The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Since it's Summer I've decided that I will set myself a project of digitising one 78 of mine per day. I have an ION deck which I can hook up to my laptop.

At the moment I'm using Audacity to remove my clicks (since it's free!) but the noise removal tool makes the music sound awfully tinny and fake. Does anybody know of any decent (and relatively low budget since I'm a student) programmes to remove noise?

Thanks

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnb1I0KMH70[/youtube]

Incidentally here is a sample video. The record is in E condition

Audio Editor Plus is a free program that contains many effective noise reduction tools.

You might find it a bit fiddly, there is no one setting that's going to do everything for you, but it may be worth a look. It doesn't do deticking/clicking, you'll still have to use Audacity or another program for that. Free programs that attempt transient noise removal are generally worthless in that regard, in my experience.

Although not exactly free, ClickRepair (and its companion dehissing program DeNoise) costs only about $35 to use, and it's really great, once you learn how to use it.

Thanks for posting. You have some nice music posted on your youTube channel!

No problem, I'm glad you liked it. I try and put stuff on there when I have the time

JHolmesesq wrote:Since it's Summer I've decided that I will set myself a project of digitising one 78 of mine per day. I have an ION deck which I can hook up to my laptop.

At the moment I'm using Audacity to remove my clicks (since it's free!) but the noise removal tool makes the music sound awfully tinny and fake. Does anybody know of any decent (and relatively low budget since I'm a student) programmes to remove noise?

Thanks

I use Audacity as well....don't know why your transfer has nothing below 150 Hz or so. I remove the big clicks and bangs by hand and have a go at copy/pasting a bit of something only when a bad bit is too large to sort otherwise.

Here's one I did recently with it, from a V++ disc. There is a slight bit of weirdness in the vocal passage which is from where I did a copy/paste and couldn't get it sorted 100%, but still:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVKifTJ9B9o[/youtube]

See what you think of it.

I ALSO USE AN ION MACHINE BUT I USE VINYL STUDIO FROM WWW.ALPINESOFT.CO.UK WITCH I THINK IS EASIER to use and better. its a free download but will only let you burn 5 albums without buying a key.so to get around that you just burn the finished file with another burner program

I use Audio Lab myself which gives ok results - although not spectacular. Like all of the software available (that I have come across) it takes a while to get the best out of them. They seem to all come with loads of "effects" and tools but in my experience using just the declick and decrackle in moderation seems to work best. I personally steer clear of denoise tools as they make 78s sound like they have been recorded underwater and sound terrible. There are some you tube transfers out there that sound like this and attrack comments about how great they sound - but not to me!

A well transferred 78, from a good to excellent copy can sound very very good indead if processed with care. Over processing sucks all the life out of the recordings and they sound horrible! I once bought a commercial CD of Bing Crosby recordings - most of the tracked were over processed with that "under water" type of sound. It was so bad I simply threw it in the bin. This is why I like to buy the disks / songs I like and do my own transfer so I can make the sound be what I want it to be. Oh, and don't forget to process the track to mono if using a stereo pick up.

I never got on with Audacity myself - but then others I know have got excellent results from it. It may just be that I haven't spent enough time getting to know it better.

S-B-H

Swing Band Heaven wrote:
A well transferred 78, from a good to excellent copy can sound very very good indead if processed with care. Over processing sucks all the life out of the recordings and they sound horrible! This is why I like to buy the disks / songs I like and do my own transfer so I can make the sound be what I want it to be.

You said it. But, there's a lot of rare and desirable music out there that's too rare or expensive to make making one's own transfers a viable option, at least extensively. That's why it's useful to acquaint oneself with the labels and engineers that do good work. Engineers like Ward Marston, Richard Nevins, John R.T. Davies and others, they're out there.

Unfortunately they seem outnumbered 5 to 1 buy those who just want to bury everything under CEDAR or No-Noise, or whack a low pass filter in the chain to filter out everything above 1500 cycles and with big midrange boost to boot, in a misguided effort to eliminate/mask surface noise, above retaining a musical, natural sound.