Hiss is lowered.
Steady hiss gets Full-band speech cleanup, a speech model that keeps the voice's full range and lowers what surrounds it.
SOLIPSIUM Super-resolution audio engine
Audio restoration
Restore an old recording of a voice.
Drop an old recording and Solipsium names what is wrong, such as hiss or hum, then repairs 20 seconds for you to hear.
Drop an old recording here
Solipsium checks it in your browser for clipping, hum and noise, without uploading it. It can then repair 20 seconds for you to hear, with no account.
WAV, MP3, M4A, MP4 and more, up to five minutes for the check.
What Solipsium hears
Solipsium can still try a repair on 20 seconds.
Your 20 seconds, before and after
Drop the same file in the editor with a free account.
What it is
Built for voices.
Solipsium repairs noisy or damaged recordings, such as an interview on cassette or a spoken-word record.
Make a file from the tape or record.
Play the tape or the record into a computer and save it as a WAV. Set the level on the loudest passage, so the transfer never reaches full scale.
The check names what it hears.
In your browser, it names background noise, mains hum, clipping, dropouts and muffled sound, with their times. Your file is not uploaded for it.
The try repairs 20 seconds.
Solipsium's server repairs those 20 seconds, looks for crackle as well, and lists a reason for each step. Then switch between Original and Repaired as they play.
The editor repairs the rest.
With a free account, the editor takes up to 30 minutes and 1 GB at a time and keeps your original beside each repair.
How it is repaired
Each problem is measured first.
Suggested repair treats what it finds in a set order: dropouts, clipping, crackle and hum, then at most one cleanup, and low rumble last.
Hum is notched out.
Hum from an old deck or a lamp sits at 50 or 60 Hz, with harmonics above it. Solipsium notches them out in bands a few hertz wide, and only where the hum is when it comes and goes.
Crackle is redrawn.
When ticks keep coming through the pauses, as on a worn record, the try redraws each one and lists the reason: “Clicks and crackle were found, in the pauses too, so each click is redrawn from the sound around it and the rest is untouched.”
Clipped peaks are partly raised back.
Flattened peaks are partly raised back from the undamaged samples around them, never more than 2.3 dB over the clip level.
Tape dropouts stay.
A dropout on tape is a dip in level with sound still in it, and the gap filler leaves it. Only holes of digital silence up to 100 ms are filled.
Questions
Where it stops.
Will it restore a song, or a record of music?
It does less there. Solipsium's free try is built for speech. Crackle in dense music can go unlabelled, because the label needs quiet moments at least 25 dB under the loud parts. Where Suggested repair still hears music with the hum notched out, it skips the hum notches, which would cut into the notes. Real hum under the music then stays.
Can it bring back the treble a tape lost?
Solipsium rebuilds the treble in two cases. One is speech that stops under about 5.4 kHz, as a phone line does. The other is sound that stops between about 8.3 and 11 kHz, as a file saved at 16 kHz does. Either rebuild runs only when nothing else was found, or only steady noise, and what it adds is labelled inferred. In the editor, a free account can run AudioSR on a passage of up to 60 seconds.
Does it fix wow and flutter?
No. Wow, flutter and print-through are not repaired, and the repair does not move sound in time.
Should I keep the original?
Yes. A repair is a changed copy, and a treble rebuild adds sound labelled inferred. Keep the transfer as it was, and name the repaired copy so nobody mistakes it for the original.
Is my recording uploaded?
Not for the check, which runs in your browser. Pressing Repair the first 20 seconds sends those 20 seconds. If your browser could not open the file, or it runs over five minutes, the whole file goes to Solipsium's server instead, so the try is offered for such a file only up to 25 MB. Solipsium keeps only those 20 seconds and deletes them within an hour. If you are signed in, a file you drop or choose is uploaded to your account and opens in the editor instead. The privacy notice has the rest.
Free audio tools
Related free tools.
Each of these covers one kind of tape, or one fault.
- Clean up a cassette tape
Capture a tape, then check it for hum and hiss.
- VHS and camcorder tape sound
The sound of a home video tape.
- Remove crackle
Ticks through the pauses, redrawn.
- Clean up an oral history recording
An interview, with the original kept as it was.
- All free audio tools
Every free tool on one page.
Want Solipsium to do the whole recording the same way?
The editor runs the same Suggested repair on the whole transfer, up to 30 minutes at a time.
Repair the whole recording
Free for a limited time, whole recordings included. No card.
Free account, no card.