Hi,

If the audio was recorded at too high a level what you are calling distortion is actually clipping.  Clipping can be minimized and the audio can be made to sound much better, but cannot be totally eliminated.  Audio Cleaning Lab is really designed to improve audio tracks that are not ideal, not audio that is basically totally over driven to the point of severe clipping.  There are other tools out there such  as Audacity that can do really wonderful things with these situations if you care to take the time to learn how to use them.

If you care to learn more about this, please send me a private message with your email.

Good Luck,

Technically, the cause may be clipping, but the effect is audible distortion of the audio (sound).  So, we're all correct.

I find it difficult to believe that there's any program that can reverse this entirely.  It's like trying to "burn" an under-exposed photograph....you can't expose what isn't there to begin with.

@Procyon,

I was not trying to challenge your knowledge or experience.  I was simply trying to point out that sofware such as Audacity can in fact minimize clipping to the point where the audio does become something that can actually be listened to.  It can also minimize other forms of "distortion".  There is also software available that will actually analyze "distortion" including clipping, look at the audio where there was no distortion both before and after, and then fill in the audio at the appropriate level to smooth out the audio track.  Is it expensive yes, but it can be done.

George

Not a problem.  I was just debating technicalities.

I do not profess to know everything, and in fact I know I don't.  Anytime you want to enlighten me, it is most welcome.  How else am I supposed to learn anything? 

Apparently, Audacity isn't the answer.  Are there people who would be willing to listen to the first 46 seconds of the book and then give me their recommendations?

Hi Barry,

This can definitely be fixed with audacity,  I left you a private message with my email. Please send this clip to me and I will fix and return.

HI Barry,

I recorded your 46 s clip as a WAV, imported it into MEP MX, duplicated it half a dozen times, and tried out varioius effects and filters.

There was arguably some minor improvement when I cut down the bass, but the bottom line was as expected. The familiar GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) principle prevails. Just looking at the waveform confirms that removal of that clipping is never going to be satisfactory.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

@ terry, were you recording directly from your sound card when you created the recording or did you play the audio and capture through your PC microphone.  That was the first thing I did with it which clearly showed that the audio level instead of clipping was at too low a level.  That is why I hoped to have a look at a copy of the clip from the original file. 

Barry, how was this originally recorded, was it played on a PC and use one of the PC based recording applications, or is it a copy of the original ebook?

Unfortunately, I know nothing about how the recording was made.  My son downloaded this from an online site, along with the previous book in the series.  They were both posted by the same person on the site, and I assume that they were copies of the original audiobooks.  The quality of the other book was fine, yet this one was obviously recorded with the input set too high.  The file was named HyCaBk4 (Hyperion Cantos Book 4, I assume it means).  I have no other information to offer, other than the size of the file is 846MB.  Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help.

Hi Barry,

Thank you for sending me the file.  So, when I analyzed the wave form, the speaking part actually looks pretty good.  But to me there is some modulation around the speech that looks like it was recorded with a microphone that was placed too close to a speaker, or a laptop or pc internal microphone that was either over driven or not working properly. 

That is why I asked how this was originally recorded.

Here is a clip that I tried to improve using one of the Magix audio products. Let's see if it sounds better.  If this is on the right track, it can still be improved.

Some of the distortion seems to be gone, though it is hard for me to tell for sure.  What types of filters are you using?

Here are the settings I used.  They can still be adjuster to get it better, but I agree with terrypin, there is something wrong with the original recording that is going to be very hard to fix. But it seems like we are getting closer to making it more useable.