Extreme Background Noise

Question

HelloI have several hundred lectures from 1970-1990 all recorded on cassette tape. I am converting  these assets to digital. On most I am able to clean them up using any and all of these: normalize; noise reduction by 70%, reduce by 7db; parametric equalizer, hard limiter, multi-band compressor. The lecture talk  presented here I am unable to make any useful noise reduction. Though I judiciously apply noise reductions the audio is less than listenable.  Sometimes I start with normalize then noise reduction. Then again I may start with noise reduction than normalize – and a few other attempts using other tools. I am unable to achieve a good sound. Please give this audio a listen to and let me know how I may be able to reclaim Don’s conversation. It is an important talk from 1981. Let me know if there is a working fix.Sincerely and with Gratitude

SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted Answer

You won't ever get a good sound out of this - there's far too much going on in the background, and it's not constant. If you pick your noise sample carefully you can reduce quite a bit of this, but the constant low frequency beating is hard to shift completely. You should probably attempt to do the NR in several stages, targetting different aspects of the noise each time. The police car siren you could reasonably paint out using the paintbrush tool and Delete key, but this will be time-consuming to get right. Doesn't matter whether you normalize or do the NR first - that's your choice.

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