Oral History Audio Test

To: The Oral History Audio Test Team

We're working on a major effort at the Lawrence History Center to digitize our collection and make it available on the web. As part of that effort we'd like to ask for a little help evaluating some of our oral history (OH) audio which has been digitized. Over the last year, we hired an audio engineer to process 130 of our 700 oral histories. He has given us back these 130 mp3 files and we now need to assess them to see if the audio processing quality is at the right level, so as to set the right standard for the processing of the remaining 570 interviews. This represents a significant investment of time and money for the LHC, so we'd like your help by listening to a small number of these recordings and giving us feedback regarding your perception of their audio quality. Since you've all been enthusiastic supporters of the LHC we thought you would like being included in the 'OH Test Team'. We would like to collect your feedback over the next 2-3 weeks. If for any reason you don't have the time or can't participate, please let Barbara, Pam, or I know and we'll find someone else to take your place.

Many thanks,
Matt

OH Test Scoring Form on the web

Below is a printable scoring form which you might find useful to have in-hand as you're listening, or if you won't get a chance to submit the web form right away and want to note your scores.

AttachmentSize
LHC OH Audio Test Form - printable 53.88 KB

OH Test Objectives and Procedures

Specifically, we are interested in the following questions about each recording:

  1. Are both the interviewer and the narrator completely audible and can you understand everything they're saying?
  2. Is the mix between the interviewer and the narrator balanced, or is one much louder than the other?
  3. Is the beginning and end of the recording smooth and short, or is there a long leader or trailer and bumpy sounds at each end?
  4. Is there distracting sibilance in the voices (where an 's' sounds like 'ssssss' or has a screechy quality to it)?
  5. Are there many blips, crackles, bumps, screeches, pauses, or other distractions in the recording that should be cut out?
  6. Are there any consistent background noises, like tape hiss, rumble, flutter or buzz that go for long periods on the tape that could be filtered?
  7. In general, is the recording quality something we should be proud to have on the LHC website?

Note that these questions pertain only to the audio processing, not to the quality of the interview, the content of the material discussed, or whether it's an interesting or valuable interview. These are, of course, very important, but there's not much we can do about them at this point. Our job now is to get the recording onto the web where people can listen to it. To that end, we are only focused on the quality of the audio processing given the tape we have to work with. In many cases, the original recording quality is not very good, due to using an inexpensive tape deck, especially for the early recordings. We're happy to have the recording and now all we can do is make the best of it.

The objective of this test is to determine the audio quality standard that we're going to apply for the next 570 recordings, and the answers to these questions relate to specific things that can be done in audio processing to improve the result. Of course, those things take time, and that costs money, so we're interested in getting to an acceptable level, not perfection. Going forward, we are now recording straight to digital files with separate mics for each person, so we don't have many of the issues we see with these older tapes.

I've divided the recordings up into 10 groups, so each of us has a baker's dozen. The recordings are, on average, about 30 min long, so this represents about 6 hours of your time. Hopefully, it will be very entertaining and a worthwhile way for you to spend time. Since it's audio quality, not content, that we care about for this exercise, you don't have to pay close attention to the content of the conversation. You can have it playing in the background. If you want to note the place on the tape where you hear something, you can use the time shown in your player, but you don't have to do detailed analysis of the tape - we just want your overall impression after listening to the entire tape.

We are interested in knowing your answer to the above questions FOR EACH RECORDING INDIVIDUALLY, so once you've finished listening to one you should note your assessments before going on to the next. We're also interested in your general feedback about listening to the interviews and any ideas you might have about improving our interview or digitization process.

The recordings are listed below. They are all links to mp3 files, so you should just be able to click on one and have it play in your browser. Alternatively, you can download the file to your computer by right-clicking on it and selecting 'save link as' and then saving it to your computer. Once there, you can click on the file and it will play in whatever mp3 player is the default on your computer. You'll probably find that downloading it and playing it from your player rather than in the browser is better since you'll have more control over the playback (pause, rewind, etc.). You shouldn't have any trouble, but let me know if you do.

Your feedback should be recorded on the scoring form. I'll then compile this feedback into a summary report which I'll post on the website.

Thank you very much for helping out with this project. You're making an extremely valuable contribution to our digitization effort. Hopefully you'll have find this entertaining as well!

Many thanks,
Matt

OH Test FAQ

Here are some frequently asked questions regarding the OH Test project:

What's the deadline to get this testing done?
There is no fixed deadline, but we'd like to have most of them reviewed by the middle of May. As scores are submitted on the scoring page we'll be getting a good sense of how the quality looks sounds.

How do you save the MP3 file on a Mac?
You hold the control-key down while clicking on the filename and that opens the 'right-click' menu which allows you to 'save file as...' or 'save link as...' where you can then name the file and location where you want to save it on your disk.

How long does it take to download an MP3?
These are big files (10-100MB), so they may take 5-15 min to download on a broadband connection (eg. verizon fios or comcast). If you have dial up it will take forever!

OH Test Files

Here they are - the actual OH audio files, divided by tester - 13 files each... right-click to save each file to your computer and then play in your PC's audio player.

Barbara:
2007.500.001-eartha-ywca-2.mp3
2007.500.001-eartha-ywca.wav
2007.500.008-allston.mp3
2007.500.008-allston.wav
2007.500.016-armitage-1:2.mp3
2007.500.016-armitage-2:2.mp3
2007.500.017-armitage-1:2.mp3
2007.500.017-armitage-2:2.mp3
2007.500.041-bashara.mp3
2007.500.047-wbeaulieu-1:2.mp3
2007.500.047-wbeaulieu-2:2.mp3
2007.500.051-bella-1:2.mp3
2007.500.051-bella-2:2.mp3
Amita:
2007.500.036-mbarker.mp3
2007.500.056-mblackwell.mp3
2007.500.073-jbuckley-1:2.mp3
2007.500.073-jbuckley-2:2.mp3
2007.500.074-jbuckley.mp3
2007.500.075-pbuckley.mp3
2007.500.083-ecaffrey.mp3
2007.500.086-emcalderone.mp3
2007.500.091-jcarey.mp3
2007.500.093-carpinone-1:2.mp3
2007.500.093-carpinone-2:2.mp3
2007.500.108-cicarelli.mp3
2007.500.116-contarino.mp3
Marcia:
2007.500.121-costello-test-32k.mp3
2007.500.132-jdanforth.mp3
2007.500.134-defeo.mp3
2007.500.135-defillippo-1.mp3
2007.500.135-defillippo-2.mp3
2007.500.137-defillippo-1:2.mp3
2007.500.137-defillippo-2:2.mp3
2007.500.138-ldegnan.mp3
2007.500.145-depippo.mp3
2007.500.149-difiore.mp3
2007.500.150-jdilavore-1:2.mp3
2007.500.150-jdilavore-2:2.mp3
2007.500.166-jdoyle.mp3
Pam:
2007.500.162-ldonohoe-1:4.mp3
2007.500.162-ldonohoe-2:4.mp3
2007.500.162-ldonohoe-3:4.mp3
2007.500.162-ldonohoe-4:4.mp3
2007.500.163-ldonohoe.mp3
2007.500.176-earley.mp3
2007.500.178-meastwood.mp3
2007.500.186-afleischmann.mp3
2007.500.187-lfleischmann.mp3
2007.500.188-bflynn.mp3
2007.500.193-kfranco-1:2.mp3
2007.500.193-kfranco-2:2.mp3
2007.500.195-frishman.mp3
Karen:
2007.500.200-galvagna.mp3
2007.500.201-garbelnick-1:2.mp3
2007.500.201-garbelnick-2:2.mp3
2007.500.202-jgarbelnick.mp3
2007.500.215-lgorham.mp3
2007.500.219-wgriffin.mp3
2007.500.220-crguilmette.mp3
2007.500.229-jharrison.mp3
2007.500.230-hart.mp3
2007.500.232-hatem-a.wav
2007.500.232-hatem-b.wav
2007.500.232-hatem.mp3
2007.500.235-mhebbelinck.mp3
Gene:
2007.500.238-phewitt.mp3
2007.500.256-tjohnson.mp3
2007.500.265-keeley.mp3
2007.500.267-ekellett-1.mp3
2007.500.267-ekellett-2.mp3
2007.500.267-ekellett-3.mp3
2007.500.271-mkennedy-1.mp3
2007.500.271-mkennedy-2.mp3
2007.500.272-mkennedy.mp3
2007.500.280-kiley.mp3
2007.500.287-jkurpiel.mp3
2007.500.295-flascola.mp3
2007.500.297-latham.mp3
Paula:
2007.500.299-laverriere.mp3
2007.500.302-alawrence.mp3
2007.500.303-rlebowitz-1:2.mp3
2007.500.303-rlebowitz-2:2.mp3
2007.500.304-llefebre.mp3
2007.500.305-wleonard.mp3
2007.500.306-gleone.mp3
2007.500.308-mlezberg.mp3
2007.500.311-clong.mp3
2007.500.318-mplynch-1:2.mp3
2007.500.318-mplynch-2:2.mp3
2007.500.319-mplynch.mp3
2007.500.325-mccarthy.mp3
Lynn:
2007.500.328-mcilwain-1:2.mp3
2007.500.328-mcilwain-2:2.mp3
2007.500.337-manzi.mp3
2007.500.347-mmartin.mp3
2007.500.351-meile-a.wav
2007.500.351-meile-b.wav
2007.500.351-meile.mp3
2007.500.358-fmesser.mp3
2007.500.392-oconnor-a.wav
2007.500.392-oconnor-b.wav
2007.500.467-ssantore-1:1.mp3
2007.500.467-ssantore-2:2.mp3
2007.500.471-ssavinelli.mp3
Rich:
2007.500.480-fseifert-1:2.mp3
2007.500.480-fseifert-2:2.mp3
2007.500.481-aseminara.mp3
2007.500.490-nsilverman.mp3
2007.500.491-silverstein.mp3
2007.500.495-csimonelli.mp3
2007.500.508-bstella.mp3
2007.500.515-strikes-1:2.mp3
2007.500.515-strikes-2:2.mp3
2007.500.530-atimpson-1:2.mp3
2007.500.530-atimpson-2:2.mp3
2007.500.531-timpson-1:2.mp3
2007.500.531-timpson-2:2.mp3
Matt:
2007.500.535-tory-a.wav
2007.500.541-mtroy.mp3
2007.500.575-zimmerman.mp3
2007.500.578-urena-2:2.mp3
2007.500.578-urena.mp3
2007.500.580-ssapienza.mp3
2007.500.581-ebolis.mp3
2007.500.584-abenedix.mp3
2007.500.587-rbuchonis.mp3
2007.500.590-mtarshi-1:2.mp3
2007.500.590-mtarshi-2:2.mp3
2007.600.001-millworkers.mp3

Oral History Audio Test Scoring Form

To make it easier for you to assess these recordings, and make it simpler to compile the results of 130 tests, please use this form to score the audio recordings. Each of the attributes correspond to something we could do in the processing to improve the result. The score should be based on the following scale:

5 - Perfect, no issues at all.
4 - Good, slight indication of the problem
3 - OK, acceptable
2 - Poor, needs improvement
1 - Very bad, unusable because of this issue.

Please select your initials

Enter the full name of the mp3 file you're scoring (eg. 2007.500.016-armitage-2:2.mp3)

Are both the interviewer and the narrator completely audible and can you understand everything they're saying?

Is the mix between the interviewer and the narrator balanced, or is one much louder than the other?

Are the beginning and end of the recording smooth and short, or is there a long leader or trailer and bumpy sounds at each end?

Is there distracting sibilance in the voices (where an 's' sounds like 'ssssss' or has a screechy quality to it)?

Are there many blips, crackles, bumps, screeches, pauses, or other distractions in the recording that should be cut out?

Are there any consistent background noises, like tape hiss, rumble, hum, flutter or buzz that go for long periods on the tape that could be filtered out?

In general, is the recording quality something we should be proud to have on the LHC website?

Please share any other comments you might have about this recording