Hello all,
While I was going through a load of 78s that I found when clearing my late mother’s house, I came across a “Recordio” disc marked “Merry Christmas 1947” - basically a self recorded 78 made with some sort of coated paper - probably not designed to last 70 years. I got someone to rip it for me, but the disc was in a bad way and the resulting audio can at best be described as bloody awful. I’ve been trying some of the nyquist effects on it, but feel like I’m trying to thread a needle wearing boxing gloves - everything I do just feels clumsy and the end result is only marginally better - and when I do reduce the scratches the voice audio goes with it.
Can any of the assembled wisdom offer me any advice?
I’ve put the original and my best attempt (which involved manually deamplifying the scratches and then performing noise reduction) on google drive:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZR4p8RCbwwTVn4PKsg4KvZVeU5EgWQ_L/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1quJSg94zapOZf4ewldzR7of5oczqbfu4/view?usp=sharing
Thanks in advance
Peter
Audacity: 2.3.1
Windows: Windows 10 Pro; 19041.1052
Noise reduction is making it worse (not surprising when the noise is bad) and “deamplyfing” is no different than turning-down the volume control.
I made some improvement with the Graphic EQ, but I still could only understand “Have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year” at the end. And probably the only reason I can understand that is because you gave me a hint. 
I pushed down all of the sliders below 500 Hz and above 10KHz to the minimum, and I boosted the “remaining” frequencies 3.15kHz and above by +6dB. You can probably do better by taking more time time to experiment. You can experiment with the Preview feature or you can apply the effect and then optionally un-do. (And of course save a back-up!)
Can YOU understand what’s being said? (Headphones might help.) If you can understand what’s being said here’s what I’d do - Type-up a transcript and maybe frame the record together with the transcript, or put them in a photo album, etc. And keep a CD with it in case anyone wants to listen.
I wouldn’t expect it to ever be “listenable” but it’s a cool thing to have, especially if you know who’s voice it is.
Thanks for the advice guys, I really appreciate it.
I tried the splitter.ai which seems like witchcraft on a normal song but turned my recording into whale music.
I’ll follow your lead DVDdoug and play with the equalizer. I think it’s a cool thing to have, and no I don’t know what is being said and who is saying it - that’s kind of the main thing I want to be able to hear. I come from Newcastle and was expecting to hear hints of a Geordie accent but I get more of an RP accent coming through - knowing my family it might be just something that was picked up somewhere random and added to the collection and be no-one that we know!
Thanks again … Peter
I too tried Spleeter on it, but it didn’t help.
Here’s what WetWare 1.0 produced …
Starting at 7 seconds
“… and I communed cribula last year, there were lots of fashions but,
so I used about a hundred*. Oh well merry Christmas and happy new year”.
[* $100 in 1947 is >$1000 in 2021 ]
and no I don’t know what is being said and who is saying it - that’s kind of the main thing I want to be able to hear.
Well, that’s sad… At least you have a digital copy and maybe someday technology will improve, or if enough people listen, maybe it can be eventually “decoded”.
We had something similar in our family but I’m sure it’s gone now. I didn’t remember if it was paper. From what I understand it was like a photo-booth but instead a recording booth where you could make your own recording. My mother was “dating age” during WWII so maybe it was from a soldier friend of hers. I think that was the general idea… that you could record a voice message and mail a message.
knowing my family it might be just something that was picked up somewhere random and added to the collection and be no-one that we know!
Funny, but probably not.