Hi.
FirstIy I apologise for the essay length post for my first forum post.
My setup is a 2.1Ghz Dual Core Athlon Laptop with Windows Vista SP2
Audacity 2.1 (The latest build other than the nightly builds)
Additional ny plugins: De-Clicker ,De-Esser, EZ-Patch, PopMute, and NoiseGate,
Additional VST files:Floorfish Expander/NoiseGate, and finally Cockos ReaFIR and Cockos ReaEQ.
I also use a Brazilian program called OCENAUDIO for the DC Offset, the amplitude, high and low pass filters, and the bandpass or notch filter, and do the editing. in Audacity 2.1
I am having problems taking crackle and pop out of a couple of tracks from a 1985 vinyl LP. Click Removal does not get anywhere with it on the various settings. I have only four month experience on vinyl to PC restoration since February in fact so I am still a newby. I am following the Audacity LP Workflow in tandem with the above mentioned extras for cleaning things up:
I have followed the 9 pages of info on the forum related to the excellent De-Clicker by PaulL, from this link https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/updated-de-clicker-and-new-de-esser-for-speech/34283/1 , but struggling with two tracks. I have tried default settings and it turns the spikes to mud where the spikes used to be. I then took a Spectogram Log F reading, and left the bands in De-Clicker where they were on 12 but chose between 250hz to 18000 hz. I raised the bottom end hz as suggested by PaulL. At these settings I get oscillation. If i raise the bottom end again I get mud or whistles. Increasing the bands didn’t work. ReaFir does clear everything up but only at the expence of the actual audio. I also trialled ClickRepair, and got similar results to ReaFir, ClickRepair has since run out of trial days. Any help would be appreciated. Sorry for the over detailed info. I have finished four tracks successfully on the same album, but not these two. Here is a sample of one of them. Thanks in advance.
Christine. PS I learned my way around the bands from this page. http://bobbyowsinski.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/description-of-audio-frequency-bands.html
Thanks Trebor for the excellent befor and after flac file. I couldn’t get my settings as good as that when I trialled ClickRepair before my trial time ran out. It is certainly a purchase for the future. Embarrassingly I have solved this problem within 24 hours of posting, and thought I would share this everybody still using the De-Clicker by PaulL. I was getting desparate and took a complete track FFT (Fast-Fourier Transform) reading from Ocenaudio . Then back In Audacity I set the bottom end Hz range to 100 in De-Clicker, and the top end to 22000hz, and left the Bands on 12 default. This has worked for three tracks in a row, but i am not techy enough to know why. It takes about 9 minutes for a 3.5 minute track. Here is a screen shot of the settings. Thanks again for your help.
Thanks for the reply Trebor. Sorry I have been a bit of time get back to you, but I was trying one or two things out. I tried your idea of setting to 75 but it made no difference. My settings as on the above screen were the best to date. I thought everything was ok, but when I play either of my two tracks with the settings above on a better quality sound player like KMPLayer through the laptop, or wire my laptop to my hifi via the Aux I get a very slight oscillation on both tracks. Leveler does not fix this so my maths via the FFT is floored . Thanks again for your help.
Thanks Trebor. I realise that, I was just trying as a frequency change idea, setting the bottom end of the frequency bands to 75 in Audacity because PaulL said in the original thread that there was no improvement by moving the threshold figure, although I did try that with threshold readings from OCENAUDIO. I have found out something interesting which does go against the original notes however. PaulL mentioned something about increasing the bottom end of band frequency or increasing the band number. If I move the bottom end of the band frequency up from 150 anywhere between there and 300 I get more mud. Increasing the number of bands hasn’t helped. My best result to date was with REAFIR VST Plugin which takes all the clicks away, but takes all of the clarity out of the music. I then raise the whole wave, and put clarity back into it with REAEQ, but doing that brings some of the pops back. I also have to watch out for clipping. It looks like I am purchasing ClickRepair. Thanks for you help and quick replys.
Thanks again for the reply Trebor. I can’t get a copy of ClickRepair till early July as the author is on Holiday or travelling. I have tried demo version of some of the more exepensive offerings you were talking about, but they are a bit scary on my limited and less than 6 months knowledge. I have also since found out that one of my three media players was creating the oscillation so some of my earlier setting of going to the end of the top and bottom of the FFT range and then running Declicker probably worked, and just left me with minor cleaning up. Thanks again.
Hello, I discovered this discussion belatedly. I have not listened yet to the example.
The De-Clicker was intended to remove naturally occurring but undesirable mouth noises from narration, not to repair damaged audio signals which is not quite the same problem, but if you think it does a decent job for this purpose too, that’s swell!
I have told people that the way to catch more clicks (at a cost in computation time) is to have more and narrower bands, not to lower the threshold which risks increasing the “mud.”
Perhaps in your case you could use an even higher threshold to treat the sound more cautiously but still get the obvious clicks.
Maybe varying the last parameter for width of repair interval would affect the mud too – I am just guessing here.
Thanks Paul for the reply, sorry I am late with this but I have been away for a few days. Things have moved on a bit since I posted either of my two posts. I found out that my KM media player was causing oscillation, and wasn’t giving true representation . I had to change it and all my media players now work. To use De-Clicker, I pick the figure that shows up mostly as the peak Hz figure of the highest point of the noise with Plot Spectrum. It is usually somewhere between 100 and 300. I then set the top end frequency to 22000 and run it with the rest on default. This solves everyting for me if it is a group of musicians. I can improve overall sound with filters after that and tidy things up. It is a bit more difficult with intricate guitar peices however where some of the bright sound is replaced by mud in the 125-150 Hz area. I have been using the excellent Repair Channel add on by Steve Daulton for those as I am working with sterio tracks. This only works if the left and right channel are roughly the same and the noise is only on one side. The other two areas of De-Clicker you mention related to threshold and the repair interval I don’t understand very well. I will test the higher threshold as you suggest, and let you know. De-Clicker is the best that I have found for this type of thing and is working on most albums. Thanks for the reply.
PS I learned my way around the bands from this page. http://bobbyowsinski.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/description-of-audio-frequency-bands.html
Thanks for you help and quick replys.