How Can I Improve The Sound Quality of Speech Recordings?

[Son of Spam]

I have a set of Audiobooks that I recently downloaded from Soulseek.

The information for the tracks are as follows:

Filesize - 18 MB (on average)

Bitrate - 26

VBR - Yes

Frequency - 12,000

Channel - Stereo


The sound quality is poor (as mp3's go). I realize there's probably not much I can do. But there's a slight "muddiness" to the audio. How can I improve it so that it doensn't really become annoying after a while (these tracks are anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes long)?


Thanks.

[alatham]

Probably not. The process of making really low quality mp3s throws a lot of information out. You can't magically get that information back.

It's a bit like giving someone every other word of a book and asking them to recreate the original.

[kozikowski]

I have several different programs that create MP3 files and they all warn at the beginning that once you do this, you can't ever go back.

If you have "straight" soft or muddy audio, then you might make use of the equalizer. Load a short version of the track (don't load the whole 90 minutes, we'll be here all night). Select the clip, Effect > Equalizer. Push the curve up and down. Experiment with what the curve does at different points. If you depress everything lower than 300 and higher than 3000, you will get a dandy "telephone" effect. To get a brighter sound, boost everything above about 6000 or so. Play with it.

Here's the curve trying to get rid of somebody's irritating voice. 3000 is where you hear fingernails on blackboard, so that's the lowest point.

http://kozco.com/audacity/voice.jpg

Koz