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Audio restoration

Audio restoration and repair. Send the file, get an honest answer.

Noise, hum, hiss, clipping, room echo, and damaged archival recordings. Send a file for a free assessment before committing to anything. Remote clients anywhere.

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Noise removal and audio repair

Spectral repair on irreplaceable material: performances, interviews, location dialogue, old tapes. To remove background noise properly you have to identify what the noise actually is first, so source files are never overwritten and every pass is reversible.

  • Broadband noise, hiss, and tape noise
  • 60-cycle hum, ground buzz, and electrical interference
  • HVAC, traffic, refrigerator, and air handling rumble
  • Clicks, pops, crackle, and vinyl surface noise
  • Digital clipping, overload distortion, and declipping
  • Excessive room reverb and boxy small-room resonance
  • Microphone bleed between sources
  • Sibilance, plosives, lip smack, and mouth noise
  • Dropouts, gaps, and damaged sections
  • Wow, flutter, and speed problems on tape transfers
  • Codec artifacts on low-bitrate MP3 and video audio

Who sends work here

Artists with a great take sitting under a noise floor. Podcasters with a remote guest who recorded in a difficult room. Documentary and video editors with location dialogue that has to be usable. Families digitizing a parent's tapes. Researchers with field recordings. Institutions with archives that have been on a shelf since the eighties.

Free assessment, no obligation

Send the file and you get back a written breakdown: what is wrong with it, what can be improved, what genuinely cannot be recovered, and what the fix would cost. If it is not worth repairing, you will be told that plainly.

Send a file

How restoration works

Assessment
Free
Restoration
Scoped after assessment
Archive and bulk work
Hours estimated up front
Turnaround
Agreed before work starts

What to send

The highest quality file you have, not a re-export or a version that has already been processed. A WAV beats an MP3, and the original beats a copy that has been through anything else. If all you have is the compressed version, send it anyway and say so.

Common questions

Questions about audio repair.

Can you actually fix a bad recording, or is that a myth?
Some of it, genuinely. Steady noise, hum, hiss, clicks, clipping, and a lot of room problems respond very well. What cannot be recovered is information that was never captured, such as a source buried entirely under a louder one or content lost to severe digital clipping. You get told which category your file is in before you pay anything.
What kinds of problems can be repaired?
Broadband noise and hiss, 60-cycle hum and electrical buzz, HVAC and traffic rumble, clicks and pops, digital clipping and distortion, sibilance, plosives, mouth noise, excessive room reverb, microphone bleed between sources, dropouts, wow and flutter on tape transfers, and codec artifacts on compressed files.
What is the free assessment?
Send the file. You get back a written explanation of what is wrong with it, what can be improved, what cannot, and what it will cost, at no charge and with no obligation. If the honest answer is that the file is not worth repairing, that is what you will be told.
Do you restore old tapes, vinyl, and archival recordings?
Yes. Digitized cassette, reel-to-reel, DAT, MiniDisc, vinyl transfers, voicemail recordings, old camcorder audio, and family archives are all regular work. If it is already digitized, send the file. If it is not, say what format it is on.
Can you clean up dialogue for video, film, or a legal recording?
Yes. Dialogue cleanup for video, documentary, and interview footage is common here, including material recorded on camera mics in bad rooms. Note that restored audio for legal or evidentiary use should be discussed up front so the process and any limitations are documented properly.
How is restoration priced?
Quoted against a defined scope after the free assessment, so it is not an open-ended ticket. Rates are on the rates page.

Send the file.

Free assessment, honest answer, no obligation.

Start a project See rates