Audacity Forum

Hey folks,
I'm trying to clean up a very old recording of my mom singing for her funeral this weekend so we can play it at the funeral as she requested.

The original song is here:
http://smurfzilla.com/mom/city_of_god.wav

and here's what I've done so far:

http://smurfzilla.com/mom/city_of_god_1.wav

I think I made it better somewhat - but was wondering if any experts here had any suggestions on how to make it better.
I ran it through a few noise removal filters and a low end eq removal but there is still a shadow following her voice and not sure how to get rid of it - or if anyone has any suggestions on what I should do to the original one to get it to a better place that would be great.

To my ears I'd go with the original recording.
Yes there is some background noise and a regular click.
However you frequently find when trying to "improve" a track that it makes things worse.

smurfzilla wrote:... or if anyone has any suggestions on what I should do to the original one to get it to a better place that would be great.

It's a stereo recording : if you invert one track it cancels out a lot of the artifacts ...
[the result is mono]

Thank you for the suggestion Trebor & Mike - yeah after I walked away for a little bit and came back to it I have to agree with you that the original was sounding better as I wound up removing to much of her voice as well.

Here's the updated one with the suggestions from Trebor:

http://smurfzilla.com/mom/city_of_god_3.wav

There's some interference going on between the left and right channel.
They do only relate to 43 % - which is quite unusual for such a single voice recording.
Firstly, I thought it would be best to just take either channel but this doesn't seem to work out. each one has its weak and strong passages.
making the track mono is also not very satisfying.
But the opposite way of decorrelating the channels seems better. It is easy to do:
Choose vocal removal from the effect menu. The defaults are just right, so click OK.
Normally, the voice would be gone, but because the relationship is under 50 %, we still have enough vocals (after amplification).

The repeating click pattern (from the revolutions) is now almost gone. Instead of the single hiss/wind (see Trebors post) we do now have a broader noise.
I've used the noise removal tool with a profile from a singing pause in the middle of the song.
Reduction was 20 dB, frequency smoothing 600.
I also used some equalization. A standard presence amplification with boosts at 340/3400 Hz and a 10 dB cut at 1000 Hz (not necessary if you've already used trebor's code).
You could add some stereo reverb but I guess that it would be too much if the song is played in a church.

Robert J. H. wrote: ... You could add some stereo reverb but I guess that it would be too much if the song is played in a church.

Just a wee bit of Stereo reverb applied to the mono version giving a pseudo-stereo effect ...
http://soundcloud.com/city-of-god-processed/s-YG1Fy
[SoundCloud online player requires Adobe Flash , (like YouTube) . Download is possible from SoundCloud without Adobe Flash]

thank you guys for the updated versions and all the tips.they seem really great. that was so amazingly awesome of you. I'll take some updated ones to my dad tomorrow and see what he thinks. Thank you again.