Audio restoration

Originally Posted by Soluzar

I will admit that there's a bit more stereo in some of these samples. I'll also admit that the Freelancer music is fairly nice, and worth a listen. I just don't think the gains outweigh the losses though. When you're recompressing a lossy MP3 to another lossy MP3, you will lose quality.

Isn't something like this more likely to offer the better quality you're looking for? Are there tracks which exist in the game but are not on the OST?

http://music.msn.com/album/?album=39728626

I have this soundtrack (courtesy of bishop743). The point is, it contains almost all music that is written by Visual Music and James Hannigan, but it totally misses out these bar themes, written by Andrew Sega.

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Originally Posted by evilboris

To topic starter - what you are trying to do is mathematically impossible to do. All you can do is adding some filters to increase percieved quality, but you cannot restore data lost by lossy compression, in any way.

I'm not trying to return files to they're original state, I'm trying to make the music a bit more listenable. Just for the sake of musical experience (:

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Originally Posted by gulahi

I have this soundtrack (courtesy of bishop743). The point is, it contains almost all music that is written by Visual Music and James Hannigan, but it totally misses out these bar themes, written by Andrew Sega.

In that case I sympathise with your plight. I still say there's nothing significant you can do, but I do sympathise.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by gulahi

I haven't abandoned the thread, I've just decided to take a little break.

Also, here's my current progress with Freelancer restoration. Comments please. Personally I'm really satisfied with results. I will do a little more exploration on working with audio editor's, might even try to do a gamerip. Who knows.

I'm sorry, but no, the sample's still clipping, you need to cut it alot more than that. Check Parjay's sample.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

If I to cut it a bit more, there will be not much of a music left. Couple of clicks here and there are okay by me (:

Anyway, it's the way original file was and I really don't want to mess with that.

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Quote:

Anyway, it's the way original file was and I really don't want to mess with that.

So what's the point of restoring then? Good luck not messing with it if you want to restore it.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I work with audio all the time on a daily basis as part of my work, and Im not new to doing remastering and restoring. Maybe I can help you out?

How ya doing, buddy?

Can any of you guys briefly explain to me how you restore an audio file like this? I figure you guys use Adobe Audition, but what exactly is it you do you remove clipping and such?

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

While there are ways to reduce the static sound that results from a clipped waveform, there is no true way to recover the lost information. It's no different than an overexposed photograph: you can darken the while areas, but you will never recover the textural detail; the area can only become a gray mess.

Looking at the waveform, I am fairly disgusted. It reminds me of Californication. A frequency analysis reveals that all frequencies above 10kHz are nonexistent. (Of course, considering the sampling rate). I didn't check the RMS of the file; I assume it must be very high. Tsk tsk! There's not much that can be done here besides basic clip restoration.

music_bar_ku04.flac

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I could apply some EQ, a little dehiss and rumble filters and -- if you wanted to -- generate some of the missing frequencies. But it takes many hours.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

You can't truly create information that was never there in the first place. This is especially true for complex sounds such as transients and instrument overtones. In this file, the upper frequencies simply do not exist. What would you generate them from? (I'm actually curious here.)

Any way, I don't think the file needs any more filters applied to it than already have been. It's had enough, I think.

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I have a piece of software that does it, but it takes forever and its expensive as hell lol.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

But what I'm wondering is, how does this software work? How does it "know" what kind of information to add in? For example, let's say we have a 22050Hz waveform audio file of a violin playing. At this sampling rate, frequencies above 11025Hz cannot be reproduced because the sampling frequency was lower than the frequency of the sounds in question. The timbre of a violin is very complex, especially in the upper treble frequencies. Would this software be able to determine the nature of the sound in question and add in the proper harmonic content? How does it determine this? What is it working from? Wouldn't any high frequencies generated by this program only be extrapolations based on the available data?

I'm not trying to be argumentative here, really. I guess I'm just a skeptic at heart. I have no reason to believe that you're lying, but I just can't see how such a program would (or could) produce realistic results.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek

But what I'm wondering is, how does this software work? How does it "know" what kind of information to add in?

Ask the people who made the Creative Sound Bullshit X-Fi. It has the same "Restore your 128k mp3s to studio quality with our 24bit crystalizer!!!1!" bullshit.

It's impossible to restore audio this way, no more then you can make a 200x200 px image wallpaper sized. You can increase the percieved quality with filtering and whatnot, but thats only an approximate and may sound (or look) completely different then what it originally was.

I'm kinda wondering why this topic is still open.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?