Subject:Leveling speech volume

Posted by: dpvollmer

Date:8/11/2011 2:45:28 PM

I have 120 sermons that I am taking (mostly from cassette tapes) into my computer with the purpose of converting them to 128K MP3 files. These files will be used by transcribers to convert to text which will, in turn, be used for Kindle books. The audio files will also be available for download.

I am having a terrible time getting these messages to sound as good as I would l like, especially in the area of volume leveling. I am using Wave Hammer but am not getting the increase in the low levels and the compression of the louder levels to suit me. The speaker has a tremendous dynamic range. If anyone has a Wave Hammer algorithm or other method that would help, I would really appreciate it!

I am using iZotope purchased version of their noise reduction software and also own their latest versions of Nectar, Alloy, Ozone 4, and RX Advanced. If those, or any other software/plug-in will help, please let me know.

Thank you!
David

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: musicvid10

Date:8/11/2011 5:36:39 PM

Audio from cassette tapes, having a useful dynamic range of ~50dB, shouldn't require any compression. Maybe your problem is something else, like analog clipping.

Why don't you upload a 60 sec. wav sample somewhere; there are people here who have a lot experience with audio restoration.

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: iain_m

Date:8/12/2011 4:00:25 AM

You need an upward compressor to raise the volume of the quiet parts.

Waves Maxxvolume would be a good choice to help with this.

Or drop me an email and I can help.

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:8/12/2011 4:55:46 AM

If you're not getting any effect from Wave Hammer you're probably not being aggressive enough. Try lowering the threshold to at least midway between the peaks and the quiet areas and increasing the compression ratio. I normally look for a level that seems to be the most constant peaks of the quieter sections and set the ratio to about 10:1. Make sure you have auto gain compensate checked or there will be no volume increase. I also usually set the output gain to -0.5dB to avoid any residual clipping.

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: MarkWWW

Date:8/12/2011 7:45:22 AM

If you're not sufficiently familiar with compressors to achieve the results you are after you might like to try a less hands-on approach.

Have a look at the free Levelator which is designed for the purpose of taming disparate speech volume levels in recordings of meetings, etc. It gives you no control over the process but it does produce very useable results (on speech at least - don't be tempted to try to use it for music).

Mark

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: dpvollmer

Date:8/12/2011 3:17:32 PM

The series of messages that has just given me fits is the series where the minister's wife is conducting a women's seminar and someone is recording her using some kind of portable tape recorder that has a built-in mic. Her levels are all over the place and the noise is terrible!

I was able to manage the noise with iZotope RX Advanced, taking two or three passes to tame it. The dynamic range on that tape uses the entire 50DB you mentioned, with those nearest the mic/recorder creating louder sounds than the speaker.I have use Wave Hammer and while that improves the levels, it is not quite good enough.
There is also a lot of sibilance that required three Multi-band dynamic filter to reduce and then using iZotope spectral repair to slightly reduce each frequency above 3.5K.

The minister's tapes are much better, but he, too, has a wide dynamic range speaking voice and I think a more aggressive use of Wave Hammer might be the solution.

If I am not satisfied with his messages, I will upload a wav sample and ask for suggestions.

Thank you, Musicvid, you are a big help to the forum members here, especially with Vegas.

David

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: dpvollmer

Date:8/12/2011 3:19:53 PM

Jain_m,

I tried to download a demo of MaxxVolume but had to jump through so many hoops with Waves and iLok that I finally gave up. They may have the best solution, but I am not going to get a USB iLok key just to find out!

Thanks,
David

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: dpvollmer

Date:8/12/2011 3:23:52 PM

Chienworks,

I will apply your suggestions to the remaining tapes. Many of the peaks that I have are at zero DB digital and I have some tapes that, using two Tascam CC-222SL tape-to-CD recorders are still too hot, even with the input level control on the CD recorder side turned all the way down!

David

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: dpvollmer

Date:8/12/2011 3:27:22 PM

MarkWWW,

Thanks for your suggestion. I have downloaded and installed Levelator, and used it on two of my files and will try it on more. It does increase the low levels and reduce the higher ones which is just what I want. I'm afraid on one of the series of messages (so far) it will not be able to increase the low levels enough.

I guess for those I will have to master Wave Hammer.

David

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:8/12/2011 5:51:48 PM

Hmmm, that's weird. With the input level all the way down you *should* be getting no signal at all. Something's definitely not right. Zoom in and look closely at your 0dB peaks. Are they narrow sharp points coming close to 0dB, or are there wider flattened off plateaus? If the latter then you may have to look for a different solution for digitizing them.

For most speech, especially in cases where the recording process is far less than ideal, going from the tape deck or mixer output directly into a line input on the computer's sound card is usually sufficient. Just make sure you don't use a mic input without some sort of attenuation adapter.

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: MarkWWW

Date:8/13/2011 7:41:50 AM

> I'm afraid on one of the series of messages (so far) it will not be able to increase the low levels enough.

Hmmm, must be a very extreme case. Might be worth running it through Levelator twice if it's as bad as that. I've never needed to try more than one pass myself so I don't know how successful multiple passes might be, but it wouldn't take too long to try it at least.

Mark

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: dpvollmer

Date:8/13/2011 4:02:08 PM

Using Levelator on my "normal" tapes works really well. I'll try running it twice on a couple of files and see if it improves the overall level without adding artifacts or increasing the noise.

Thanks.

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: dpvollmer

Date:8/13/2011 5:34:04 PM

I don't think the Tascam input level control actually reduces the input to zero. I only had one tape (so far) that had an output as high as the one I mentioned. I've had some other "hot" tapes where the input level control was almost to zero in order to keep from clipping. The clips were, of course, square waves but were not so bad that I couldn't use SF to correct them.

David

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: dpvollmer

Date:8/18/2011 4:09:45 PM

I discovered why the input level control wouldn't reduce the audio. One of the two identical cassette-to-CD recorders had a menu setting that allowed the cassette levels to pass thru without change to the CD.

My mistake for not catching that early!

David

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: rraud

Date:8/19/2011 12:27:49 PM

When confronted with extreme leveling issues, I usually go to Jeroen Jeroen's JB broadcast leveler: http://www.vstplanet.com/VST_effects/Compressor/broadcast.zip .This free VST plugin has a manual or auto switchable AGC circuit, a limiter and a 2cd stage b'cast 'clipper', including a 3-band compressor among other image control process' for stereo. Not as 'fool proof' as the 'Levelator' but certainly more configurable for users with advanced skills in dynamics processing.
Ammended: added HTML tag to URL

Subject:RE: Leveling speech volume

Reply by: musicvid10

Date:8/19/2011 1:06:30 PM

That's nice to know about, rraud.
Thanks!