The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I used to use Goldwave, and it did a decent job overall. I didn't think it was that hard to use.

Now, I use Audacity to record, a program called Clickrepair to do the click and pop removal, and then back to Audacity to do the general noise reduction.

I've used Goldwave, Audacity, Diamond Cut, Polderbits, and a few other programs that I can't think of, and Clickrepair is the best pop/click removal tool of any of them, by far. On LPs and 45s, the results are amazing. The creator of Clickrepair has a program called Denoise, and it also does a great job removing general noise. Audacity's noise removal tool seems to do just about as well. Audacity's automatic click/pop removal tool outright sucks in my opinion, though.

Group,

Thanks for the comments to-date.

With regard to "Clickrepair", I receive a message that the software can't be downloaded securely ? Any idea what that means besides do not download ?

Marc

I would love to know what this collector used to achieve the result he did with this very crackly HMV pressing. I own this same record and can attest to how crackly this one is particularly at the start when the drums begin and the crackle is as loud as the music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTevyJT ... &index=128

I am a fan of Audacity. It's free and has thousands of plugins.
It even has playback equalization curves for different types of 78's.

https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/78rp ... ack_curves

Another benefit is it can be used live. That is in line with a Hi-Fi system.

The program can be a bit daunting to start with but don't let that put you off. Once you have learned how to apply the filters it's pretty much straight forward.

Marc Hildebrant wrote:Group,

Thanks for the comments to-date.

With regard to "Clickrepair", I receive a message that the software can't be downloaded securely ? Any idea what that means besides do not download ?

Marc

If you are trying to download it from their website (https://clickrepair.net) I'd just ignore the nanny message and download it. I just did as a test, and I didn't get any messages and it downloaded fine. The site and program have been around for years now.

phonosandradios wrote:I would love to know what this collector used to achieve the result he did with this very crackly HMV pressing. I own this same record and can attest to how crackly this one is particularly at the start when the drums begin and the crackle is as loud as the music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTevyJT ... &index=128

Getting rid of the crackles is likely possible with what I am using.
In this particular video, however, I hear the result of a ramped-up noise/hiss filter. It may leave a first impression of sounding clean but I definetely here some very audible 'metallic' artifacts, especially in the vocals. It sounds somewhat like an .mp3 at very low bitrate. Also, a lot of the background details have been drowned/destroyed here by overapplied filters as well.

Crackle, or continuous pops, are a real problem. Hiss is more easy to cope with, in case it doesn't mask parts of the music, say, the Chester or the traps... Our ear is capable of distinguish them, but an automatic filter cannot. Large isolated pops are better treated locally one by one, by several tricks including manual edition of the waveform, which Goldwave allows... I don't know if audacity allows manual editing...

You can manually edit just about anything in Audacity by using the magnifying glass, and then remove what you want, very time consuming. I have had good luck with it's click removal (the latest version.) You can see the spikes disappear, and then you also can increase the gain more, and I don't hear metallic artifacts. The key to using those features, is to use them as a blend, and carefully try different ratios, and note the effect, if you go heavy on any noise reduction it will have the metallic effect but a reduction of 9 or 10 db, will lower the noise, without the artifact sound. You can also remove some surface noise by selecting a blank section with just the noise you want to remove (that is a non musical section) by hitting the sample noise button, then select the selection and reduce the noise, it is better to reduce it some and lower the noise level than to try to totally eliminate it, it takes experimenting to find the balance of removing noise without adding the artifact, metallic sound, or damaging the music. usually reducing the two controls about a ¼ way will do enough noise removal to be noticed but not ruin the musical content, and make it robotic.

Yes, I've noticed the same when using automatic spectral noise reduction... To use only 80% or so is the key to avoid those horrible artifacts...

That's where de-crackle filters come in handy. Some distinguish these by using a different settings profile while other manufacturers place them as a separate filter aside from a de-clicker.
A good and well-applied de-crackle filter can yield to some great results.

Noise reduction in general is always a high risk to generate nasty artifacts. But caution it can also be used quite effectively, although I wouldn't vouch for any noise reduction filter in general.