Need some help with cleaning a soundfile.

I need to clean up some soundfiles for work, these are all recorded telephone conversations (legally recorded i might add ).

These particular ones i am working on, the voices are fuzzy, there is no background noise , but the voices themselves sound like thier noise, except you can hear words.

i have access to goldwave, and Adobe Audition.


any help? thank!

Crenshaw

im a wiz at adobe audition. let me know what version you have and i will try to direct you.....no promises

ive got 2.0



only thing is, i cannot send you the file in any way due to its confidential nature....

Crenshaw

yeah i figured that. i will try to go through some menus and see some ideas. i havent used it in several months.... standby

standing by! thanks

Crenshaw

i have 1.5 but the menus are the same. loading up from my old comp. now (may be slow, hasnt been awake in months and has a virus)

hmmm
its likley got loads of spyware on it...use ad-aware ( http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ ) if you dont already, it catches ALOT of the spyware....

Crenshaw

yeah, i have tried every remedy, including completely wiping it. not just a restore but from scratch. its gotta be a corrupted .dll that i cant fix. im not worried about it though.

oh well...:shrug:

i really appreciate any help that you can get me out of that slow thig then....


Crenshaw

the problem has to do with whatever spoolsv.exe is. when i end that process it is 100% better but then it loads up again in the processes window and goes down. it uses 99% of my ram

i should probably tell you that im not just a random person that has audition. i have been using audition for 3 years editing every day for various radio stations. my proudest was for the award winning show on WFYI in Indianapolis, IN Sound Medicine. its all public radio

glad to have a pro on the case then.....

i am not even sure if the file can be saved or not...its usable, its just the client wants to know if they can have a better quality one...

Crenshaw

Ok i recorded a phone conversation. Here is what i am doing to edit it:
drop down menu: Effects --> Hiss Reduction --> Standard Hiss Reduction.
(this should take care of hiss or wind noises) click preview to make sure, then OK
now you will adjust the EQ to give it some mid-low and take off some of that +8K high ( will post pictuer in one minute)
if you want me to send you the before and after audio of my staged phone conversation give me your email and i will do that

try to set levels as such. if you arent familiar with EQ's the lower vertical faders are for the lower frequencies, and the higher for the highs. (just in case you dont know, ya know?) :twothumbs
and remember, there is only so much a human can do creatively in a timely manner to make phone conversations sound good.

Adding my 2 cents here, as I've had to process a number of (legally recorded) muddy phone conversations. A few general things that have helped me:
* Roll off the response below 250hz to reduce hum.
* Do some trial and error with boosting the response in the 2 to 4khz range to improve intelligibility.
* Depending on the codecs that the voice has already passed through, you might need to add some gentle compression to bring the quieter passages up the same volume as the louder ones. This makes the voice a little bit more intelligible.

I have cleaned up thousands of hours of various recordings from many different recording sources with my good old "Cool Edit Pro 2000" that I got a long time ago....which was sold out to Adobe.

After trying many techniques and reading endless hours on various audio forums, I have found the best way is to open a sound file, select a segment with prominent distortion as shown in first pix, then open up one of a number of filters and noise reductions menu choices.

Starting with all frequencies playing at normal dB level, & segment looping, I start manually reducing various frequency ranges until I find the source(s) of distortion/hiss/humm/undesired noise, and sometimes boost dB of desired frequencies.

I have never found a set program or filter that works the way I need, because almost every sound recording is unique. However, once found for a given recorded source, I save the profile & apply the formula quickly to all the sound files in that category. It really doesn't take that long, and this program has a lot of set filter choices that often act as a great starting points.

Okay guys, thanks for the help...but sof ar no imporvement, the problem is that there IS no back ground noise, just very bad crackling sound when ever someone speaks...think of like when the recording volume goes into the red, except this wasnt very loud.

Luxluthor, thats an interesting approach, sounds like why they do on crime shows, i will try that...
Crenshaw

One other tip that I have used when converting my vinyl and cassette tapes & other sources to CD media, there is another program I also bought long ago called "Steinberg Clean" which is awsome at cleaning out all the pops, crackles, hiss, rumble, hum, clicks, etc....again has a multitude of submenu choices and filters, and lets you hear changes live as you make them. Steinberg makes very high end musician/recording studio equipment, so it shocked a lot of people when they came out with this little software program that was very cheap at the time. Here is their website:

http://www.steinberg.net/25+M52087573ab0.html

Not sure if Pinnacle Systems still sells a version of this, but it is truly awsome...and probably exactly what you need. Amazingly, there are still sales of this I just saw on Amazon. Ignore the bad reviews, or noobs that couldn't figure out how it worked...mostly related to a new CD burner version not being supported....I only used it for the cleaning up purposes, then used Nero to burn files to CD/DVD.

Thanks from me too Lux, I am still learning a lot about audio that I didnt know and what you have said makes perfect sense and paints the picture i have needed to understand it better.

climberkid said:

yeah, i have tried every remedy, including completely wiping it. not just a restore but from scratch. its got to be a corrupted .dll that i cant fix. I'm not worried about it though.

Click to expand...

Have you tried deleting the partition before reformatting?