Wikipedia:Featured sound candidates/Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

1890 – "America", read by Walt Whitman

An 1890 recording of Walt Whitman reading the opening four lines of his poem "America", from his collection Leaves of Grass.

I think the reasons for this nomination are somewhat obvious: It's degraded, yes, but it's from 1890, the only known recording of Walt Whitman - a major American poet, reading one of his poems. Sure, you could do a modern recording - but it wouldn't be by Walt Whitman, so historic value surely trumps the technical flaws. I have restored it as far as I felt comfortable doing: Restoration of sounds is a computer-assisted process, and there's only so much that mathematical analysis can do before you start throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Anything more than this and Walt Whitman's voice starts degrading unacceptably, so I just tried to bring his voice out a little more, and accepted that some noise would remain. In any case, this is a very good recording for its period.

Nominate and support. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 20:50, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support everything seems to checks out. Very encyclopedic. Ottava Rima (talk) 23:18, 14 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support - It's hard to understand what he's saying, but encyclopedic value is definitely strong. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 23:26, 14 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Very high EV. Annoys me every time I see the Levi's Jeans ad I see using this. Staxringold _talk^contribs 01:05, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Walt Whitman - America --Seddσn ^talk|^WikimediaUK 20:00, 19 August 2009 (UTC)"[reply]