Trying out Adobe Podcast, and wow!

Everything except LibriVox (yes, this is where knitting gets discussed. Now includes non-LV Volunteers Wanted projects)
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JorWat
Posts: 1681
Joined: February 16th, 2009, 10:20 am
Location: Oxfordshire, England

Post by JorWat »

I found out about Adobe Podcast and its 'Enhance Speech' function today, and thought it would perfect for LibriVox. Just did a quick search, and found very little mention of it on these forums (one mention of how it could be used to remove echoes in a recording, and one mention of someone using it for their 1-minute test), so I thought I'd bring it up.

I decided to test it with a recording I did for LibriVox a while back. Here's the same comparison in two different ways. Firstly, starting with the original low quality recording cross-fading into the enhanced recording:
https://librivox.org/uploads/xx-nonproject/JorWat_Adobe_Podcast_Test.mp3

And secondly by cutting between the old and new versions every three seconds:
https://librivox.org/uploads/xx-nonproject/JorWat_Adobe_Podcast_Test_2.mp3

The difference is astounding. Wish this was a thing when I did my earlier recordings...
Jordan

Alcohol and Maths don't mix. So never drink and derive.
ChuckSTL
Posts: 125
Joined: December 8th, 2022, 10:04 pm
Location: St. Louis, MO, USA
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Post by ChuckSTL »

Thanks for the info! I tried it out on a recent recording and it does, indeed, seem to sound better overall. It looks like their AI does a compression/normalization routine that's better than the one the comes with Audacity or (my app of choice) SoundStudio. It also cuts down on "room tone" and other eccentricities. The only thing I don't like is that it's a bit too manic about closing up silences. Sometimes you need a slight pause for emphasis. Still worth thinking about, especially for the voice tracks I record for KDHX.
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Chuck Lavazzi
Senior Performing Arts Critic, 88.1 KDHX
Member, Music Critics Association of North America and St. Louis Theater Circle
http://www.stageleft.org
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