Women in Technology

Hear us Roar


Article:
  QuickStart: Digital Audio Editing
Subject:   Spoken word editing from old tapes
Date:   2007-01-05 09:32:19
From:   Skogula
I have some relitively old tapes (10+ years) of my grandfather speaking into a tape recorder.


The tapes have degraded over the years, so there's conciderable background hum, and in places, his voice sounds almost like it's been run through a bad sci-fi robot filter.


What software would be best to clean these up (I've saved them as high bitrate wave files to get as much information as I can for editing)
Full Threads Oldest First

Showing messages 1 through 1 of 1.

  • David Battino photo Spoken word editing from old tapes
    2007-01-05 16:36:58  David Battino | O'Reilly Blogger [View]

    See our article "Seven Steps to Noise-Free Digital Audio" at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmedia/2005/06/22/noise.html

    I've found it works best to apply multiple gentle passes of noise reduction, followed by EQ. I also toggle back and forth between the original and preview modes to make sure I'm not removing too much signal along with the noise. Excessive noise reduction sounds worse than a little noise.

Recommended for You
 
Sign up today to receive special discounts,
product alerts, and news from O'Reilly.
Privacy Policy >
View Sample Newsletter >