Audio Restoration

amendegw wrote on 12/11/2011, 10:24 AM

Anyone interested in helping me with a little project I told a friend I'd help him with?

Here's the background... apparently my friend's grandfather played the banjo in the 1938 Whitetop Mountain Folk Festival. My friend was handed down a recording from a 1938 radio broadcast and wants to give it to his family as a Christmas gift.

I'm not much of an audio expert. I can struggle thru some Sound Forge Stuff, but I'm not particularly good at it.

So, here's my plea: can someone with some audio expertise take a look at this very old, very noisy audio and make it sound better? I realize it's 1938 Radio and it's never going to sound good - but maybe better.

Here it is: JamesVSage.zip

I'd gladly repay anyone who helps with Mercalli Stabilization or Web delivery work (but then again, I'd do that for anyone on this forum anyway).

...Jerry

Back to post

Comments

paul_w wrote on 12/11/2011, 5:09 PM

Well if not, i could download Larry's wav and pitch it the same way? Im using Cubase 5 to do the intellegent time corrected pitch shift and the track its out by exactly 1 tone (two semi tones) too low. Larry, you or me ? :)

Paul.

larry-peter wrote on 12/11/2011, 5:18 PM

I can give pitch correction a try later this evening, Jerry. I have to stay on point in an edit for a few more hours.

And yes, the occasional flanging/whooshing that's there are artifacts from wow/flutter (slight speed changes) in the source. When the pitch of the recorded noise changes from the "learned" noise profile in Izotope or any NR software it acts like a modulated comb filter. Reducing the amount of noise reduction can reduce the artifacts, but I felt the lack of noise was a better choice.

And Paul, if you can get to it before I can, feel free to download the file and see how your pitch correction works with it.

Larry

musicvid10 wrote on 12/11/2011, 5:23 PM

I too thought it sounded about a full step low.
But that is odd, because in those days, broadcasters typically sped up the playback to mask wow and flutter.

paul_w wrote on 12/11/2011, 5:33 PM

Ok, by request. Its Atom12's clean track with pitch correction added. Its sounds good to me.

http://cuenet.co.uk/sony/Atom12Atom's banjo audio pitch corrected[/link]

Paul.

amendegw wrote on 12/11/2011, 5:44 PM

Atom12's submission with Paul w's pitch correction sounds the best to me.

Do we have consenus?

I hear a couple of pops in the open announcer's sequence, but I can easily remove them with Sound Forge.

...Jerry

paul_w wrote on 12/11/2011, 6:13 PM

Jerry, that was a lot of fun! Atom's done a great job, much more effective than my basic 30 band EQ method. I want Izotope now :)

Hope the resulting project turns out well. Its a great performance.

Paul.

larry-peter wrote on 12/11/2011, 6:24 PM

I shouldn't keep my browser open when I'm editing. LOL. Couldn't stop thinking about Paul's comment on the flanging, so I did another pass with the broadband NR reduced a bit. The artifacts are a bit less, except for the audience applause at the end where they fade into white noise and are picked up by the noise profile. I applied the whole step pitch correction and you can choose if a bit more noise is preferable to the artifacts in the first file. I didn't take time to hear Paul's final so it may be the better one.

http://www.powerplantonline.com/Sage/JamesVSage_RX3.zip

NOW, back to work.

Larry

paul_w wrote on 12/11/2011, 6:47 PM

Our pitches are the same, but our speeds are different.
I used time compensated pitch correction which keeps the track the same length (and so the same playing speed). Whereas yours is probably more accurate because yours has increased pitch and speed, like compressing the track physically smaller.
Thinking about it, yours would be more accurate to the original performance.
Result: the guy (Mr Sage) is playing even faster than we first thought!

Right, i must go to bed now, its 00:45am in the uk. good night :)
Paul.

amendegw wrote on 12/11/2011, 8:12 PM

Boy, I wish I had half the talent you guys have!

Also, every so often we see a thread like this that illustrates how great this forum is!

...Jerry

amendegw wrote on 12/27/2011, 2:35 PM

All,

I received feedback from my friend - and this Christmas gift to his family was a real hit!

So... thanks to all that posted in this thread. You've made a family happy.

btw, my son's wife is a graphic designer and, in about 45 minutes, took some old photos and made the following CD label. Geez, I wish I had this kind of talent!

...Jerry

Chienworks wrote on 12/27/2011, 3:35 PM

Makes me wonder ... 1938 wasn't really that long ago on the grand scheme of things. What's going to become of all of our stuff by 2084?