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Comment by drcongo | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one who thinks the original sounds considerably better and clearer than the processed one?

No, I agree. There’s an impressive level of theory on display here, and I admire the passion, analysis, creativity, and follow-through. The end product matters less than the journey, but I agree with you that it’s missing the discernment of a human ear practiced in this kind of work.

Maximizing for signal-to-noise ratio sacrifices the integrity of the voice, with that telltale “underwater gurgle” quality to what’s left of it.

Yeah agreed. The originals sound warm, the cleanups sound cold and echoey.

That said, I love a good applied math write up. That we can also evaluate the result using human perception just helps keep us honest

This is good feedback. I've become accustomed to listening to heavily processed audio for voice communication. So maybe I find it easier to listen to the processed audio? It was fun and a small learning experience for me to do this either way.

I should have said that I thoroughly enjoyed the writeup by the way. The end result has a tinge of the kind of artefacts that you get with stem separation to separate vocals from music, I might try putting the original through Brusfri later to see how it does - https://klevgrand.com/products/brusfri

Thanks. Part of the goal was to apply some signal processing stuff I learned. The other hope was someone who knows more about audio preservation than I do would get access to an extant B-58 and see if they could produce better quality recordings of this. It is a unique part of history we take for granted today I think.

Yeah. I love this kind of stuff and appreciate everything the author has done but I think much better is possible.

The same thing happens in photography: noise removal software removes the static but also causes the photo to lose detail. The human brain is exceptionally skilled at seeing and hearing through noise.

It's kind of tragic when the guy doing this so passionately with so much technical knowledge can't hear past his own level of taste.

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