Vocal restoration help please

  • Thread starter Thread starter MTLib
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MTLib

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Hi,
I am working to restore my Grandparent's tape library. There are thousands of reel-to-reel and cassette tapes. All are of speakers at conventions. I am using Pro-tools LE, Digi001, a newer Sony Vaio with mega memory, and a combination of Audacity and Audition 1.5. (yes, I know this is overkill but my son has hopes of me learning to use the equipment so I can earn a living with it later)
I can get the audio into the computer, take out hiss and noise, but I am having trouble cleaning up the voices. They are "fuzzy" to varying degrees. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!
 
I recently did some remastering work for a friend, with a range of material from his Grand-Father (Who's uncle founded the New England Music Conservatory). Solo Grand-piano performances, Gospel vocal pieces in a large Cathedral, as well as Narration (Stories). A lot of the vocal pieces had "Fuzzy Vocals", especially the gospel stuff, and it was very hard to deal with, due to the nature of the recording (Lots of natural reverb, an organ, back-up vocals, etc.). It seemed to be a combination of tape distortion from worn magnetism on the tape itself, as well as too much overdrive from excessive volumes at the recording stage (i.e. crappy microphones, and hot levels). I tried every EQ setting I could think of, and nothing worked. I ended up borrowing a friends Dolby Noise Reduction Unit, and it worked beautifully. Even though the originals weren't recorded with Dolby. The unit proved to be a life saviour, it removed just enough of the fuzz around the vocals to allow me to EQ out the really offensive stuff. It didn't eradicate the problem 100%, but it got me really close to it. Of course a by-product of The Dolby process was removing other frequencies too (just like using a compressor, which I did as well Post-Dolby), Some make up EQ was in order. Hope this is of help. Good Luck!!!
 
Just another quick suggestion, If any of the material is recorded in stereo, and is just commentary, you may want to listen to the left and right channels seperately, you may find during the really fuzzy parts that one channel isn't really so bad (This is especially true for cassettes who got flipped alot in the tape player). If you have one good channel, and it isn't absolutely vital to have true stereo, use just that one mono track. You can always convert the one mono track into a stereo track and use a spacial enhancer/widener plugin (plenty of free ones out there) to add a bit of width back into it when your finishing up with the file.
 
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Thanks so much, I will look into Dolby. Really appreciate your help!
 
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