I hope I am posing in the right forum. Please ignore or move my post if I am not.
I have a couple of old voice clips: no music, just talk, probably dating from the 1930's or so. I would like to do two main things to the audio.
The first is to eliminate noise (bascially anything which is no voice: there are quite a few artifacts).
Wheb I have a clearer voice clip, I would like to try and lose the obvious characteristics of an old radio sound (voice sounds tinny, pitch may be wrong) to try and make the voice sound as contemporary as possible.
I am new to sound editing and audio restoration so my naive question is: what softaware (vst or satndalone for Windows) would be best to do the above? Would you also please tell me what software would be the easiest to use for a newb.
Thank you for your help.
Cleaning up old audio clip
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- KVRAF
- 16873 posts since 8 Mar, 2005 from Utrecht, Holland
Noise can be removed. But the more noise you remove, the more artefacts appear. Like with bad MP3 encoding. Not sure that is what you want.
Old recordings don't have high frequencies, say above 5 kHz. You cannot add artificially what is not there to begin with. Sure there are effects called Exciters which do it, but what they in reality do is just add distortion to the upmost frequencies where no pitch is perceived.
Stupid question: why not re-record the speech? Less trouble, who will know... Take a good "voice talent" with a simular voice, or an impersonator.
Old recordings don't have high frequencies, say above 5 kHz. You cannot add artificially what is not there to begin with. Sure there are effects called Exciters which do it, but what they in reality do is just add distortion to the upmost frequencies where no pitch is perceived.
Stupid question: why not re-record the speech? Less trouble, who will know... Take a good "voice talent" with a simular voice, or an impersonator.
We are the KVR collective. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. 
My MusicCalc is served over https!!
My MusicCalc is served over https!!
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- KVRer
- Topic Starter
- 9 posts since 18 Jul, 2010
Thanks a lot.
You're right, I don't want more artifacts, so I am shooting myself in the foot if that is the resultof trying to remove them in the first place.
Not a stupid question at all. One of the clips is of an old French politician who probably has never been impersonated or certainly not in the last 50 years. Plus, I had the source so my first instinct was to ask if I could do anything to "improve" the source audio.
Anyway, thanks a lot for taking the time to answer. It's very useful. I would still like to hear suggestions on software for audio "restoration" even though BertKoor clearly explained it doesn't really apply to my project.
You're right, I don't want more artifacts, so I am shooting myself in the foot if that is the resultof trying to remove them in the first place.
Not a stupid question at all. One of the clips is of an old French politician who probably has never been impersonated or certainly not in the last 50 years. Plus, I had the source so my first instinct was to ask if I could do anything to "improve" the source audio.
Anyway, thanks a lot for taking the time to answer. It's very useful. I would still like to hear suggestions on software for audio "restoration" even though BertKoor clearly explained it doesn't really apply to my project.
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- KVRAF
- 16873 posts since 8 Mar, 2005 from Utrecht, Holland
We are the KVR collective. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
My MusicCalc is served over https!!
My MusicCalc is served over https!!