ClickRepair

[Rukirabbit]

I followed Waxcylinder's advice and have now installed ClickRemoval, which is ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL!!! Thanks W.C., this is making my life a lot easier!

Now one little questions: I've got heaps and heaps of scratched sound tracks in my iTunes, but they are all in MP3 format. How can I convert them back quickly and easily into AIF(F) so I can get them de-clicked in ClickRemoval?

[waxcylinder]

Glad to have helped - and good to see ClickRepair works well on MACs too.

to convert MP3 to AIFF - I think you should be able to use iTunes to do this - or you could open the MP3s in Audacity and then export them. But you may be better off having a quick Google of t'interweb as you may be able to find a bulk converter.

Just be aware though, that going MP3 => AIFF => MP3 again will inflict further compression damage on on already compressed file - i.e. you will inevitably suffer some audio loss (the higher the bitrate of your original MP3s, the less you will notice this).

WC

[Rukirabbit]

Glad to have helped - and good to see ClickRepair works well on MACs too.

to convert MP3 to AIFF - I think you should be able to use iTunes to do this - or you could open the MP3s in Audacity and then export them. But you may be better off having a quick Google of t'interweb as you may be able to find a bulk converter.

Just be aware though, that going MP3 => AIFF => MP3 again will inflict further compression damage on on already compressed file - i.e. you will inevitably suffer some audio loss (the higher the bitrate of your original MP3s, the less you will notice this).

WC

GOT IT, THANKS! P.S.: WHAT WOULD BE A HIGH BIT RATE, PLEASE?
RR

[waxcylinder]

If your original MP3s are 256 bit and you re-export at 256 bit then you shouldn't get much degradation - at 192 bits you may notice it and if your originals are 128 or lower then you may notice the degradation - try some listenings tests with your material.

WC

[Rukirabbit]

If your original MP3s are 256 bit and you re-export at 256 bit then you shouldn't get much degradation - at 192 bits you may notice it and if your originals are 128 or lower then you may notice the degradation - try some listenings tests with your material.

WC

Oh, I see... in fact, I "import" the songs from old music cassettes with a Mac programme called "Garage Band", which stores the tracks in AIFF. After sending them to iTunes I convert them into MP3. Somehow I'm at a loss about where/how I can see the number of bits of each track - can you give me a hint?
Fortunately, I kept the really good cassettes so that I could start all over again, just in case...
Thanks for your very valuable tips!
RR

[waxcylinder]

If you have kept the AIFFs (sounds unlikely from your posting) then I would use those as the source material for ClickRepair. Or if you don't and in the cases where you still have the good tapes - I would go back to the tapes and create a new AIFF for ClickRepair processing.

I use Audacity to capture my tapes/LPs I use 44.1kHz 32-bit fir recording/editing and then downsample to 16-bit PCM 44.1kHz WAV (similar to AIFF - but Microsoft).

For MP3s that you already have in iTunes - right-click on an MP3 track, and click the Get Info - the Summary tab will show you the bitrate the MP3 was encoded at.

You can control the MP3 bitrate that iTunes encodes at in iTunes from Edit>Preferences>Advanced>Importing.

BTW are you sure that you have MP3s in your iTunes library? The default compressed format for iTunes is Apples AAC, defaulted to 128-bit. If you do have AAC, note that Audacity will not be able to import AAC files.
WC

[kozikowski]

You can open just about anything in QuickTime Player and press Apple-I to open up the INFO panel.

You also should know that Apple AIFF and Windows WAV are so genetically close that they can't get married in most states. I wouldn't be shocked to find that Audacity will open AIFF files directly.

Koz

[RHA]

An easy way to convert formats with a Mac... iTunes >Prefs > Advanced > Importing (gives several options) Select the one you want and click OK. Go to the iTunes library and select the album/songs you want to convert. If you're doing a compilation from several albums you should make a new playlist of the songs you want to convert. Select/highlight the songs to be converted. In the menu bar Advanced > Click on Convert selection to (whatever you chose in iTunes prefs). All the songs will be converted to your new format. Be aware this makes a duplicate song in the new format. You can delete or save the original/duplicate. There is no way to restore the data lost in the lossy MP3 format when you change to AIFF. I don't know if this will loose additional information when you change the converted AIFF back to MP3. If you want to save both file types in different iTunes libraries you can go to Computer
Audiophile.com and search for making a separate iTunes library for different formats. Good Luck!

[waxcylinder]

An easy way to convert formats with a Mac... !

thanks for this tip RHA - BTW: this should also work on a PC as iTunes works fine on PCs (as all iPod/PC owners know)

WC