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I am a total newbie to this sound world and need some help.

There is a huge audio clip of almost 3 hours (I have attached a part of them) which I wish to make a bit more audible.

Original audio clip is file aud1 and things which I have tried so far on standard settings are Noise reduction, Declicker, de-esser and vocal isolation.

Still, the resultant is not very good and satisfactory as there are a lot more crackles while the main content is being spoken (no idea what that's called).

Please do help me if you can, as this is my grandfather's birthday present.

aud1
aud2

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  • 2
    sounds like you have probably gone overboard with the noise reduction - there are clearly audible artifacts. Also, the original recording is likely not that great - wax cylinder or wire?
    – Mark
    Oct 14, 2022 at 7:27
  • Even Izotope RX struggles with this. Lining the azimuth up first very slightly improves Intelligibility after processing, but there's so much noise that even at best settings it's pulling a lot out of the top end of the voice in order that it can silence the noise. It's slightly less 'gargling' then the OP's attempt, but not good enough I'd try sell it to anyone.
    – Tetsujin
    Oct 14, 2022 at 14:37
  • Yes I know the audio is pretty weak and I also have no idea how was it recorded. Itwas probably recorded in 60s. I don't want the audio to be really high quality like it was recorded yesterday from a professional setup, rather what can I do to improve the current state of the audio or even restart the entire project. I currently use audacity to edit the audio and also am in no state to spend some money. Thank you for your help and @Tetsujin can you please link your version of the clip to see how much of an improvement is that and is it actually audible.
    – maths is fun
    Oct 15, 2022 at 7:24
  • I didn't save it, I just played with it for ten minutes. I'm not a restoration engineer, but just sometimes it's fun to have a quick look at what could be done. I didn't think my attempt worth sharing with the world ;)
    – Tetsujin
    Oct 15, 2022 at 10:02
  • BTW, "Original audio clip is file aud1"... aud1 is not the original recording - it's clearly got noise reduction artefacts. I have a feeling the original will be very "hissy". This would probably have masked the weird fuzz on the voice. As for restoration, there is not a lot of vocal information there to recover or clean. No offence, but it sounds a lot like sexual harassment panda from South Park! :)
    – n00dles ♦
    Oct 16, 2022 at 15:43

1 Answer 1

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Well you have three options.

Option 1:

You can go to a professional studio and have them work on this file to do the best possible job of restoring it.

Option 2:

Try some restoration tools such as Izotop RX, although I don't think it will help since this isn't just a distortion or noise problem.

Option 3:

Try some AI tools which I think will be your best bet.

Although AI will require for you to provide some high quality audio samples of your grandfather speaking.

Audio Super Resolution might help, you can read more about it here: https://kuleshov.github.io/audio-super-res/

If you are interested in the Audio Super Resolution method you can try the code example here: https://github.com/kuleshov/audio-super-res

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  • I do have some other clips of him speaking which are way batter than this one.
    – maths is fun
    Oct 15, 2022 at 19:21

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