Audio quality makes all the difference

[Andrew Smith]

Couldn't help but notice that you can have a VHS quality 4:3 picture from back in 1995, but the video is easily watchable due to the beautifully clear audio and the powers of VHS' later Hi-Fi audio encoding on the tape. (As we all know, having terrible audio can make the best of videos painful to watch.)

Here's a recently resurrected and digitised Windows 95 launch from back in the day when it was really exciting to finally get long file names.

Microsoft Windows 95 Launch with Bill Gates & Jay Leno (1995) - YouTube

Andrew

[John Murphy]

When I’m trying to stress the importance of audio to people I ask them to do this little test.
Turn on a video of say, a symphony playing classical music. Turn off the video for 60 seconds. Return to normal viewing. Now turn off the audio for 60 seconds. Which experience was better for you?
It’s usually a pretty simple answer as to which is more compelling on its own.
The common saying is that audio is 50 percent of any video, I’d say more like 60 percent. j

[Boyd Ostroff]

Funny, I posted this elsewhere but it's also relevant here. I recently watched "Revenge of the Nerds" which is a fascinating documentary about personal computers from 1996. It also includes footage from the Windows 95 launch.

But perhaps the most interesting thing is the ESRGAN AI that was used to convert the old VHS video to HD. I have always been very skeptical about this kind of thing... but wow! It's unbelievable what they have done with this video. I wonder, is there also AI software to enhance low quality audio this way? No doubt it's coming if it doesn't already exist.

YouTube (Short URL)

[Rick Reineke]

iZotope's RX Advanced and Steinberg's SpectraLayers Pro can effectively remove noises and such that was previously not possible, but if the audio was poorly recorded, it is still just polishing a turd.

[Boyd Ostroff]

I always assumed as much, but now it appears that AI-based software can go much farther by actually manufacturing details based on "training" with similar images. Seems like that would be even easier to do with audio than video. Through training, the software could learn what a good recording should sound like and how a bad recording of that same material is degraded. Then it could apply that knowledge to your own bad recording. It might not sound like the original, but it would still sound like a high quality recording to somebody who wasn't familiar with the original.

Watch the video in my link and then watch some of the other versions on Youtube that have not been enhanced, it's pretty remarkable. Some interesting examples of images that were enhanced with the same software here: https://www.resetera.com/threads/ai-...ourself.88272/

[Jase Tanner]

I've had some degree of success using this:

https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enha...EaAkKoEALw_wcB

Not sure I'd pay full price for it but IIRC I paid half of the regular and there is a watermarked demo

[Andrew Smith]

I'm thinking that any overt mp3 audio compression squelching noises will always be there and near impossible to work out what they used to be. But f anyone can do it, it's the people at Izotope. They've already got an audio recovery tool added in their latest version of RX.

https://www.izotope.com/en/products/...-recovery.html

It's amazing stuff they can do these days.

Andrew

[Allan Black]

Just before large industrial video screens became available, multiscreen audio visual programs were in vogue. The company I worked for bought 20 Electrosonic 2001 units, each controlling 2 Kodak slide projectors on one screen.

We started with 3 screen 6 projector shows with a stereo soundtrack, building up to 15 screens with 30 projectors. These were 45 minute shows, introducing new model Ford cars to the dealers around Australia. The big budgets included original orchestral music with a quadrophonic soundtrack and a crew of 8 of us flew all the gear plus 2 new Ford models in a Bristol Freighter around the country. The Freighter came from Queensland flying cattle around the state. The young red headed pilot had never flown below the Qld. border before and we nicknamed him Biggles. I remember flying up the Murray River between the trees, with Biggles with an NRMA road map on his lap looking for the steeple on the Shepparton Town Hall, the airport was just on the other side.

As well as shows for other clients we did 2 big Ford shows a year and I was able to demonstrate the benefit of good sound. I’d already worked in radio and TV audio but I learnt big time with these quad. soundtracks on 2 x 24 track 2” tape Otari recorders mixed down to an 8 track 1” tape Ampex recorder. The big advantage was, on site these quad. sound tracks never went through any broadcast chain, no final limiting or compression. So I could meter the narration to about -10db and the big music breaks to +1, and with powerful Meyer amps. and 4 speakers on site turn the whole track up, and that certainly demonstrated the sound. Our Ford contacts were literally speechless.

For the last shows, at night we lowered the new Ford from a chopper with searchlights on it and blazing music, into the Sydney cricket ground. I saw about 2000 Ford dealers standing up cheering and throwing their hats in the air, after seeing the new model they’ll get to sell next year. They were the days, nearly killed us but we were all young.

Cheers.

[Andrew Smith]

I have some very vague memories of being able to image your computer graphics to 35mm slides, and it was a matter of whether you were going to have it output at 1000 lines of resolution or greater. (Not sure of the exact number as this was back in the 1990s I think.)

I had <u>so</u> forgotten all of that.

Andrew

[Allan Black]

Yes it was the nineties Andrew, multiscreen audio visual 35mm slide programs still appear in museums, mainly because they still do their job and it’s too costly to replace them with a video program and video equipment, that would do the same job.

With my company I remember quoting on producing a/vs for Sydney museums and we got most of them mainly because of my reputation doing the those big Ford a/v shows when I was with the previous company. At the time the chance we took was not lowering our price to match the competition, then of course we had to deliver. I remember convincing the Australian Museum in Sydney into upgrading their main rooms audio system just in time for our ‘whale exhibition’ and I spec’d some huge bass reflex speakers.

With their lighting expert we flooded the whole room in deep sea blue lighting with slides of waving seaweed and lines of air bubbles going up the walls. For the audio, I got different size tubs filled with water and with various rubber tubes blew bubbles and recorded them. By vary speeding these and playing them into the room, visitors got the impression they were deep in the ocean, especially when they heard various whale sounds from the new audio system around the room. The bubbles from the big bass speakers went baaalooop! baaalooop! It worked very well, word got around the museum was always full and some schools paid a second visit.

The audio quality made all the difference, you just can’t beat it.
Cheers.

[Allan Black]

Someone reminded me, the Aust. Museum commissioned 2 realistic looking 1/2 scale synthetic wales made, positioned in the centre of the room. Each was on a thin pole on a hidden turntable and they slowly turned and rocked back and forwards during the day.

I saw them being made and asked the constructors whether one whale could open his mouth wide at various times and I could position a speaker back in his throat. They liked that idea but didn’t have the budget, visiting school kids would love it, we were going to pay for it but our accountant talked me out of it.
Cheers.

[Allan Black]

Memories. For the country Ford shows, dealers come from all the surrounding districts to see the show, and the new models they’d be selling next year.

When we land at Shepparton airfield, Biggles taxies near the airport buildings and stops. As we alight the airport control manager drives up to our Bristol Freighter, he’d never seen one before and asks us “What have you got inside?” We answer “Two new Ford cars” “Huh mmm Ok” and he flips through the pages of his Airport Control Rules. He says “Is there any petrol in the cars and are the batteries disconnected?”

“All ok” we answer. “Good” he says and drives off. Biggles opens the big front doors of the Freighter, pulls the ramp down and we drive one car after the other over to the airport gate. The manager holds it open for us to drive through to the local community hall where the show is going to be.

That’s how it works for the country shows.
Cheers.

[David Peterson]

Originally Posted by Rick Reineke

iZotope's RX Advanced and Steinberg's SpectraLayers Pro can effectively remove noises and such that was previously not possible, but if the audio was poorly recorded, it is still just polishing a turd.

Cedar is also very powerful, and a popular "industry standard" used by professionals.

https://www.cedar-audio.com/index.shtml