Aural exciter, harmonic generator

Friends,
 
Had a charity project laid in me and willing to spend the time. Worthy cause and need some advice how to proceed forward with the task.
 
Beautiful treasury from India from as far back as the 1960's.  Washed in the blood, howling recordings of blessed devotees flailing away on the cusp of liberation.
 
These are both on quarter track reel to reel, and severely deteriorated cassette.
 
Got them transcribed to wav files. Noise properly analyzed and removed with Adobe Audition.
 
The sound so dull after taking the noise out.
 
Not making any money on this, so looking for free harmonic exciters to throw some artificial hi's into the remaster. Had one program in the ancient past, but can't find anything currently.
 
Any advice appreciated.
 
John
 
 

JohnKenn
Friends,
 
Had a charity project laid in me and willing to spend the time. Worthy cause and need some advice how to proceed forward with the task.
 
Beautiful treasury from India from as far back as the 1960's.  Washed in the blood, howling recordings of blessed devotees flailing away on the cusp of liberation.
 
These are both on quarter track reel to reel, and severely deteriorated cassette.
 
Got them transcribed to wav files. Noise properly analyzed and removed with Adobe Audition.
 
The sound so dull after taking the noise out.
 
Not making any money on this, so looking for free harmonic exciters to throw some artificial hi's into the remaster. Had one program in the ancient past, but can't find anything currently.
 
Any advice appreciated.
 
John
 
 

Slate Revival might help....it's free and it's nice...but it requires the dreaded iLok...

Thanks guys,
 
Ozone keeps coming up, and thanks Larry for the links.
 
Was some program from the past. Was freeware and allowed a parametric exciter merged into the eq function. Most of the freebies have a set frequency. Maybe just hallucinating.
 
Got to get these heathens saved and washed in the blood. Some of the material not bad considering it is over 50 years old and recorded with the worst mics and cassette tape recorders of the era.
 
John

Bit,
 
Appreciate your offer and will take you up on it.
 
The most challenging pieces in the archive are recorded discourses from a Shrii Anandamurti, great yoga master of the last century. The recordings were from India using the technology (or lack of) from the late 1960's. Substandard mic, budget cassette and tape deterioration over the years.
 
Off to Salem for a fun day of the wife's dental surgery. Will send a clip soon as I get back.
Still can't remember what the free exciter was I used years ago on some restoration project. Worked well and had a parametric type layout. Everything seems to point to Ozone currently.
 
Many thanks,
John

Hmmm...
 
Should record a clip from the dentist... Where's all the Icrap when I need it.
 
Don't think it was BBE but will look. Was a freebie, but come to think of it, I might already have BBE.
 
Thanks,
John

+1 on Cosmos

So it's mostly speech? If so, that should simplify things somewhat. Send me a PM and I'll give you my email address.

Ozone isn't free. Neither are the products I suggested, but they are cheap. Variety of sound makes several that are free if the OP doesn't mind 32bit. There is also the Sizzle bus that Craig Anderton made for Sonar.

I have the Waves Aural Exciter, sounds great as long as you don't push the dial past 3 or 4.  But there is no option to confine the excitement to a particular frequency band and I have no idea where exactly it's doing the exciting. 

Bit,
Sent you a clip, and appreciate your time.
 
A bit off topic here, but gaining some "good karma" from accepting this free volunteer project to restore old cassettes.
 
The music is neat, some not so neat, but the discourses are cold sobering.
Sometimes garbled and bad quality cassette recordings of Shrii Anandamurti.
Some claim that he was the greatest yoga master to have touched down on the planet.
 
I got a western mind and consider myself to be borderline scientific. Yoga and everything about it has always been cloaked in vague mysticism, vibes and energy fields. These discourses and writings are the closest we have come to putting a rational stamp of science upon the discipline.
 
Just for interest, those taking a walk on the heathen side, this Master founded an organization they call Ananda Marga. Outrageous idea is to help humans at our level of evolution to escape the death exterience, to get out of life alive, which they claim is the reason we are here to begin with. Just that we got off on the banana boat too early to get the experience without radical intervention. All their instruction is free and no strings.
 
Much worth a web search. The material I have downloaded and am looking at is like a lifetime exploration. Better late than never.
 
Anyway, back to the restoration. Getting some good results from Bootsy's ThrillSeekerXTC. This plug does have two sweeps to focus on areas needing harmonic enhancement, and does so without the overkill of some other freebies I've tried.
 
John

Glad it worked out, John. I intentionally did not get fancy with the treatment, so that if it worked out it'd be easily repeatable. For example, I did not use MDynamicEQ, which would normally be my first choice. I would also be inclined to try MAutoVolume for leveling. But I only used Ozone. I did, however, employ four of its modules:
 
EQ: -6dB at 660Hz, wide; +8dB at 4KHz, moderately wide
Limiter: "fast and loud" setting with a high threshold, for peak control
Multiband: 2:1 compression in lower mids, gating on upper mids for noise reduction
Exciter: Tube mode, small amount 400-1.8KHz, much stronger above 1.8K
 
I've saved it as a preset, but because I am using Ozone 4 I don't know if the preset would be readable by Ozone 7. 
 
I also experimented with Alloy, mainly because I haven't had it long and I'm trying it on EVERYTHING. It didn't do too bad, but I couldn't match the results I got with Ozone. It's possible that if I'd had as many hours under my belt with Alloy as I do for Ozone, that Alloy might work just as well for this purpose.

It worked, not because of any special skill on my part, but rather because the clip you gave me had a nice isolated noise sample at the front of it. That's the key to transparent noise reduction.