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Eliminate linguaphone background noise? | ||
Tags: Linguaphone | Voice Recordings | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| dweedman Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4498 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 11 05 February 2012 at 3:06pm | IP Logged |
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Hi, I've been using some linguaphone tapes, but one thing has been bugging me. After and during someone has
said something a very noticeable, quiet, muffled version of what they said seems to repeat. I have converted the tapes into a digital format, does anyone know a way for me to eliminate this annoying background noise? By the way, this is universal among all courses, I've tried 4 different ones, 3 from the 1970s-80s, and one from the 1950s-60s era Edited by dweedman on 05 February 2012 at 3:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5250 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 2 of 11 05 February 2012 at 6:35pm | IP Logged |
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Strange. Is it present on both the tapes and the digital copy?
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| dweedman Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4498 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 11 06 February 2012 at 1:34am | IP Logged |
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Yes it's present on the tapes and the digital copy. I've tried two different tape players. Here's a short 1 minute
extract from the 1960s norwegian course. This same problem is also on my arabic, Spanish and french 1970s courses. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgFXF2UMy9A 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lazyday Newbie United States Joined 6950 days ago 21 posts - 25 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 11 06 February 2012 at 5:52am | IP Logged |
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OK, I think this will help you. Get the program Audacity if you don't have it.
Open the file with it. Once open, highlight a selection of audio that should be silent but has the murmuring sound. Do this by holding the left mouse button and dragging. Release the button after you have dragged to the end of the section that should be quiet. Now, go to Effect at the top and in the drop down menu select Noise Removal. In the new box select Get Noise Profile. You have told it that this is what you want to remove. Select the whole audio file by holding control and then the a key. Go to Effect again and then Noise Removal again. This time click OK. I didn't change any of the settings as the default seems good to me. It will take a bit of time for the program to work through the file. Now do a test play. Is it good enough? If not you may have to repeat the process with a section that is still obviously bad with the murmur sound. I Did the process twice and it seemed to remove all but the most faint background noise. Save the file. Done. PS You might want to have a backup of the file you are working on. There is an undo feature in Audacity but I would feel bad if your file got messed up and you had to record it again. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5357 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 5 of 11 06 February 2012 at 7:24pm | IP Logged |
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I think this is quite common on old tapes. The sound seems to "leech" accross the wound tapes. In theory I suppose it must be possible to fix it with enough computing power.
My only suggestion would be to use Audacity to split the stereo into mono tracks, and listen to them separately, as one may be better quality, but i wouldnt hold out much hope. I don't think you'll be able to improve it with "noise removal" as presumably the spectrum is identical to the original sound. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lazyday Newbie United States Joined 6950 days ago 21 posts - 25 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 11 06 February 2012 at 7:47pm | IP Logged |
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I pulled the file off of youtube, converted it to an audio file and did the actions described above. The "noise removal" works. It's not perfect but is much less fatiguing to listen to now.
Here is the cleaned sample: http://www.filefactory.com/file/c2447a6/n/ling_sample.mp3 Edited by lazyday on 06 February 2012 at 8:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5357 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 7 of 11 06 February 2012 at 9:50pm | IP Logged |
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You're right, that is an improvement.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dweedman Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4498 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 11 06 February 2012 at 11:40pm | IP Logged |
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Sigh... :(
I tried noise removal, it barely made a difference. Maybe it's because I'm using the mac version, I don't know. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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