metal sound

[thiebo]

Hello,

I have recorded, using Audacity, a voicemail from my telephone to my laptop. However, my telephone's loudspeaker procuded quite a "metal" sound, as if the person leaving the message was speaking into a can.

I suppose there's a way to correct that with Audacity, but I don't have a clue where to start looking for a solution.

Could anyone please help ?

Many thanks,

[steve]

You will probably be able to make some improvement using the Equalizer effect, but don't expect miracles - you can't put back what isn't there.

If you look at the spectrum of the sound (Analyze menu) you will probably notice that there is a big spike, or mountain shape in the graph. This is where the sound frequencies are artificially high. What you need to do is to adjust the Equalizer the other way so as to "tame" that peak.

If you could post a short sample somewhere on the internet (preferably in WAV or flac format) for us to listen to (post a link on the forum), then you will probably get some suggestions of the kind of settings that you need for the Equalizer.

[thiebo]

Hello,

Sorry for the late reply. Here's the example : http://duvel.te.verweg.com/~thiebo/test.flac

It's in French. Many many thanks for your help with this.

Regards

[kozikowski]

It's in French. I'm not sure I can handle it, n'est-ce pas?

Most of the damage is caused by overload which should be preventable. The volume is much too high for Audacity to properly manage. The blue waveforms should never go all the way up and down like that--to "1" if you're on the normal waveform display. When you play the work, there are little red bars on the right of the bouncing light sound meter. They should not be there, either. Try recording again with the microphone a little further away from the speaker, or reduce the speaker volume. Once you do that, I'm betting youi can produce quite a pleasant show, equalizer or not.

This is a piano solo I made, illustrating correct sound levels.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/Audacity1_playback.jpg

There are no good tools to repair the kind of damage you have.

Koz

[thiebo]

Hello,

Thanks for the reply. This was recorded from a voicemail with the loudspeaker of my telephone. That loudspeaker is very bad (not strong enough). By the time I had lend another telephone from friends, Orange had erased the message... Therefore, I can't reregister

Can I change sound levels using Audacity ? With the equaliser ?

Thanks again !

[kozikowski]

<<<Can I change sound levels using Audacity ? With the equaliser ? >>>

You can change sound levels by selecting the whole performance and Effect > Amplify.

However, what it's going to do is give you very damaged sound only more quiet. Digital systems do not gracefully overload like some analog audio systems do. Once a sound performance fails to fit into a digital system, the system will clip the pieces that don't fit. That's what produces the metallic grating sound.

It's permanent.

Sorry,

Koz

[thiebo]

Thanks a lot for your replies !