IKAR Lab

"Center of Speech Technologies" (CST) provided at the beginning of 2013 to cultural institutions the newest technologies of recovery and a shumoochistka of sound recordings which allow to digitize and restore sound collections for the purpose of preserving of sound heritage of the country and ensuring access to phonoarchives to everyone.

The Institute of the Russian literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences became one of the interested organizations. In the Pushkin House there is the largest in Russia and one of the world's largest folklore Fonogrammarkhiv. Unique samples of the epos, historical songs, fairy tales, lamentations, round and wedding songs are stored in it. In records more than 100 people of Russia and the world are provided. Records are stored on different carriers including on such rare as phonographic rollers and the wax disks. The first records are dated back the 90th years the 19th centuries. On the basis of these historical records "The national electronic sound depositary" which is filled with the digitized copies of sound recordings of archive is created.

Within the project of the Pushkin House on digitization and recovery of folklore records the complex for a research of sound recordings "IKAR the Lab" was tested. This hardware-software complex allows to make high-quality digitization of the existing phonograms and also their postprocessing for the purpose of sounding improvement: remove noise and a crash of phonograph records and the wax rollers, the extraneous ambient noises which were present at the time of creation of an audio recording, the noise and distortions entered by sound recording equipment.

Implementation of this work using the IKAR Lab complex is planned in the spring of the 2013th year, it will allow not only to save sound collections, but also to provide access to folklore creativity, will give opportunities to everyone to use those surprising sound materials which are stored in the Pushkin House.

"Developments of CST are constantly improved, and here we are already ready to offer unique opportunities to cultural institutions, - Hitrov Mikhail Vasilyevich, the CEO of "The center of speech technologies" says. – Rare records of folklore or performances of classics suffer from bad quality of record. On the Internet in free access similar phonograms, but in such quality are provided that it is sometimes difficult to sort words, not that to enjoy sounding. Improve quality means to save cultural heritage of the country, to give an opportunity to our descendants to learn how Yesenin, Shalyapin, Vertinsky's voice sounded or as national songs sounded".

Gives the processed records of a song of the outstanding variety actor Alexander Vertinsky and the poem by the great poet Sergey Yesenin (http://spch.pro/zpnqm) as an example of a shumoochistka of CST. For comparison: record of the There Was No Treason … song of Alexander Vertinsky of a zashumlen rustle of the played record, it is heard as the needle "jumps". On the oscillogram it is visible as vertical single bands.