On Thu, 6 Jul 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi,
> Can anyone recommend a program to help remove scratches and pops from records
> before copying them to Mini-disc.
To my experience, you can obtain better results following a
different strategy than trying to remove pops and clicks on an automated
fashion..
I have digitized about 80+ records, and tried lots of procedures.
The one that render more satisfactory results to me was:
Equipment.-
Use a good capsule/stylus and record player. It doesn't have to be
a Rega or similar; a decent turntable with a decent capsule/stylus (eg.
Stanton MK series) so that you part from the best source signal possible.
Anyway, keep in mind the better the turntable/arm/capsule/stylus
is, the better sound you'll achieve.
Although there are very good digitizing soundcards nowadays, and
most important, with fairly decent S/N ratio, I found is usually better to
feed the signal from the turntable to the amp, (the amp's phono stage will
play a critic role for RIAA equalization and such) and from the amp to a
good *external* AD converter; from that go digitally to the computer
soundcard. PCs are horrible in terms of noise, both internally and
inducing it on external devices.
Going digital also allows you to place the turntable as far from the PC as
you can (I have a 15m coax cable from the digital out of the JA20ES I use
as AD converter) w/o signal strength/interference problems due to the
cable lenght.
Procedure.-
First of all, clean the record spraying an specific cleaner. And
the *key* fact: play it w/o recording. Disassemble the turntable head and
clean it gently with a toothbrush or alike, you'll find lots of dust on
the stylus. Repeat the same procedure. Repeat. Repeat it until *no* dust
is fetched on the stylus; that usually involves doing that 4 to 5 times.
If you're gonna digitize lots of records, having a second
turntable for the sole purpose of play-cleaning records will be useful.
It's quality insn't critic as long as it doesn't damage the records...
Now fire up your preferred recording software. Cool Edit is a
jewel, but is for windows :) I use bcast2000 for Linux; any decent
recording wav editing software will do; timed recording capability will be
a certainly useful feature, and non-destructive editing will make the
difference; be prepared to eat tons of disk space if you go the
non-destructive way, as you'll need it for the source file, the
normalized ones, and the final render...
Remember to adjust the analog level on the AD converter so that the signal
reachs about -4/-2dB; don't get obsessed trying to achieve the most 0dB
close level; we are on the digital domain and saturation isn't as
important as analog recording.
Once recorded, I have found that apart from locating the few cliks
and pops, easily eye-located, and removing them, the *best* is to *simply*
normalize each track individually to 0dB. If you see that a track doesn't
normalize as expected, is very possible that you missed a pop. leave a 2
sec silence between tracks, render the final fileand you're done to burn
it.
I don't know much about nowadays windows based recording software,
I use the excellent *nix, non-destructive, toc oriented xcdrdao program. I
put the track marks/pregaps there (I work with a huge single wav file),
enter the CD-Text relevant information and DAO burn the CD. I supposed
there are windows programs with that capabilities.
Conclusion.-
Believe me, I have tried lots of PC based off-line postprocessing:
noise gates, expanders. ocmpressors, click/pop removers... The best
procedure is not to use them, just assure to start with the best
source material posible, and simply normalize it.
Think of it: an automated click/pop remover usally scan certain
patterns. With a noise remover you usally feed it with a noise sample
and it analyzes it in order to remove the pattern it has computed.
The problem is that there aren't "illegal" sound patterns in music by
definition. The program can confuse click/pops with percussion sounds; the
noise remover usually kills "bright" high-frequency sounds.
The best is source material doesn't have clics/pops to start. The
less post processing you apply to it, the more natural and warmth sound
you'll achieve.
it may sound obvious, but this golden audio engineering rule isn't usually
followed.
Last, put the CD on the CD player, and record it digitally to the
MD letting it title tracks and such using the CD-Text information...
hope it helps,
*****---(*)---**********************************************---------->
Francisco J. Montilla System & Network admin
[EMAIL PROTECTED] irc: pukka Seville Spain
INSFLUG (LiNUX) Coordinator: www.insflug.org - ftp.insflug.org
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