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Gunilla5EBE
Participant
May 29, 2023
Question

Probably the ugliest sound possible - any experienced sound extractors out there?

  • May 29, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 221 views

Been using adobe products for a long time - less so Audition, but I know something of my way around it. The problem is as follows:

 

I got handed a 16 minute chunk of video from 1990 given to me by my cousin who works for Adobe. It features my late sister interviewing my late aunt and uncle, and my late grandmother. So pretty precious material. None of them were professionals, so the sound levels would be terrible enouigh on their own. However.... there is a grinding, electric-toothbrush-against-the-mike level of sound running the length of the recording. I've tried just erasing the midsection of the spectrum, and it does clean it up SOME, but since everyone is speaking so softly, it's difficult to pull that up without some portion of the horrible noise returning with it. I've included a selection of sound from throughout the 16 minutes. I've also included screenshot of  the SFD (that "center line" sound, that's the noise).

 

So anyone got a magic stack, or suggestions (and yes, I've taken a noise sample and it works meh, but difficult on the b-side with my grandma - very quiet speaker and my sister is off camera, and there's plenty of visual noise, making it difficult to KNOW that no one is talking, and the noise definitely has a slightly different pitch between a and b sides, so wants a separate solution.

 

Cheers in advance!

Sarge

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

SteveG_AudioMasters_
Community Expert
SteveG_AudioMasters_Community Expert
Community Expert
May 29, 2023

I downloaded it (and boosted the volume about 25dB) and you're right - it's horrible. It sounds as though the video is mistracking - have you tried playing it on another machine to see if that's any better?

 

Just as an experiment, I uploaded your snippet to Adobe's Online Speech Enhancer to see what it would make of the noise. The result isn't brilliant, but when you consider what the original is like, the bits you can hear aren't that bad. I've attached what came back as a file, but if you want to try it yourself, then it's available here. It works most of the time, but occasionally it gets overloaded. If it does that, then try again later.

G
Gunilla5EBEAuthor
Participant
May 30, 2023

That did come up clear... gibberish unfortunately, but clear. They're both native english speakers, and it came off as swedish. It's the AI trying to make sense of the sounds it was hearing. I've tried it on some classic speeches (Kennedy's "New Frontier", Roosevelt's "Date Which Will Live in Infamy" speech, both cases came off fairly clearly till you get to the applause and then the AI lost it's mind and tried to translate the applause into dunno... gremlin? Definitely needs some greater audio smarts than I have. Thanks for sitting through that sound ... it was pretty gut wrenching.

Hadn't thought of maybe trying another transfer. I'll ask my cousin.

 

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