[App_rpt-users] Recording tail messages

[Bryan D. Boyle]

The audio quality over a 5kc bandwidth-limited repeater at an 8 kc sampling rate is never going to sound like a broadcast FM station (most of them sound like crap anyway), especially if you are using a pc microphone on a $20 headset you'd use for skype or echolink.

You have to start with high quality audio and downsample; going the other way isn't going to get you what you want.  

The Allison files included with the release are only 8kc samples. And they sound fine.  As does William, etc. if you've paid the license fee to cepstral. 

So, what are you looking for?  Loudness or clarity?  Loudness you can fix with Audacity; clarity (or fidelity) can't be created in an 8kc sample rate unless it was there to begin with; IOW you can't put in what wasn't there from the start, and current PC-grade mics are not the way to go, neither is starting from mp3 files or other lossy codecs.

Maybe I'm lucky in that I have a recording studio and pro audio equipment at my disposal, as well as contacts with pro radio and TV voice artists...but I've heard great amateur announcements done with simple mixers and a decent Heil or Electro Voice mic, recorded into a wav file, edited, then downsampled to work in Allstar as per the directions in the archive.

But, the beginning HAS to start with the best quality and go down from there, not start with low quality and try and go up. 

--
Bryan
Sent from my iPhone 6S...No electrons were harmed in the sending of this message.



> On Jan 18, 2016, at 10:16, Robert Newberry <N1XBM at amsat.org> wrote:
> 
> I followed the directions on ohnosec for using audacity for recording audio files. I use them as tail messages and that works fine. The audio quality however is eh so-so and I feel it could be better. I know one thing the normalize feature called for -6 and I ended up bumping it to 0 db just so it could be more audible.
> 
> Is there anyone willing to share their experiences? It seems from listening to traffic on allstar the quality of messages could be better.
> 
> N1XBM
> Apparare Scientor
> Paratus Communicare
> Allstar Node # 27086, 41540, 41812, 42086, 42658
>    
> 
> N1XBM
> Apparare Scientor
> Paratus Communicare
> Allstar Node # 27086, 41540, 41812, 42086, 42658
>    
> 
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