Old Time Radio

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paulzahara
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 1:04 am

Old Time Radio

Post by paulzahara »

Hello.
I am trying to create a gift for my Father, who used to enjoy listening to the radio serials of the 1930's and '40's. I have downloaded a bunch of MP3 files and converted them to AIFF so he can listen to them on his CD player. The quality of the recordings is generally pretty poor so I am trying to clean them up a bit. I have been using ClickRepair to get rid of the obvious clicks and pops, then using Amadeus' Denoising to remove the hum and its working pretty well, but there is one problem I don't know how to fix.

The voices are left with a very annoying squeal that makes it very difficult to understand the words. The squeal is a high pitched accompaniment to the speech that isn't present when no one is speaking.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to remove the squeal?

Thanks

Paul

rfwilmut
Posts: 255
Joined: Fri Nov 17, 2006 1:19 pm

Re: Old Time Radio

Post by rfwilmut »

paulzahara wrote: Does anyone have any suggestions on how to remove the squeal?
All you can do is try to filter the frequency the squeal is at: however if it is in the speech frequencies range you will find it difficult: also it probably isn't at any one frequency.

Try this (and WORK ON A COPY!)

Effects>Audio Units>Apple>AU Parametric EQ

Set the gain to +10 (and don't turn your main volume up too high). Set the Q to about 10 to start with. Preview the recording and move the Frequency slider up and down until you find the point where the squeal becomes much worse. Now turn the gain down to say -10. Experiment with the gain reduction and the Q (higher is narrower band) to see whether you can reduce the squeal without damaging the speech too much.

CDJonah_alt
Posts: 379
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2007 3:57 pm

Old Time Radio

Post by CDJonah_alt »

In my experience, (which is all AII so this may be totally irrelevant)
denoising does not work terribly well on noisy tracks -- I have found
that when I take a sample of noise, it is better to take a sample of
noise, move it to another file, attenuate it and then use that as a
noise sample. I haven't done this in a while so I leave it as an
exercise for the reader to decide how much to attenuate the noise sample
before using it as a noise sample.

I have also used sound soap and have had some fairly good results with
that. You might also want to create a filter that tends to isolate the
spoken frequencies and thus get a cleaner signal.

Chuck

paulzahara wrote:
Hello.
I am trying to create a gift for my Father, who used to enjoy listening to the radio serials of the 1930's and '40's. I have downloaded a bunch of MP3 files and converted them to AIFF so he can listen to them on his CD player. The quality of the recordings is generally pretty poor so I am trying to clean them up a bit. I have been using ClickRepair to get rid of the obvious clicks and pops, then using Amadeus' Denoising to remove the hum and its working pretty well, but there is one problem I don't know how to fix.

The voices are left with a very annoying squeal that makes it very difficult to understand the words. The squeal is a high pitched accompaniment to the speech that isn't present when no one is speaking.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to remove the squeal?

Thanks

Paul




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paulzahara
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2008 1:04 am

Post by paulzahara »

Thanks to rfwilmut and CDJonah_alt. I have tried both your suggestions and they have both helped. You have also given me some good hints on how to proceed.

I have about 70 hours of radio programs to clean up, so by the time I finish I will have learned a lot. Unfortunately I have to squeeze this around my work so finishing the project could take forever.

regards

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