Audio sessions?

[Questioner]

Questioner,
You pretty much ran down the same list I did in terms of trying to clean up the audio. I have a pretty extensive VST library, which includes some noise canceling plug-ins. Since analog tapes are one of the noisiest mediums to clean up audio from, the methods you described are great in theory, but have some crazy side effects when tweaking them.

I won't quote the whole post but I did find it all interesting.

I've also tried playing with plugins to clean up bad audio and found the same problems with artifacts. In particular, overdoing the noise removal made speech sound like chipmunks gargling underwater. And I found the same problem with gates. After a certain point, it's like how opening and closing the doors all the time is more distracting than just living with the breeze.

SoundSoap is new to me. From your description, that batch noise reduction feature will give you a quick way to get much better sound quality.

I don't have the reference right now but a few months ago NPR had a mention of some audio archivist, maybe at the Library of Congress, who was able to discover the speed variations of analog tapes and correct for the wow and flutter. This made old concert recordings really come to life once the wandering overtones got straightened out. I don't think it would make much difference with speech, though.

I'd guess that these days, sessions would be recorded into a computer and also into a standalone digital recorder?