Mono>Stereo WAV Filtering

[Hariken]

I've had a search around and I couldn't find anything obvious about my query.

What I have is some old VHS tapes that I am capturing to DVD and then ripping to an XviD AVI. The problem is, the VHS tapes are Mono and grainy. I want to filter the audio, making it less muffly and grainy, and convert it to Stereo if possible.

I tried a program called MAGIX Audio Cleaning Studio, but it didn't seem to do much good - that or I wasn't using it correctly.

Can anyone suggest the best way of filtering these WAV files in the way I require? An AVISynth filter would be preferred, but I don't know if they exist for audio filtering.

Thanks to anyone who can help!

[ursamtl]

There's only so much you can do with audio in this condition. One approach that worked for me in the past was to EQ out distorted highs as much as possible and then use an exciter effect to add artificially generated high frequencies. This is not going to work miracles, but it did help to a certain extent. There are some really interesting effect plugins out there that can do this. A couple of good ones are izotope Ozone and BBE Sonic Maximizer. I tried these on projects several years ago and was pleased with the results. I believe they have new versions now that are even more powerful.

[Hariken]

Okay, thanks for your help - I will try those programs/plugins.

[Raziel6969]

Hello,

1. Filter audio, avisynth can do a little, but is far better use an especific audio software like cool edit pro, soundforge (they can use the same plugins to clean the audio); You can take a sample of Noise, and do a Noise Reduction. There are specific audio restoration software: DARTS, Steinberg CLEAN (i did read than DARTS has better results but worst GUI).

2. Convert Mono 2 Stereo, i don't know a good solution, you can always set a effect to 'feel' the audio not in the front (u prefer to use a little gentle effect of pan, delay, echo, reverb). You can test and choice of course.

3. Mastering (dynamics): I left the maximizers to the end, to add volume whithout clipping (like BBE Sonic Maximizer, but i prefer WAVES Ultramaximizer L2). Note: Can level up the volume upping the avg. volume (sound luder than normalize audio :P, no overuse)

Note1:
There are plugins for winamp that do DSP (many effects like, mass, reverb, dynamics, etc) like Izotope, i prefer DEE2 that is freeware and powerfull, you can try and find the better options for you, then use the diskwriter to create a WAV.

Note2:
You can always post in an audio forum like hydrogenaudio.org (is like doom9 to video)

Bye