Partially this is my own lazy fault. I had it in my mind that if I was going to destroy the sound quality anyway I could use my iPhone to record initially. However, this has proven to be an epic disaster as I accidentally recorded everything as mpeg 4 files. For the live of me I can't get them to convert properly despite reading up on how to do it.
The saddest part however, is despite devising an idiotic way to work around it my end solution has been to just use a pile of VSTs overlayed with each other and adding a few odd effects in...and it sounds a heck of a lot better.
So what is the point of this mad rant? Well I guess the point is that I've learned the hard way that some things are not better off live and there's no reason to reinvent the wheel when embarking on a project. Life is hard enough and takes up enough time without making extra work for yourself.