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yarg28

I'm really frustrated with this process. I'm recording some phone system audio and the customer wants u-law format which is 8khz, 8bit, mono.

I recorded in my default format and tried to save as u-law in Audition which all works fine; except the resulting file sounds pretty awful. It has a ton of hiss.

I googled it and found a few articles trying to explain how to deal with the issue but none of them were very helpful.

Anybody have success getting u-law files to sound good?!

Really struggling with this.

Thanks

Gary

Matto · Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2015 1:05 pm Post subject:

Hey Gary,
My understanding is that the u-law conversion in TwistedWave works pretty well. I haven't used it for a while as most of the telephony I do is delivered in standard WAV format.

If you want to send me a file or two I can run them through my software and see if it makes a difference. We might be able to figure out what is different in the process.

Someone who has more experience with this might be able to jump in, but I'm happy to help in the meantime.

Send 'em to matt at downundervoiceovers dot com

Cheers
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todd ellis · Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2015 2:06 pm Post subject:

hi gary - i use audition to make that same conversion. it will sound like TOTAL CRAP to you because it is such a low res format --- but it will sound perfectly fine coming out of their KSU.

i know it's extremely counterintuitive to send out a file you think sounds like poop --- but that's just the way it is.

yeah - and - if you want to send me a sample uncompressed .wav - i'll make the conversion here - send it back & you can compare the two.
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Deirdre · Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2015 2:25 pm Post subject:

Pro Tools does not make this conversion— how about that. So when I need to make teeny weeny files, I use Audacity.
Sound a lot better for me to do it than for my clients to try and do it.
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yarg28 · Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2015 2:31 pm Post subject:

thanks for the replies and the offers to help with files. I really appreciate it.

I actually think I found a way to make them much better. Going to let the customer upload the standard ulaw conversion and one of my monkeyed with versions to see how they sound.

And yes, it feels so strange to fight to get something to sound perfect and then destroy it with encoding!

If I have any issues I may take you guys up on the file help.

I'll let you know how it all turns out. If my monkey business helps i'll post a couple files to compare and I can maybe walk through what I did to help it out in case any of you deal with this format in the future.

Thanks again.

Gary

ConnieTerwilliger · Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2015 3:45 pm Post subject:

Whatever you do, do NOT downsample to 8 Bit. Let the Save As mu-Law program do that for you.

You can downsample to 8K if you want, but it is the lower bit rate that really brings in the hiss.
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Mike Harrison · Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2015 5:11 pm Post subject:

I don't know; I'm asking: Is this one of those times when it's best to record at what will be the final specs? Would that not eliminate any down-sampling/conversion shmootz?
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yarg28 · Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2015 6:00 pm Post subject:

Connie, by downsampling, do you mean recording the file in 8bit, 8khz to begin with? I did try that before your post and it was horrible even before I tried to convert it to u-law. Sounded about identical to the u-law file. It seems like your assessment that the 8bit is the root of the hiss is correct.

Mike, I be;ieve that is what Connie was saying (unless i misinterpreted) is ineffective. And as mentioned above, i tried that and it was flames.

Deirdre · Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 5:53 am Post subject:

Yeah, Connie is saying to let the program that makes it a mu-Law file do the compression.
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ConnieTerwilliger · Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 10:18 am Post subject:

Record in 44.1/16 bit (at least) and then either let the software do the conversion to 8K/8 bit (Vox Studio can do this - it is a program designed specifically for telephony - $500 Belgium). OR downsample to 8K/16 bit and then let the software do the final compression to 8 bit.

Do NOT record in 8K/8 bit.
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yarg28 · Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 12:20 pm Post subject:

so, interesting; I kept digging into this and I ended up downloading Audacity to convert my original wav files. Simple 3-4 step process and the files sounded amazing compared to the Audition encoded files. No hissing at all and better than I'd have expected for something squashed so much.

No idea why Audition had an issue but Audacity worked great.

Thanks for all of the help and offers to help.

Gary

ConnieTerwilliger · Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 12:26 pm Post subject:

I use Audition and it does fine saving the 8K/16 bit file as an 8K/8 bit mu-law file. AA3 is not as good to my ears as AA1 used to be. But still OK.

But you can't beat Vox Studio for clean conversions to the telephony format. I would suggest getting it IF you do a LOT of telephony that requires converting and saving mass quantities of files, as well as adding silence to the beginning and end and normalizing in a batch.
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Mandy Nelson · Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 4:52 pm Post subject:

We use Sony Sound Forge here and the results are great. Plus, as Connie points out for the other software, you can do all kinds of normalizing, renaming, adding silence, etc. There was a time when we used to record in 8k b/c it wasn't ever going to be needed at a higher bit rate. There was also a time we would splice tape with a blade so...
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vkuehn · Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 6:23 pm Post subject:

Does Audition have the ability to save a file in a u-law format? I thought I had done it once months or a couple of years ago just to see what it was all about and what would it sound like. I have Audition 2, 3, and the current CC2015 version and I see I can save as WAV at 8k, 8bit, but I don't see the ability to create a u-law specific file.

I did one 8/8 wav last night as an experiment that I thought sounded amazingly good under the circumstances, I went back for a second dip and all I create was a bunch of.... .... a bunch of goat-droppings!

yarg28 · Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 6:47 pm Post subject:

Yes, you can "save as" and also export as u-law in the current version of audition cc.

I may post a few files the next day or so since I recorded in Adobe and then tried to convert it on two different pc and it was a disaster. Then audacity was simple and good quality.