MAIM is a plug-in that reproduces the sound quality degraded by MP3 compression.

There are various techniques for compressing audio data, and the MP3 format in particular is one of the most popular lossy compression codecs. When compressing MP3, the sound quality deteriorates significantly when the compression rate is increased or the number of times compression is increased, but a plug-in `` MAIM '' has been released that reproduces the sound quality deterioration caused by compression.

MAIM | Wildergarden
https://wildergardenaudio.com/maim/

MAIM is distributed as an AU/VST3 plug-in that can be used with digital audio workstation (DAW) software.

MAIM's UI is as follows. The encoder has built-in LAME and BladeEnc . When LAME is compressed and the bit rate is lowered, high frequency parts are cut and the sound becomes heavy and muffled. BladeEnc is an older encoder, and although the sound quality is rougher than LAME, the developer says it sounds somewhat nostalgic.

MAIM not only encodes to MP3, but it is also possible to lower the bit rate and increase the compression rate so that the sound quality deteriorates on purpose. It is also possible to specify a band to cut the frequency or add distortion to the sound quality to further deteriorate the sound quality.

You can understand what it looks like when you actually degrade the sound source with MAIM by watching the movie below.

This is what happens when you use the plug-in 'MAIM' that reproduces the sound quality deterioration caused by MP3 compression - YouTube


MAIM's VST3 plug-in for Windows and Linux, and the AU plug-in and VST3 plug-in for Mac, are distributed free of charge under the GPL v3.0 license. The source code has been published in the GitHub repository below.

GitHub - ArdenButterfield/Maim: Audio plugin for custom MP3 distortion and digital glitches
https://github.com/ArdenButterfield/Maim

A user manual is also available on GitHub.

Maim/Docs/Manual.md at main · ArdenButterfield/Maim · GitHub
https://github.com/ArdenButterfield/Maim/blob/main/Docs/Manual.md