Many of us are old enough to remember the quality even brand new LP albums had. The true audiophile of 1970 would spend thousands of 1970 dollars to get sound quality close to what we think nothing of today coming from a CD. The average teenie-bopper, however, only had access to far less quality playing hardware which nonetheless produced impressive audio but wore the vinyl. After a few playings, scratches began to be heard and as the vinyl aged the listener could detect hiss and objectionable scratches.

In addition to simply transferring the audio of a vintage LP album to CD, we can also do audio restoration for an additional nominal fee. Any LP album surviving multiple decades is certain to have scratches, clicks, pops, and lots of crackle. In many cases our restoration lowers the presence of these to the point where the average listener will not be able to detect them at all though results are not always the same.

We present here an example of the results from transferring legacy LP vinyl (50 year vintage) to CD with audio restoration. In 1959 and 1960 the Thomas M. Cooley high school in Detroit, Michigan produced three LP albums recording student festival productions. As you listen to samples of music extracted and restored from the vinyl, pay close attention to any sign of scratches, hiss, or rumble. It is not uncommon to achieve this level of success with our audio restoration.

If you are a Thomas M. Cooley High School alumnus (especially from 1959 and 1960) and would like to purchase any of these CDs, they are available at $12.50 each +tax plus $5.00 S&H. To order please call (734) 834-1700 and say you would like to order one or more of the three Cooley High CDs. Download the order form by clicking here. Personal checks, MasterCard, Visa, and American Express are accepted.

The audio that accompanies a professionally produced video is a critical component in developing overall quality of wedding videography. A viewer can easily ignore a slight color anomaly in the video but will not be able to get around the sound of an overhead ventilation fan or hum in the audio.

One of the distinctions few people consider in audio as it applies to wedding and event videography is the nature of microphones. Consider the typical wedding video showing the couple exchanging vows. At W. Cardone Productions we try to tap into the sanctuary sound mixer to capture any audio going into the public address system. This would, of course, include the couple as they exchange vows. However, the microphones usually used by churches are designed for clarity in public address and will not deliver the richness of the human voice. For this reason we like to place wireless microphones on both the groom and officiant. Often times this means that the officient is double-miked wearing a house mike and one of our wireless microphones.

Consider an experience we encountered two weeks ago at a wedding in Ann Arbor, The church hand-held wireless mike used to put couple’s vows on the PA had obviously taken a beating over the years. I noticed that it had problems dropping out during the ceremony but did not realize how bad it was until I hit the edit room. We had four mikes to capture the couple’s vows: 1. the church’s hand-held; 2. the groom’s lavaliere; 3; the officient’s church lavaliere; and 4. one of my lavalieres on the officient. The end result was an interaction between the church lavaliere and the hand-held such that an annoying echo resulted. However, because I had quality redundant audio to interactively select from I could key out the bad audio.

In addition, the wireless microphones we use for wedding ceremonies are designed to capture the richness of the human voice which adds a new depth to the viewing experience. Even whispers can be heard as if the viewer were at the altar with the couple.

When enjoying nature on a hike in a wildlife setting we can hear the birds chirping and other sounds of nature. We listen to those sounds and feel comforted by them as we enjoy our hike. However, try to do the same capturing the experience to video. You are in for a rude awakening.

When you play back video you have captured in nature, it is almost certain that in various spots of the video you will have audio containing annoying overhead aircraft sounds! But you say to yourself, “Those airplanes were not there when I captured this video. How did they get in?” The answer, of course, is that the airplanes were there all the while. You just did not notice them. Your brain is so powerful that it masked out those sounds allowing you to enjoy the nature sounds. The technology does not exist to do the same for your video.

In the edit room we can massage the audio masking out or at least reducing some isolated sounds. More posts will be written soon about these capabilities. However, audio massaging technology still can’t compare to the brain.

It makes you appreciate all the more magnificent the creation is.

In many cases we can actually remove or at least reduce an isolated sound such that it becomes insignificant. One of the great examples of this is audio feedback. There have been times when ear-shattering feedback rang through a public address system as we captured our video. In all cases where we have encountered this we were able to radically reduce the feedback to the point where the viewer wonders why the people in the video are shaken.

The process of removing isolated sounds relies on a principle developed by the eighteenth century French mathemetician named Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier.

Consider the case of removing the sound of an overhead ventilation system from the audio track of a video. In order for the removal of the offending sound to be effective we must be able to locate somewhere in the video about one second of silence in which the sound is present. An analysis is performed on that silence and the result applied to the entire audio track. In most cases the fan noise can be reduced quite effectively.