Which voice amplification program?

[dariuszpindela]

What program can to make someone's recorded voice louder when that person's voice is damaged? When someone smokes a lot of cigarettes and drinks a lot of alcohol for many years, they have a voice without bass and I can hear them as if they were talking only with air. Simply turning the volume up with MP3Gain, for example, doesn't do much and after turning the volume up the volume is still very weak and there is a crackling sound (it always happens no matter sound what I use when the volume level is too high).

Do sound programs have a function for adding bass and normal tone to a weak and damaged voice to make it sound like the voice of a healthy person? It was this type of loudness that worked the most.

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit

[Andrew_C]

You can't add something to a recording that isn't there.

 

You might be able to reduce unwanted frequencies, leaving the parts you do want cleaner.

 

Audacity is free; Adobe Audition is v powerful, but not free.

[dhicks]

What program can to make someone's recorded voice louder when that person's voice is damaged?

 

If this is a teacher in front of a class, then a voice amplification system like Lightspeed might be the solution:

 

https://lightspeed-tek.com/

 

If re-recording the material isn't an option, then possibly one of the snazzy new AI-based voice cloning systems might be worth a try - OpenVoice can supposidly re-create a voice with a few seconds of original source material to work on:

 

https://huggingface.co/myshell-ai/OpenVoice

[Chris_Cook]

If its an audio file, then there are a number of tools you can use, but they might be called different things in different audio editors. Audacity could help, Reaper and Adobe Audition are also good.

 

I'd start with a parametric EQ, boost somewhere between 500 Hz and 1.5 KHz. Possibly a cut above 2.5 KHz if it sounds too harsh. Be careful not to over do the boost in case it goes into clipping.

 

Then you could try a compressor to bring up the quieter bits. A multiband compressor might be better if there is one. Probably set quite a fast attack and release time. I quite like multiband compressors for this kind of thing.

 

If there is sibilance, then a de-esser can help clear things up.

 

If you get a chance to re-record them in the future, then make sure you use a good mic (preferably a dynamic one like an SM57 or SM58) and get it close as possible with a pop shield. This should improve the sound. Depending on your sound mixer/pre-amp, you might be able to apply some of the above suggestions as well.

 

Its probably never going to sound great, but if you work in the 1-2 KHz frequencies, then you can improve the intelligibility of it at least. You might find however that you just end up boosting the background noise which there might not be much you can do about;