noise/static removal

[James McLean]

Are there any recommendations for cleaning old vinyl records before recording them into my computer? I've tried different 'click removal' and 'noise removal' settings but quite often still have much 'noise/static' in the recorded file! My feeling is that the 'noise/static' is because of dirt and'/or hand oil from age and handling. Would appreciate any thoughts on how I might eliminate that noise/static!!!![size=150][/size]

[waxcylinder]

I use Brian Davies' ClickRepair to clean off the pops and clicks. It costs a little ($40) but is only a little shy of magical in the results it produces. See this sticky thread: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1994

What I do is record with Audacity, export a WAV, feed this WAV into ClickRepair and then inmport the cleaned WAV back into Audacity for any further editing and processing .

You may find this sample workflow that I wrote for the manual useful: http://manual.audacityteam.or/man/Sampl ... gitization

Also this set of Tutorials may help too: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Tuto ... iscs_to_CD

WC

[justinburnett]

I've also found that many click/pop removal tools work best when applied to small sections at a time. Obviously this might not be practical if the recording is very crackly, but if you're just trying to fix a relatively small number of problems, highlighting only the glitch for repair can mean less overall signal degredation.

[kozikowski]

And just because you didn't specify, you can do amazing things to older 78s by using the right needle. LP needles are smaller than ones needed for 78 and they ride on the bottom of the 78 groove picking up every dust mote and cat hair. No, they didn't sound like that while you were playing them and they were new. They didn't sound like that the last time you played them with the right turntable, either.

If you're talking about older LPs, then gentle cleaning in a humid room is the best you can do. I use warm water with a few drops of dish detergent in it. Rinse thoroughly and dry with a clean cotton dish towel. The humidity is to keep dust from re-attaching itself to the record through static electricity.

Koz

[waxcylinder]

I've also found that many click/pop removal tools work best when applied to small sections at a time....highlighting only the glitch for repair can mean less overall signal degredation.

Actually, Brian's ClickRepair does just that for you. It works through the audio looking for event spikes which are pops/clicks and then repairs just that small section using an iterpolation based on surrounding audio. It's not like noise removal tools (Brian's other tools included) which operate on all of the selected audio.

Brian made an improvement to his package a couple of releases ago whereby the audio is scanned backwards for click detection - this helps to avoid false-positives - fast attack percussion for example. CR still works through the audio forwards so monitoring is still available in real time - but it collects small samples at a time and reverses them for analysis (a cute trick).

WC

[waxcylinder]

James, and in answer to your original question, I forgot earlier that we have this advice in one of the tutorials in the manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Samp ... ean_the_LP

It's usually best to clean the LPs before capture, rathe than trying to remove all the clicks and noise with software after capture. You will almost certainly have some residual noise and clicks - but that's less work for the software to do and thus more of your original signals should remain intact.

WC

[justinburnett]

Wow, ClickRepair sounds like it's well worth looking into. Thanks for the recommendation. I've been using various noise reduction programs for over a decade, and I love hearing about people who hav efound ways of doing things more effectively.

[waxcylinder]

Justin, Brian is an Australian university mathematician, now retired. When he started digitizing his LPs some years aho he started out locating the clicks by ear and eye and repairing them menually (very tedious, as I'm sure you'll realize).

He thought to himself "I shouuld be able to write a littl;e software program to do this" - and indeed he did, and made a very thorough job of it. One of the things I like about it is that it is a very targetted niche application with absolutely no bloatware.

WC