I love to guess

Well I will just guess that its partially a matter of opinion. Cuz you'll need to think about the dithering from the mastering. It seems like a lot of destruction on the fragile sample rate. I feel that up-sampling from 16bit to 24bit, or something, is what u have to do to get the head room bits. then the sample rate is secondary at this point. I would prolly up the bit rate and try variations of the sample rates.
let us know some results cuz I am curious about this type of question.
peace 8-)

I think..there is merit in upsampling to 88.2KHz because it doesn't change the original audio at all, just adds spline fitted samples in between the existing ones. & convering to 24 bits will do the least harm..

So i'm gonna go with these options though its gonna be really difficult & almost impossible to preserve the real essence of the original material..

Well for as for the legal issues.. Let me know if anyone has any inputs.. Will be a great deal of help.. Or should i post it in some other section for that?

Regards..
Neel

I smell lawsuit. Personally I would wait till the smoke clears and the songs owner is clearly known.
Then maybe you can get access to the orignal tracks.

Link555 wrote: I smell lawsuit. Personally I would wait till the smoke clears and the songs owner is clearly known.
Then maybe you can get access to the orignal tracks.

NO KIDDING!!!

Not to mention the other obvious things -

1 - Adding tracks to an already mixed 2-track pre-master is going to sound like fried ass. (That's not a good thing!) You can't just go adding things to a 2-track.

2 - Upsampling will not ADD samples in between the existing samples (and it does not carry the logic further that it makes those samples more accurate.) Sampling in the digital PCM realm is performed using two points per frequency. No more, no less. Upsampling will not cause you any positive net gain in quality. The more likely scenario is that your 16 bit / 44.1 premaster is already affected by a steep anti-aliasing filter from it's original recording and mixing. The effects of which will not disappear when upsampled. Furthermore, when resampling back down to 44.1 (which from 88.2 is not a simple division by 2 as many assume), you will again add this anti-aliasing filter back in place at the same or similar location within the spectrum. The analogous representation of this in the photography world would be using the "smooth" feature in photoshop. Do it once and you may get rid of some wrinkles which will start to make George Burns look like George Clooney. Hit the button again and now you have something that takes George Burns and makes him look like a single-celled amoeba.

In other words, too many times through the filter = bye-bye top end detail and clarity. Not to mention the potential phase impact by such steep LPF occuring multiple times within the same region.

So....long story short -

If you are crazy enough to mess with the project, don't screw with the sampling rate, it won't help.

Cheers!

J.

PS -

I think they allow inmates to use computers in the penn library nowadays, so the good news is, if you do the project anyway, you're still likely to be able to visit us at RO from time to time!

You really should talk to a lawyer who knows the music business on this. The phrase "...what extent of new stuff needs to be added into it to not get into any legal hassles??" really indicates that you don't know much about the law on this. Adding new material to a tape doesn't prevent legal hassles. If anything, it creates them. But I'm not a lawyer. Don't take my word for it. Get some expert advice.

At the very least you need to need to be protected from being a party to any lawsuit that might come down on the artist if there is a dispute that you have not been told about. I'd expect a lawyer would want you to have something in writing from the artist asserting that he has all rights to these tapes. Having to sign such a document might light a fire under the artist to get his own lawyer to get a clear title to the rights.

Thanx all u guys for the replies & helpin me thru to come to a conclusion that, ITS BEST TO STAY OUT OF IT!! & advice the producer the same..
Now the curious me has something more to ask.. If the artist wants to re-record all the stuff with subtle changes on the tracks, will they still be considered as covers? Coz its the same artist doing the tracks again in its own "new" way.. If yes, then again does the artist have to go talk to the old record label for rights??

Regards,
NEEL

It depends. Does he have the rights to the songs? Or is he just the artist and the studio own the rights?