You made your recording for a purpose.

But, maybe, it didn't turn out quite good enough for that purpose.

As a Sound Editor, I can help.
..................................................

Toward a more-perfect recording

Modern technology has made it possible to manipulate sound recordings in ways that were not possible just a few years ago. It used to be that the best you could hope for was a skilled tape splicer with demagnetized scissors. But now, listeners expect to hear better than simple cut-and-paste to remove gaps, stammers and word-whiskers.

The environment may not be ideal. A good Sound Editor can remove or dramatically reduce hum, background room noise, room echo and even incidental noises such as a ringing phone or cough. Some of these services can be performed quickly across an entire recording, while others will require case-by-case editing.

Your speaking talent may bump the microphone, introduce 'plosives, sibilances, breath noises or mouth clicks and pops. These can all distract from the performance... and from the message you are trying to get across. Processors can even adjust a voice to sound like it had different larynx and nasal proportions.

The overall performance may also need to be adjusted to repair minor over-driving (clipping) and to adjust timing, tone, leveling and compliance to broadcast loudness standards.

Your basic recording can even be enhanced to fill empty spots with matching ambiance, or conform to a common equalization profile. You may need to have intro and outro segments added.

In my career as a technical engineering specialist, I learned that my job was to make my supervisor look good. I bring that same attitude to my work for you. Job One is making YOU look good.

David Satterlee

p.s. The bottom line is:

• I offer boutique custom audio editing and modification. 
• I'm set-up for processing, not recording. Although I can put you in front of a pretty-good microphone, my space is not noise-isolated.
• I'm a one-man shop. Therefore, I'm at liberty to fool around with a difficult problem for as long as my interest holds out. At the other end of the spectrum, I will be reluctant to take on long-term, high-volume commodity services. 
• I want your business... and your repeat business. Let's discuss your project.

p.p.s. I'm also an author with books in print and free stuff to read on my writing blog. It would be lovely if you dropped by to visit at  DavidSatterlee.com. Thank you.

Offer new services to existing clients - Instructional media

I have been doing some volunteer transcribing for IntegralLife.com  a favorite organization that promotes the work of one of the world's great philosophical theorists. In appreciation, they offered to enroll me in one of their new courses. But, the opening words of the opening module caught my attention. I said to myself: "Self," I said, "You can make this sound better. Why don't you just have a go at it?" And so I did.

I prepared the following brief sample and offered to discuss their using my audio services as well. Time will tell... I'm already doing this work for random clients. I would really enjoy working with some of the finest people I know on some of the most important topics I have ever encountered. Note to self: People who already know you in one context have a hard time imagining you in an other. Be patient.

This picture simply shows a short phrase being repeated before and after processing. The low end of the spectrogram shows less low-end room "boominess" in the right side.  Also, look closely at the trailing edge of the peaks. On the right side, there is more-obvious fall-off as you hear less of the original sound lingering in the recording space.

It's fun to watch the processing finish and all the waveforms grow different shoulders as the display refreshes.

I also enjoy working in the iZotope RX editor to remove pauses in the X-axis (time) and unwanted sounds in the Y-axis (amplitude).

• After selecting a horizontal area, pressing [Delete] simply closes-up the remaining content at zero crossing points.
• If [Instant Process] is turned on, a new selection is automatically rendered with the desired function (such as replacing an unwanted noise with a signal based on a sample of background room noise). 

In both cases it's like it never even happened. I feel like Luke Skywalker shooting womp rats.

Alternating samples

This section contains only "alternating samples." That is to say that:

• Each sample contains a series of phrases. 
• Each phrase is repeated once for before-and-after comparison.

These samples are for demonstration purposes. Many samples are rather severely treated to demonstrate what can be done. In real life, for instance, you might want to leave a little of the room echo for "realism."

President Obama's ISIS address

Removed overall background noise, room echo plus individual sibilance and mouth noises. (Yes, I really over-did it on the sibilance.)

%%%

Episode of "Cooking Hawaiian Style"

Frank Abraham produces Cooking Hawaiian Style, and sent an episode to work on. The good news is that there was a lot to love and it cleaned-up very nicely. The bad news is that one of the microphone inputs sounded as if it was severely over-driven and clipped.

I'll talk about the minor issues first. Here's a few seconds of the original recording.

The voices are too low to start with (Total RMS = -35.45 dB) and the background noise (the two selected areas) is too high (Minimum RMS = -51.11 dB). If we simply crank up the volume, we will amplify the noise as well.

The Orange Juice Symphony gets a new life

My neighbor brought me a favorite CD to listen to. It turned out to be an old symphony performance that had been transferred, in some unknowable past, from a 78 rpm vinyl record. You could hear the needle hitting dust. The loud parts were distorted by clipping. Ahh, here was a challenge.

The disk was simply labeled "Concierto de Aranjuez, Joaquin Rodrigo." It was an orchestral piece that featured a Spanish Guitar soloist. It was alternately melancholy and spirited. It deserved better treatment.

In retrospect, there are some perfectly wonderful recordings of this work floating around. EMI sells one with Placido Domingo conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra and you can also get Louis Fremaux, also conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, from Sony. But no, none of that pre-baked stuff for this boy. This was probably something different and older and of historical importance.

I've chosen a segment that begins with a quiet stretch, which reveals the vinyl noise, and moves into a strident burst of enthusiasm that is too loud and thus distorted. Also, there is clearly some 50-cycle hum, especially in the right channel. That marks it as coming from Europe -- maybe England. Maybe this is the performance that ended up on EMI Classics - Simon Rattle conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with Julian Bream on guitar. Well, that's enough to start with. Let's have a go.

Outsourcing to an off-shore contractor

Several weeks ago, I accepted a job from an instructional media developer in Mumbai, India. He said that he had 2.5 hours of recording that needed to have background noise removed. He even provided a brief sample clip of audio. Easy peasy. I bit. It turned out that the audio was actually embedded in 23 separate video files. Whatcha gonna do?

So, I stocked up on Cheetos and Diet Coke, kissed the family goodbye and locked my door. It would have been one thing to sample the ambient noise, turn the De-noise module loose and go pet the cat while I watched cartoons. Instead, I was going to have to extract the audio, process all 23 files separately, put everything back together, return them and, finally, find a distant mountaintop from which to contemplate the condition of my karma. I ended up consuming 82.5 GB of disk space on this sucker (and more hours than I care to admit). Note to self: If the requirements are ambiguous, double your quote.

Here's the first 20 seconds.What do you hear?