Need Help Cleaning Up Audio

[ralber]

I'm not experienced enough to clear up the hiss and ambient noise on a short (7-second) .mp3 file and would like to pay someone to enhance it for me. A friend of mine died very unexpectedly and this is the greeting she left on her voicemail. The volume is quite low. I'll pay $25 via PayPal or some other means if someone can clean it up for me.

If you're interested, reply to this message and I'll send you the file.

Thanks!

--------- Rick A.

[davexnet]

Somebody (myself included) will do it for free.
Post it here in the forum.

[enim]

i am busy cleanning up my ears, atm.

[redwudz]

Try the freeware audio editor Audacity and you can likely improve the audio yourself.

[ralber]

Thanks for the replies. I tried using my usual audio editor, Adobe Audition, but I don't know which filters or effects to apply. I'm more adept at cropping and mixing tracks together for videos rather than clarifying the sound. Maybe the audio can't be improved very much, I don't know. I've attached the audio file to this message. Any help is very appreciated.

Thanks again.

[poisondeathray]

Is that the original, original audio recording from the voice mail ? Or did you trim it, re-encode it? Anything else other than the original reduces your chances of improving it

[pippas]

Certainly sounds as if an attempt at noise reduction has been made......

[ralber]

What I posted was the original recording I made of the greeting, using a recording application on my cell phone. I trimmed off the "Please record your message, when you're finished recording..." part that followed my friend's voice. The recording app I used was the only Android app I could find that would work on my Moto X phone and it recorded in .mp3 format. I've attached the untrimmed version of the recording if that helps.

--------- Rick

[poisondeathray]

So this is off your phone ? Can you go into details how you recorded it and transferred to the computer (what programs, what steps)

Is it possible to access her phone (maybe parents, relatives) ?

The reason I'm asking is you might have inadvertently introduced some lossy stages, or there might be some better programs or setting to use for recording off your phone. The closer you are to the source , the more you can potentially clean it up because of a higher signal to noise ratio. Even longer recordings may have sections of ambient noise that you can sample from that may serve better to aid the improvement process (so it's important not to trim sections off)

[ralber]

Thanks for all of your attention to my little problem! The recording was indeed made using an Android app on my phone. I don't have access to any other copy of the phone greeting. However, perhaps a better recording could be made of the greeting since it does sound a lot better over the phone than it does in the .mp3 file my Android app created. If somebody has the interest and the means to capture a better recording, one that might not even need any cleaning up. If anyone is interested, I'd still be happy to pay them for a good recording of my friend's voice. Contact me directly (rick<<at>>drscience.com) and I'll give you the phone number to call where the greeting can be heard.

Thanks!

[davexnet]

You might be able to get a better recording by sticking a microphone in front of the speaker
and recording with a higher sample rate into a PC. I was able to get a noise print from the existing recording
using Bias Soundsoap in Sound Forge, but the finished result really doesn't sound any better
than the original.

[pippas]

Listening and/or recording over a phone link (not an option for me really, on the other side of the Atlantic! ) is not going to be the best way of doing this.
To get the best out of the original you really need to be able to get at the recording on the machine itself... and then either copy the original file digitally (probably not possible) or make a recording directly from the machine itself.
That way you're not going to introduce any losses from the phone line, or microphones, or low resolution 'apps' .
I understand that may not be easy to arrange... and in most cases not really worth the effort.
But this is a rather special situation......

[poisondeathray]

However, perhaps a better recording could be made of the greeting since it does sound a lot better over the phone than it does in the .mp3 file my Android app created

This observation suggests it's your app introducing loss & noise from the recording

I'm not familiar with that model, but it's definitely worth your time investigating how to get a lossless recording out of it. Some people have been able to hack their phones and get a direct 1:1 copy of files. Try looking in various moto x forums

Or, it might be as simple as plugging it in to the mic port and recording uncompressed (instead of low bitrate mp3) in an audio editor, or there might be better apps (or at least better settings) to do this from the phone

[ralber]

Thanks a ton! I ditched the Android app and simply recorded the greeting using my microphone and Skype. The result is a much cleaner recording with more signal but still a bit fuzzy. Anyone still interested enough to take a go at cleaning it up? I've attached the new improved, untrimmed version.

Thanks again. You guys are terrific.

---------- Rick

[davexnet]

It's much, much better. Not really any noise to speak of, perhaps it could do with a little equalization.

[poisondeathray]

Just a FYI when posting uncompressed audio or video , or images (bmp, tiff) on message boards - it usually good etiquette to zip (e.g. 7-zip - free, winrar, etc...) , or use some sort of archiving software to reduce the filesize

Can you name the Android app you used earlier ? (so people know to avoid it )

Yes, it's much better. IMO, there are 2 things that should probably be cleaned up: the clicks, and background noise . I suspect a lot of the background noise is from the mic recording . Were there any clicks when you listened to it directly on the phone?

Is there anyway you can record directly from your phone ? I don't use skype but I suspect it's adding some noise as well. You always hear people complaining about skype quality. I'm wondering if you can improve the recording technique even more. What phone model is it specifically ?

[pippas]

Problem is the bandwidth of the recording is very limited, and the noise is well 'embedded' so to speak. Adding a bit of compression, and trying to lift what there is of the mid range seems like a good place to start.
Trying to lose the noise will almost certainly result in an 'underwater' type effect on the voice, similar to the first recording...

A simple edit along those lines will give you something like the attached mp3... (not too big a file, I hope!)

[ralber]

I normalized it, equalized it, etc. etc. in Adobe Audition and it cleaned up rather well. Thanks to everybody on this forum for your great and generous help.

------------ Rick