Years ago I spent months trying th o restore several Quiet Please episodes to a more listenable quality. Now, with the AI revolution it occurred to me that some ai restoration is in order.. I went to explore but didnt get far..
Evidently someone beat me to the task, and its quite amazing. I know what a mess some of the best available copies were and how difficult it was to repair, and that's why I'm so blown away how good these sound.
It's from the Enhanced Radio Classics channel, who's been restoring OTRs:
Hes done about 15 other of the Quiet Please episodes too;
https://m.youtube.com/@enhancedradioclassics
I didn't know about this channel. Thanks Rich - this is great! I've been thinking about starting another AM station, playing mainly vintage shows, so this is a valuable resource.
@rugster I just found out a few hours ago, and thatsvonly because I wanted to try as and find an AI to restore some of the Quiet Please episodes! -- I had no idea about this guys methods, but know from the results that only AI could have accomplished this degree of improvement on some of these poor quality source originals.
I just asked him when he was going tu o do the Cornelia episode, he replied he'd do it next week... oh, that's damn near hilarious.. That confirms AI is the restorer.. I notice on some sections of an episode it suddenly jumps into a few seconds of non-proccessed audio and noise comes in and the volume goes up in order to distinguish what is being said - that's because with processing in those particular sections will destroy whatever dialogue that's there.. so its neccessary to do some hands on work to retain it.. he doesnt do that- which indicates to me that hes not doing any work at all.. but rather pressing a button and coming back when its done.
Hes using one of these new premium AI audio programs which does everything at the touch of a button - or so I suspect..
We're bound to see a massive restoration of a lot of old recordings come back to life for the first time ever before the year is out.
Or so I suspect.
@rugster This is my programming. I have several dramas of OTR in the mix. 2900 episodes of various shows. Airs at 10PM daily and back to back from midnight to 3AM daily.
@mark your profile says your in Afghanistan. What's the part 15 rules like there?
Mine says I'm in Timezone UTC+0
I'm going to have to look up those rules
@rugster Your profile indicates your nowhere at all. You must be an AI.
Took me a minute lol
@richpowers LOL. Thanks for the heads-up. I just updated my profile a little. In the other Part 15 forum that I frequent, I go by my real name (as you know). For some reason, I felt the need to be a bit more anonymous here. My Part 15 installation complies with the spirit of the law, if not exactly with the letter of the law. I used to have delusions of being dragged out of bed at 3am and incarcerated in the micropower broadcasting gulag for not having a transmitter at ground level, with a short ground lead! However, I've lightened up considerably since then. My coverage is nowhere near as consistent and the coverage area much smaller, than other Part 15'ers in the area who I feel fairly sure have strictly compliant installations. I'm not interfering with anybody, and my station has a virtually non-existent public profile. Almost no-one knows I'm here, so no-one cares. (I mean my station - not me. I'm doing fine!) Only 2 people in the neighborhood (that I know of) have ever listened to it, which is OK with me, as I can continue to run it as a vanity project. It also means I don't have to worry too much about the one or two songs on the playlist that I still haven't gotten around to editing the F word out........
Besides, I like the name of Rugster. It is a tribute to my first cat, who died too young. I still think about her quite often.
@rugster It also means I don't have to worry too much about the one or two songs on the playlist that I still haven't gotten around to editing the F word out........
That Mp3cut I mentioned is made for that, or could've been anyway.
@richpowers I wasn't aware that there are audio editing programs available that use AI. I'm really behind with this AI stuff. I use Adobe Audition to do all my editing, and it works well for what I need.
There seems to be a lot of advertising hocus pocus surrounding AI. Remember when headphones used to be marketed as "MP3 ready" or "digital ready"? Of course they were! Headphones didn't care whether your music came from a digital source, or had been converted to an MP3, as long as they were receiving an analog electrical signal!
I don't know much about AI, but those two letters seem to get bandied around a lot these days.
@rugster I'm really behind with this AI stuff. I use Adobe Audition to do all my editing, and it works well for what I need.
Your not behind at all, it just swarmed in. I knew it existed but wasn't really aware of it's free and open utility except for in the past month.
ChatGPT, music creation, summary generations, speech writing, the list goes on, and here is OTR restoration and reconstruction where previous attempts have failed - and within hours instead of months. Quite incredible.
I wouldn't stop using Adobe Audition or Audacity or Stereo Tool or whatever we're using now. And there's also an ai toolbox sitting on the desk.
I asked what he was using to restore these otrs, he replied "I use CapCap mostly".
CapCut?
A google search reveals it a video editor which so happens to have an excellent background noise remover. I'm not believing this. What about the chirps and pops and dialoge entirely lost in noise.. No way it handles all that. It just cant be.
However CapCut does seem pretty capable, as this guy (who so happens to live on a boat too) demonstrates, beginning at about 8 minutes into this video;