If you’re short on time, there are three main points here.
- After a lot of painstaking work, we have massively improved the quality of the audio. (See the sample below.) It would be worth re-listening to your favorites, especially for audience questions.
- That being said, the original master recordings were not professionally made. They were intended just to be study aides. The teachings have always been a volunteer, grassroots sort of thing. So, though the audio isn’t perfect, it is audible, except for some audience questions. More importantly, the information is astounding. If you are a fan of the Storyteller, you’ll know that every class is a good class full of nuggets of wisdom on all different topics.
- The files now have all the metadata included. So you will see titles, track numbers and more.
Remastered Sample
I selected this audio not for its message, but because the sound was unusually poor. Every ten seconds, I toggle on and off the audio enhancement. In the poor version, you will hear room echo, the whirring of the CD recorder, and an airplane flying overhead. In the enhanced version, almost all that background noise is gone, and the Storyteller’s voice is improved. He doesn’t sound like he’s in a box.
Below is another example where the audio is toggled between the original and enhanced versions.
Background story
As many of you know, for years Scott has been collecting the old classes on cassette tapes and converting them to digital format. They were slowly deteriorating, and many classes were lost to mold or fire. So, it was important to him to preserve as much as he could before they were all lost. And Chuck supported him in doing that.
By the way, if you have any old cassette tapes, please let us know, and we can convert those to digital format, too. We’re calling this The Storyteller Library Project.
The restoration process
Scott uses a professional cassette deck with noise reduction and special adapters to connect the cassette player to his computer and professional audio software. Often, the tapes snap or get crunched, and he has to take them apart and fix them. Sometimes, entirely unwinding and rewinding the spool, and replacing the casing with something nicer.
Then he remasters and resamples the audio. It’s a tedious process that begins with deleting all the bangs and pops (unless they overlap the words), and reducing the volume of laughing, or increasing the volume of audience questions. Then there is a whole process of deleting the background noise, normalizing the volume, enhancing the speech, and more. Luckily, now, AI programs can do an amazing job at enhancing the audio. But still, most of this process needs to be done tape by tape, sometimes minute by minute.
Though you may still hear odd background noises, coughs, or have trouble hearing someone who is speaking without a microphone, the Storyteller’s words are audible, and the audio is as good as it gets without causing further distortion or spending heaps of time and money.
We do hope that you forgive the errors and enjoy these amazing life lessons.