Need help removing noise from a recording. Urgently...

[Hovmod]

A friend came over with an interview lasting about an hour, and I said I'd look at it. I'm having a bit of trouble though.

Could someone try to make this little 20 second sample intelligible and tell me how they did it, and I'll apply the same treatment to the rest?
(it's in Norwegian. Just assume that I will be able to decode the actual talking as soon as the noise is out of the way... )

The sample is HERE. It's a 1.8 MB wav.
I have six hours.
Anyone feel up to the challenge?

[pHz]

ive just had a bash with auditions noise reduction and am struggling to get anything intelligible TBH ... im no expert in this but it seems thats just TOO bad to do anything decent with ...

... sorry ...

slainte rob

[Hovmod]

Thanks. I did the same. Cocky as hell three hours ago ("if anybody can do it, I can" - that sort of thing), slightly panicky now.
I'm trying EQ, pop elimination, noise removal... Nothing can get to those voices.
Thanks for bothering, rob.

[Hovmod]

panic bump

[Landphil]

I've tried Redunoise, Cool Edit's noise plugs (25 minutes to render in extreme mode!) and I even tried some outboard noise gear including the expander in TC's Finalizer. Could almost get the last few secs of the clip where the voice gets louder, but the rest is too far buried in the noise. I don't think it's gonna happen, especially in your time frame.

Phil

[CinningBao]

I'm having a go right now - I used the noise reduction in CEP extensivley some years ago to make mashup bootlegs (removing the instruments to leave the vocals http://81.187.247.188 -> bootlegs), but it's a real filthy recording you've got there.
If the quality of the last ten seconds represents the majority of the recording then it may be possible to salvage some of it, to be honest tho, it IS pretty badly drenched in crackles, hiss and interference, especially in the range of the vocal. I'll post a link up shortly and you can hear for yourself..

[CinningBao]

First was the Click/pop eliminator which was set to 'auto find all levels' and increased the fft size to 512, and click OK. Then the hiss reduction, upped the number of points on the graph to 30, 'get noise floor', fft size 12000, precision 50, spectral dec 75%, transition width 5, reduce hiss by 50db, noise floor at 1.3 db and press ok.

Like Landphil said, where the voice gets marginally louder at the end you can almost hear what he's saying, and I expect if you're polish you can probably work out what he's saying.

http://81.187.247.188/music/lessnoisy.wav

[Hovmod]

Thank you so much for making an effort, guys.
I've more or less surrendered. This is pretty damn dirty.
The last bit, where the voice sort of emerges a bit, represents the quality of about half the tape, and that is pretty easy to make more intelligible and easier to transcribe than the original, but I still haven't been able to dechifre even one word from the bits that sound completely muddied in the original.

CinningBao, your file sounds like my best efforts, but then we've more or less tried the same tricks

I'm burning a CD for him where I run pop eliminator, hiss reduction, noise reduction,and some fancy, relly subtractive EQ work, so I'm sure his transcription job will be easier, but he won't get 100% of his interview.
I'm grateful for your efforts, and I don't feel so bad now.

I'm pretty sure it'll teach my friend never to make crucial recordings without making a test first...

He had one of those flat tabletop conference mics and a walkman-style cassette recorder. I don't think I could have made a more rotten recording if I had tried.

I need those nifty tools from CSI and all the FBI movies. You know - "hang on, isolate that intercom in the background".

Thanks again, guys. Mission accomplished! (hell, if Dubya could say that, I can...)

[nonono]

A friend came over with an interview lasting about an hour, and I said I'd look at it. I'm having a bit of trouble though.

Could someone try to make this little 20 second sample intelligible and tell me how they did it
I have six hours.
Anyone feel up to the challenge?

I did it... Took about seven hours but the message said "Johnson shot JFK". You have got to be kidding, that was such a staticy piece of junk you could spend 6 years and never get anything useful from it. Tell you friend if he wants to wear a wire and record the mafia that he shouldn't put the microphone so far up his butt. I tried everything I could but it can't be done.

[Hovmod]

I'll print your post and make the CD cover of it.