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A place for discussion of general audio, music and related topics.
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Cleaning up bad recordings with AI?

October 24th, 2020, 8:55 am

From 1973 to 1994, I made a living as an independent photographer before delving into IT, and it served me pretty well.
I got back into photography when I started working with CAF and counties today fully engulfed into the digital thing.
Back in the day I was pretty good in the darkroom manipulating film and prints. One could do a lot of corrections in exposure and contrast. The one thing you could not do is sharpen an out of focus picture.
Today’s digital software you can do amazing things. AI is creeping into graphic software. For as little as $100 I can get a plug-in to photoshop that does reconstruction to a fuzzy picture like what you see on TV.
My thought exercise Is why can’t this same technology be used in fixing all the bad recordings out there.

Re: Cleaning up bad recordings with AI?

October 24th, 2020, 9:08 am

In the photography, you see the entire photograph. In music you only experience snapshots in time. Unless you are an expert musician, you cannot visualize entire track to made necessary corrections.

Re: Cleaning up bad recordings with AI?

October 24th, 2020, 9:34 am

I respectfully disagree.
The AI software scans the photo pixel by pixel and makes a judgment on how to fix that particular part based on an overall view.
Not much different on how we evaluate a musical track

Re: Cleaning up bad recordings with AI?

October 24th, 2020, 9:56 am

Pelliott321 wrote:From 1973 to 1994, I made a living as an independent photographer before delving into IT, and it served me pretty well.
I got back into photography when I started working with CAF and counties today fully engulfed into the digital thing.
Back in the day I was pretty good in the darkroom manipulating film and prints. One could do a lot of corrections in exposure and contrast. The one thing you could not do is sharpen an out of focus picture.
Today’s digital software you can do amazing things. AI is creeping into graphic software. For as little as $100 I can get a plug-in to photoshop that does reconstruction to a fuzzy picture like what you see on TV.
My thought exercise Is why can’t this same technology be used in fixing all the bad recordings out there.

Nelson Pass created a little add-on gizmo that he handed out at a seminar that could at least make a recording acceptable. It was a second-harmonic generator. How that could improve anything is anyone's guess.

Re: Cleaning up bad recordings with AI?

October 24th, 2020, 10:00 am

In photography a pixel is never evaluated in isolation. It is alway evaluated in relation with other pixels. For example, consider unsharen mask. Pixels on the region where color transition is occurring are manipulated

In Music you cannot do that.

Re: Cleaning up bad recordings with AI?

October 24th, 2020, 10:30 am

Cogito wrote:In photography a pixel is never evaluated in isolation. It is alway evaluated in relation with other pixels. For example, consider unsharen mask. Pixels on the region where color transition is occurring are manipulated

In Music you cannot do that.

I have two cents to contribute. First -- Shashi is correct -- I've read white papers that discuss these issues. Here is the thing. I have a LG 4K TV and an Oppo 4K player. And no surprise -- it can spoil you. What caught me off guard with this kit was its ability to scale and manipulate ordinary DVDs to present almost as good as a Blu Ray disc. Same goes for Blu Ray -- the kit fiddles with the Blu Ray in such a way that it is almost as good as full 4K.

So having said that I have to wonder (as Paul has mused about) why not play the game with audio recordings? There has been some movie industry success with processing old Western Electric optical sound tracks to improve sound quality.

The best example that I have experienced is the new 4K release of the Wizard of Oz. The original Eastman negatives were beyond reproach, but still had those vintage sound tracks. The producers, using what ever means they had to hand, cleaned up the

sound track in ways I did not expect. I also have heard the end result of screwing with old mono 78-rpm records.

So we now come to current audio recording -- and no one to my knowledge has done the same thing with lesser quality recordings other than getting the original multi-track recording and creating a revised mix.

There just may some pro devices out there that can what Paul asks. Hopefully you don't need "deep pockets" to buy it.

Re: Cleaning up bad recordings with AI?

October 24th, 2020, 11:21 am

The problem would be in the A to D conversion so the data manipulation can take place. Then the D to A conversion back. All this conversion you might be in a worse place than what you began with.
The SweetVinyl SugarCube LP ripper I had did a very good job in not making an analog LP sound into digital hash. The copies were almost indistinguishable from the original. It was different but not really better or worse. I sold the Sugar Cube off because I was just not using it much.
I fount that it was a good idea that just was not worth the effort of the original cost. I actually sold it for what I paid for it.

Re: Cleaning up bad recordings with AI?

October 24th, 2020, 3:48 pm

While it is not an AI based solution, I have had good success using clickrepair https://clickrepair.net/ to clean up some rare recordings on acetates and presto lacquers. The algorithms used are discussed in the user manual.

Re: Cleaning up bad recordings with AI?

October 24th, 2020, 6:30 pm

The SugarCube did a good job with the pop and click stuff. It is what got the company going.
They have lots of products now and they have become pricy. It is why my original unit sold so quickly and at a high price

Re: Cleaning up bad recordings with AI?

October 26th, 2020, 7:04 pm

Just to be clear for future readers, the clickrepair software also features the ability to remove surface noise, hiss and other issues caused by wear and physical damage, although it is a lossy process overall. The click removal portion was the least important component in the restoration, as there are good number of software and hardware solutions that are decently effective. The use of a number of different stylus types and profiles also aided in the process to capture a cleaner source file achieving a better quality, more listenable, product.
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