Camping

[emmpet8]

For full details about where this excerpt comes from and the background to it, go to "Camping near Lands End 2" in (True Stories).

Just to quickly recap the full recording is a recently discovered old one from cassette. Side A is 45 mins and Side B is 20 mins. It was recorded at too low a level, with lots of wind and background noise, so the original is difficult to hear. When I first listened recently, I thought it was a blank tape. To make it worse the two German girls in the tent were trying to be as quiet as possible, so don't expect too much!

Links to the originals are in the (True Stories) thread, for anyone who wants to try and clean them up. Yeppie has done a great job on translating a bit of the German chat in that thread too. I've now done my best to clean up Side A and below is an excerpt form that attempt. For anyone who has the originals it's from 31.00 mins to 38.30. It does include some stuff that makes it obvious they were getting a bit passionate.

I intend to post a link to my attempt at cleaning up the full Side A when I finally get it uploaded to Hotfile. Then anyone can listen to other parts if having listened to the excerpt, they think it's worth downloading.

Feel free to post any other attempts at cleaning the originals up, or even parts. When I've sorted out the uploading issues with Hotfile I'll start on Side B. I'll also try to enhance the whispering/vocal bits for any linguists out there.

[emmpet8]

I know it hardly comes under the category sex sounds and if there was a category for 'trying as hard as possible not to make sex sounds' I would have posted it there. However, if anyone has listened to the excerpt and wants to download my attempt at cleaning up Side A (45 mins), here are two links.

The first is for a mp3 version (85 MB)

https://hotfile.com/dl/158198766/a949fe ... p3.7z.html

The second is for the much larger (851 MB) wav file.

https://hotfile.com/dl/158198285/c81a93 ... av.7z.html

I will get round to doing side B and there is more whispering/talking on that.

[sonar]

Wich mediaplayer can plays "7z" files?

[aisxos]

7z is a zip format (an archive file). You can unzip it with 7zip .

[sonar]

7z is a zip format (an archive file). You can unzip it with 7zip .

Thanks a lot.

[emmpet8]

7zip was recommended by yeppie, so that's why I used it, but most zip progs will extract them (WinZip, jZip, etc, etc...) Just right click and choose "Extract Here" if you want the original file to open in the folder the zip one is in.

Just a thought. There are plenty of free archiving progs (7zip, jZip, etc... all downloadable for free) so don't pay for any.

[emmpet8]

Just to remind everyone, this was a recording of two German girls in a tent done a long time ago. A mic on an extension was against their tent and I was using a Sony Walkman recorder. The first 45 minutes was on side A of a cassette, I then turned the cassette over to side B and continued recording.

As promised I’ve now cleaned/enhanced Side B as best I can. I can’t make out any obvious sex sounds, so aren’t going to attach any part of it here. However, if anyone does want to listen, here are the links to a wav version (453 MB) and an mp3 version (47 MB).

WAV

https://hotfile.com/dl/158441752/903631 ... av.7z.html

MP3

https://hotfile.com/dl/158439364/6839e2 ... p3.7z.html

If anyone has any explanations for any of the sounds I’d love to hear them. I’d also love to know what they’re saying, although the voices and whispers aren’t easy to hear. Yeppie has already done some great translation, so we know that one girls goes to the loo sometime around 11.00 mins. The last definite sound of the girls I heard for sure was a voice at about 22 mins.

I’m going to be a bit busy over the next few days, but might find time in a few days to work on each separate bit of vocals, to see if I can make them any clearer.

[yeppie]

Thanks emmpet8!!
I didn´t have the chance to listen so far but I probably will tonight.

By the way, the main reason why I recommend 7zip is the option to split archives. You can set the single file size to eg 16mb which is the max allowed attachment size on this server. 7zip will split the files into 16mb parts and rejoin them automatically when unpacking.

[emmpet8]

In case anyone is interested this is how I tried to clean/enhance the original. I've learnt in the past that I can spend ages trying to work out how to do something when editing video and the when I try to repeat it some weeks later I've forgotten. For that reason I decided to keep notes of how I try to do any cleaning work. As this file is the first one I've tried to do anything with for many years I thought it might be an idea to post them. They might be of use and I would be very grateful for any suggestions or corrections to my thinking.

HERE ARE THE NOTES I MADE

I realise now that it wasn’t worth removing peaks, as it takes quite a bit of time and the Hard Limiter does it. If I wasn’t able to use the HL for any recording in future I would remove peaks one at a time. Evening out the amplitude for the three sections done at different recording levels on Side A seemed to work. I did it by increasing the middle first and the lowest last. The order for the rest of the processes I used is as follows.

Hard Limiter

I used -27 dB but think I could have been more drastic as the original recording level is very low. Not sure how to determine best setting for the HL yet.

30 Band EQ

It seemed totally safe to reduce everything to zero from 100 Hz down. I then reduced 125 Hz to -10 dB and left all other frequencies at 0 dB.

For recordings done at a higher level I think it’s possible to be more drastic. In future I intend to remove higher frequencies with the EQ too. That will probably be 16k and above to zero, with 12.5 k at -10 dB and the rest at 0 dB.

My reason for using the EQ at this stage was that I decided there was little point in normalising frequencies I didn’t want. I’m still trying to decide if this was correct thinking and the best place to use the EQ in future.

Normalize

I did it to -6 dB. This was because I intended to increase the amplitude of carefully selected sounds in the Spectral Frequency Display. It meant I could use up to a -6 dB increase without distortion. I actually only used +4.5 dB as a max, but think some space is good.

Hiss Reduction

I did try capturing a noise sample and using the NR process, but didn’t have much success, so went to Hiss Reduction instead. I played with the default setting and saved it as ‘Camp’, but can’t remember what I changed. I must make notes in future. I need to find time to get to grips with the Noise Reduction process.

Spectral Frequency Display

I think this has lots of potential, although it is time consuming. After using it for a while though, I could start to recognise individual sounds from the display before I listened to them. You do have to use quite a lot of zoom for this. This is the part of my process that I would describe as enhancement. It was nice to be able to see a small ‘moan’, highlight it with the marquee tool and give just that sound a little amplitude boost. For the most part I used +3 dB. I saved some time by recording two volume increases (+3 and 4.5 dB) and saving them in favorites. It was then just a mouse click to use the one I wanted, after highlighting a sound. Have a look at SFD on YouTube if it’s new to you, like it was to me.


If anyone has any questions I'll be happy to respond, but I am away for the next few days. Also any comments, tips, suggestions on my process would be gratefully received.

[DrParanoyd]

I can't make anything out ...sorry.

Oh, did I return to the forums and thanked the uploaded? Yes I did!