Removing tiny 'cracks' from vinyl rips

[Awareman]

Hello,

When we numerise vinyl through special devices, there's always noise into it. Removing the hiss is pretty easy and the big cracks too.
The big cracks are usually a long line that is pretty simple to locate and remove with the "repair" tool.

However when there are tiny cracks, sometimes these cracks seems impossible to locate and therefore to remove.

Any tips?

For example, on this screenshot of the wave form, there are 2 cracks... But I can't locate them...

[DVDdoug]

Try the spectrogram View or Multi-view.

[Awareman]

I tried but I see nothing :-/
I actually don't understand this view.

Edit: I can see a few lines that may match with the cracks. It helps a bit. Thanks.

[waxcylinder]

I used the ClickRepair app - it cost a little but produced excellent results - and saved me a lot of time doing the manual type repairs that you are doing.

See this sticky thread: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1994

WC

[DVDdoug]

Or Wave Corrector which is now free.

P.S.
I forgot my "standard advice" - Buy the CD or download the MP3 (if the recording is available digitally).

[Awareman]

Or Wave Corrector which is now free.

P.S.
I forgot my "standard advice" - Buy the CD or download the MP3 (if the recording is available digitally).

Yes, but vinyl rips gives better sound when correctly remastered. You can clearly see the difference between a remastered CD rip and the same music remastered from a vinyl rip. It has a little something to it that sound more powerfull. Or maybe it's just me.

[Trebor]

... there are tiny cracks, sometimes these cracks seems impossible to locate and therefore to remove ...

Try spectrogram view ...

looking for clicks.png (42.25 KiB) Viewed 404 times

Audacity's spectral editing tools can cause less collateral-damage than repair tool.

... vinyl rips gives better sound when correctly remastered. You can clearly see the difference between a remastered CD rip and the same music remastered from a vinyl rip. It has a little something to it that sound more powerfull. Or maybe it's just me.

Not just you ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

[DVDdoug]

Yes, but vinyl rips gives better sound when correctly remastered. You can clearly see the difference between a remastered CD rip and the same music remastered from a vinyl rip. It has a little something to it that sound more powerfull. Or maybe it's just me.

You're the one complaining about the "sound" of vinyl. It's a matter of personal taste and some people do prefer vinyl or you may prefer the "sound" of a particular phono cartridge, but technically (noise, distortion, frequency response*) analog vinyl is an inferior format.

There will always be a difference, usually because of vinyl limitations but sometimes they are mastered differently and on older originally-analog recordings the CD/MP3 may have been poorly remastered.

And, you to some extent you can "remaster" digital to your tastes except you can't really fix "loudness war" mastering. (You can't fix that on vinyl either and modern vinyl is often made from the same digital master as the CD & MP3.)

Note that the vinyl cutting & playback process changes the wave shape and it often makes the vinyl "look" and "measure" more dynamic (depending on how you measure dynamics) but it doesn't change the sound of the dynamics. Something similar happens with MP3 compression.** The MP3 version often has peaks that are slightly higher than the original (and some peaks lower than the original), but again these peaks are too short in duration to alter the sound of the dynamics.



* The frequency response on a record can extend higher than a CD (limited to 22050Hz) but digital is flatter across the audible range and most of the ultrasonic information on a record is noise and distortion (not that it matters since it's not audible).

** Don't confuse MP3 file compression with dynamic compression. MP3 is lossy compression and it can introduce artifacts but it doesn't damage the dynamics.

[waxcylinder]

Yes, but vinyl rips gives better sound when correctly remastered. You can clearly see the difference between a remastered CD rip and the same music remastered from a vinyl rip. It has a little something to it that sound more powerfull. Or maybe it's just me.

You're the one complaining about the "sound" of vinyl. It's a matter of personal taste and some people do prefer vinyl or you may prefer the "sound" of a particular phono cartridge, but technically (noise, distortion, frequency response*) analog vinyl is an inferior format.

And not just the cartridge - the pre-amp that is necessary to apply the reverse RIAA equalization also has an effect on the sound (adding to that famous vinyl "warmth").

WC

[Awareman]

Thank you very much for all this information & explanations, tough I'm really not a sound engineer so your terminology and references sounds a bit complicated to my newbie ears. What I mostly do when remastering vinyl rips is because these songs/tracks/music only exists as vinyl (at least as far as I know). Mostly 80's 12 inch versions of songs that never got a into CD or any digital transfers. So, the only way to have these in the computer is to rip the vinyl...

I have used the spectogram view to locate the missing cracks and it quite worked well. Thanks for this. Though there are still extremely tiny cracks I can percieve but not locate. Not a big deal.

What are the "spectogram tools" actually, I don't understand, I've searched but I don't know what to do. If I have to play with frequencies and so on, I won't be able to do that, I have no notion of this stuff...