Audio Repair – Audio Enhancement – Forensic Audio – Surveillance Audio

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After 30 years of work in the audio industry we have developed a number or specialist audio services at ProCopy including the repair, improvement or enhancement of covert or surveillance audio recordings. This is often called Forensic Audio or Audio Enhancement and requires technical as well as artistic skills.

In many situations the recording conditions are not ideal and the audio captured may be compromised in quality, It’s often unlikely that the same recording can be obtained again and therefore we have to work with the quality that is provided to us.

The recordings are often supplied on microcassette minicassette or standard cassette formats with very poor frequency response*. ( Typically only flat in the range of 200Hz to 3KHz* – somewhat similar to an old fashioned phone line) and therefore by the time you add background noise, or a very poor recording environment or poor location selection it’s not hard to understand why extracting a voice for transcription purposes can take a lot of hard work. Another source of recordings that has become very popular is the use of mobile phones - We have more information & tips for better mobile phone recordings here. 

Depending on the type of problems in the audio recording a number of processes can be involved in improving the audio quality, as every recording has different circumstances we always like to assess the work in our edit suite prior to completing quotes.

Some of the problems that we listen for include:

Broadband noise such as tape hiss, a common problem in recordings that are too low on the tape.

Background noise such as motors, air conditioners, wind or traffic noise.

Distortion, caused by too high recording levels, faulty equipment or placing the recording equipment too close to the audio source.

Pops, clicks and crackles caused by faulty equipment leads or interference from other electronic equipment including mobile phones.

Speed changes in the audio caused by flat batteries in the recording equipment, faulty tapes or selection of incorrect recording speeds.

Each of these problems can be reduced and help make the “required audio” much easier to listen to or transcribe to a document. Once the problems have been reduced the audio can be further improved by increasing the overall level, evening out the volume variations or adjusting the tonal quality (e.g. adding bass, mids or treble to make the sound clearer )

If you have any style of audio recording that needs improving, we can repair, restore or improve most audio problems, please don’t hesitate to contact us via phone here, or email to discuss the situation. Absolute discretion and confidentiality is assured. Audio content can also be uploaded directly to our secure ftp media server.

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