lanigerous

It's the Daily Mail, it's most likely total fiction as they do this all the time.

It is wizardry right enough - electricity goes in, magic occurs,l and machine goes ping

It's definitely not as exciting as it sounds. It applies a large current through some graphite rods which causes the carbon to evaporate & deposit on a sample sat underneath. It's used to coat electrically insulating samples with a conductive layer of carbon for electron microscopy.

We have a carbon evaporator that runs linux

I use this on a daily basis on Android, works pretty well & is available through Fdroid:

https://github.com/LittleTrickster/PDF-Doc-Scan

Personally I don't know of any specific research but afaik the reason why our voices sound terrible to us when recorded is because they're missing the bass that's transmitted through the skull, i.e. they sound higher pitched on recording. So I'd try increasing the amplitude of the lower frequencies on the EQ, it'll take a bit of fiddling to get the right balance.