Technology is taking us to new places with audio. During lectures,
conferences, speeches, press gatherings and other types of speaking
engagements, the speaker commonly uses complex audio equipment and teams
for direct audio enhancement. Meaning – the equipment that is setup at
the event provides the cleanest audio both for presentation and for
recording.
This extra effort on the front end minimizes the work
that audio experts and professionals have to do when packaging recorded
audio to other media format for distribution or syndication among news
studios, DVD products, etc.
It wasn’t long ago that speakers did
not have the benefit of the high quality audio enhancement techniques
we use now during presentations and recordings. Before amplification of
audio and recording devices was mainstream, public speakers and those
giving lectures had to rely on careful annunciation and voice projection
to ensure that everyone in attendance could hear them clearly.
Even with careful annunciation and training in giving speeches, the
resulting recordings were limited by the low quality audio technology of
the time. Even with improvement in microphones and recording
technology, the audio was still recorded to magnetic tape.
Changing the Way We Hear
Beyond the professional sphere, personal recordings such as audio
letters and diaries recorded to analog media can suffer the effect of
time. Important events in family histories can be lost without audio
enhancement. Unfortunately, things like atmosphere, sun exposure,
gases, dust and humidity can have a toll on tape media that make it
virtually impossible to recover even with audio enhancement.
It
is important to note here that audio enhancement is not a magic button,
or instant fix for damaged and/or aging audio recordings. Audio
engineers can tackle minor artifact, poor volume in audio and
segregation of some noises but it cannot repair badly damaged tape.
To counter this issue, some companies rely on oral history
transcription and other forms of professional transcription once
enhancement is complete. These transcripts can provide a written
account of the recorded dialogue. For important audio, this is an
effective way to review the audio on older tape without submitting that
older tape to continued replays that could severe the media and cause
additional damage.
Common Problems Requiring Audio Enhancement
Older media such as reel-to-reels once allowed for recording at
different speeds. It wasn’t uncommon to get an important recording that
wound up being recorded at the wrong speed due to mechanical issues and
tape deck malfunctions at the time of the recording. Audio engineering
makes it easy to adjust the playback speed of media when moving it to a
digital recording. This keeps the master intact while providing you
with a modern format for playback and review.
Beyond playback
speeds, audio enhancement can tone down or remove things like buzzing,
hissing, humming, electrical interference, ambient sounds (car horns,
motor noise, traffic, nature sounds) and variable tones that interfere
with hearing and understanding the spoken dialogue of a recording.
Don’t give up on old reel to reel recordings, especially if the data is
something important to you. Audio enhancement and oral history
transcription can breathe new life into your old audio formats.
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