Cleaning up sound on Audio recording for court case

[Randalls]

Had a friend of a friend contact me about a situation where they want to clean up spoken word audio recorded on a really bad mic. It was actually a wire for a court case (prosecutor side) where there is a lot of clothing noise and some car/street noise. If anyone wishes to offer suggestions on any way to 'clean up' this audio it would be much appreciated. The bad new is they need to process this by tomorrow!

[clay]

I use this tool (well, the previous version):
https://www.izotope.com/en/products/audio-repair/rx

They have a free 10-day trial period.

There are others, though, and probably will differ somewhat in how successful they are at removing or reducing noise.

[Randalls]

OK, thanks,.I figured they would have folks to do stuff like that under their employ.

[RAMd®d]

It was actually a wire for a court case (prosecutor side) where there is a lot of clothing noise and some car/street noise.

A slight bunny trail- typically audio recordings aren't allowed in criminal proceedings (and maybe?) civil court as well, except for specific circumstances. Could you elaborate on the how and why this will be accepted as evidence?

Also, it seems to me that any editing, even "cleaning up" a recording may negatively effect it's evidentiary value. Are you familiar with similar situations.?
Inquiring minds and such...

[Randalls]

No, I was going out the door when they called. Don't know the particulars but I was asking about what kind of sound they were editing thinking it would be for a podcast or music and they said it was like a 'wire' with the residual clothing noise and 'air' noise from traffic and interior of a car. Don't really know any details yet. It would be interesting to know the particulars.

[mrbigstuff]

i'm just guessing here, but if they already have a transcript if the recording, all they desire is to get something audible.

[August West]

As mentioned by Rammie, you need to be careful editing things like that. just for clarity, no problem. Otherwise, an accredited digital forensics lab should be used.

[rjmacs]

This is going to be legally tricky. Any defense attorney worth their salt is going to have evidence altered by anyone other than a forensic sound specialist thrown out post haste.

[Randalls]

Best case scenario. Standing by the water cooler before the hearing with an iPad play a portion of the recording accidentally in front of the public defender and goombah and say. 'Oh, sorry, thought that was my Kenny G collection. My bad.' Two seconds in to the hearing, plea bargain. Just a thought.

[RAMd®d]

Best case scenario. Standing by the water cooler before the hearing with an iPad play a portion of the recording accidentally in front of the public defender and goombah and say. 'Oh, sorry, thought that was my Kenny G collection. My bad.' Two seconds in to the hearing, plea bargain. Just a thought.

That would be a slam dunk.

On TV.

In a real court case, it would be a pretty bad PD that wouldn't know the audio was inadmissible (with certain exceptions. And any evidence gained from that audio would probably qualify as fruit of the poisonous tree.

Now if he or she has reason to believe that the audio *would* be admissible, then you might have something.

"It's so crazy… It just might work!"

So assuming than pushing of the "Clean Up" button meets all legal challenges, I'm still curious as to how this audio would be admissible.