Noise Reduction Software

[Marc Hildebrant]

Group,

I am wondering what software you maybe using to record and remove the noise from the old records. I am currently using a product from Diamond Cut Productions, but I'm looking for an upgrade to the present performance I am having.

Any idea's of products to try ?

Marc

[barnettrp21122]

I've been using Diamond Cut software for years, through many upgrades. I'm using their latest DCart 10.62 which has some significant improvements overall. If yours is an older program you should try the update. You can download a free trial for 15 days. Here's the link:

https://www.diamondcut.com/st3/

Bob

[WDC]

This is probably a subject that's widely affected by personal preferences. I never could warm up to Diamond Cut, not the interface nor their filters and I tried it again a couple times over the years.

I still use Sony NR filters plugin with a 10 year old Audition 3.0, plus 78rpm EQ Curve nyquist plugin for Audacity.

The Sony filters come with separate Noise Reduction and Click/Crackle filter modules.

I have recently added a version of iZotope RX 7, of which I only find the Click-Filter to be of useful quality. It's great feature is to reliably eliminate large pops such as those from needle digs. It also works well with modern recordings from LPs. The rest of iZotope's filters, especially their noise reduction, are quite aggressive and tend to leave a lot of artifacts, as I found during my trials.

For anything else, such as crackles and hiss reduction, to my ears, the Sony NR filters are still the very best due to their extreme low residue of digital artifacts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN-Z3k-vfcY

The Sony filters were originally developed by Sonic Foundry (like Audition used to be CoolEdit by Syntrillium, as some may recall).

Audition in it's current version, neutered by Adobe, is one of the most awful wave editors I know of. Sony later re-sold their filters to Magix, so as of today, they are likely used within their editor Sound Forge.

[phonosandradios]

I have used Magix in the past but was never really satisfied with the result as although the filters were ok it is just too easy to suck all the life out of a recording using them. I also downloaded iZotope as a free trial and as Norman has commented a lot of the filters available with that are far too aggressive to give a satisfactory result with crackly 78s. These days I just try to push the crackle into the background and live with the fact that it is there. I think unless you have some very high end software it is very difficult to do a good job. Having said that I have heard some cracking restorations of 78s. I'd jut love to know what they used to achieve it

[edisonphonoworks]

I honestly have used good old Audacity for noise reduction, You find a sample in the song of the kind of noise you want to reduce, and you sample the snippet, then select the whole section. If you want to edit, say a repeat out, you can of course use the magnifying glass and find the begging and end and cut it out. It also has click removal, and I use that. I know lots of mastering engineers for final work, though it don't remove noise use Reaper. When I do noise editing I don't go crazy usually from 6-10db of reduction any more than that, it just sounds weird. My preference though is no changes in audio, I would rather hear a constant surface noise than the in and out you usually hear with most noise reduction. I know for most of us CEDAR is out of the question, but some remasters I have heard with it, in the past sounded very nice. I remember trying DC art a long time ago, I was not wholly impressed.

[Governor Flyball]

I see no mention of stylus choice and so I will discuss it here.

I feel the best noise reduction can be achieved first by choice of the most appropriate stylus. Because there was never really a standard groove dimension during the 78 era, having multiple shaped stylii on hand to test for best s/n and minimal distortion on worn discs means that subsequent digital filtering may be as subtle as possible.

[phonosandradios]

I see no mention of stylus choice and so I will discuss it here.

I feel the best noise reduction can be achieved first by choice of the most appropriate stylus. Because there was never really a standard groove dimension during the 78 era, having multiple shaped stylii on hand to test for best s/n and minimal distortion on worn discs means that subsequent digital filtering may be as subtle as possible.

I agree, this should be the absolute starting point for any transfer as it can make a huge difference as a stylus slopping around in a groove picks up less music but all the noise of skating around on the bottom of the groove. Also with very crackly 78's (HMV particularly) the choice of stylus can make a huge difference but as already said because nothing in this era was standard it really is hit and miss plus sometimes riding higher or lower in the groove can help to avoid worn areas of the groove walls. Trial and error is really the only way and then writing down a note of the best stylus size on the record cover for future reference.

[drh]

Yes, stylus choice must always be the starting point. That said, I find stylus choice almost always comes with a trade-off: reduced distortion at the cost of increased noise or vice versa. I generally opt for the lowest distortion, even at the expense of noisier play, because to a degree noise can be tamed by other means, but distortion is there permanently and, to my ear, is far the more offensive audible flaw.

As to noise reduction software, I find that a very light application of "Click Repair" usually suffices to get rid of enough that I can finish the job manually. My goal, incidentally, is not to make things noise-free but rather to get the noise down to the point that I can normalize the file to a respectable listening level.

[Marc Hildebrant]

With regard to the level of noise to remove: My goal has been to have the music sound the same as when it was recorded in the studio.

Marc

[audiophile102]

I have used Goldwave software for years. It's less expensive than most and it has a steep learning curve, but you watch this and see for yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1-dQ1Y ... urlStudent