Restoration
How do you unbake a cake?
How do you fix a bad recording?
Restoration is removing or masking unwanted noises or sounds in recordings, that have been recorded improperly.
It can also be used to separate something from the recording.
Some restoration is part of audio production – such as de-noising, removing certain reverberations or unwanted sounds, like wind and crackling from the original recording.
But that should’ve been taken care of, before baking the cake.
That’s why we use highly specialized recording techniques, work far outside of town and have a purpose-built foley room (anechoic chamber) for such tasks, to ensure the least amount of post-processing.
For podcasts, audio books and videos, restoration is necessary to enhance the fidelity of the original recordings, that might’ve been done in sub-optimal environments, phone microphones and noisy equipment to record or not to record with.
The speech usually needs restoration and cleaning up, to remove unwanted clicks, mouth noises or plosives and ensure consistent dynamic range across the entire speech, to improve intelligibility, particularly if used alongside other audio, like background music or if used as voice-over.
If the process is intended to be used on music with issues more severe than some unwanted noises, check out Restorative Mastering or Restorative Reconstruction.
Pricing
Some things can be completely automated, some things have to be manually edited out.
Some things do not require a perfect restoration, because they will have other sounds on top, while others require precision.
Every case is unique and the price will be calculated by-the-hour.