.g. main kick (layered and HPd kicks maybe) and snare but I've used a tonne of stuff from youtube tbh, usually like vocal samples like someone talking

[Rickmansworth]

as long as its not a total shit sample, you should add delay (different for each L and R), a bit of verb and eq to taste.

this will make your youtube samps sound much better.

[alphacat]

It is definitely true about not being able to polish a turd, but sometimes you can, well... sculpt it into a more interesting turd. It really depends on the type of sound (spoken stuff and things w/ limited frequency & dynamic range work better than stuff that's very busy sonically or has a wide range of freq/dyn activity like live recordings of drums.)

This is where a 30-band EQ is your friend.

Start rolling off the problem bands (where the digital artifacts from compression like flamming and digital noise occur) - even try hard notching stuff where it's literally only a box with a few bands of frequency and everything above say 2 or 3 kHz and below 90 or 100 Hz is cut completely out - then put a little slapback delay or light 'verb on it - you'd be surprised sometimes. Definitely start with the EQ tho.

[Noizydan]

Agree with the comments made so far.

There's a somewhat limited market for polished turds. But as I've made a career out of polishing turds I'd say go for it. Don't expect to be able to make something lo-fi to sound hi-fi though. Relish the filth. Wrong can be right. Some things you can only find on Youtube.

Since bit crushing / decimation seems all the rage these days, I don't think it would necessarily sound 'wrong' with bit crushing and a few effects if its vocals. Depends what you're sampling and what you're trying to achieve with it though.

[alphacat]

But as I've made a career out of polishing turds I'd say go for it.

Just out of curiosity, what name do you release tracks under?

Yeah, bitcrushing and downsampling into 12 and 8 bit range is very hip wif a lotta peeps right now. Hell, even running a shitty sample through something like Camelspace can make you reconsider...

[Subside]

You can't polish a turd

Actually wrong. Mythbusters polished a turd and it looked quite nice.

Source: http://videosift.com/video/Mythbusters- ... -Full-Clip

[DZA]

Knew that would come up

[urbannerd62]

I have an app that lets me record the audio of youtube and save it as a wav. file, so sometimes I sample kicks from the intros of house songs.
after some slight compression and EQing, and layering with my own kicks, it sounds great. dunno how bad of an idea that is, but all in all im satisfied with the end result.
so personally, i think if you believe the sounds coming out good, then like you said, why not?

[ketamine]

Sample from Hulu

[back2onett]

Sample from Hulu

I thought that was just for family guy clips

[Noizydan]

@alphacat: this n that... i've not made any dubstep yet, but like where its going. love the diversity of the scene now.