So… having given up on dedicated noise-reduction software after moving to Mac OS X in 2001, I took to the tedious manual intervention method. Finally, there are some legitimate sounds that can be mistaken for a click (think staccato percussion instruments), and the typical algorithm for pop/click removal sometimes makes this mistake. For another, these noises are intimately entwined with the good sounds, and they are totally unpredictable in frequency and intensity. Why is this? Well, for one thing, it’s nearly impossible to get a sample of a “pop” or “click”, because they are so short in duration. While this can be effective on persistent background noise like hum and hiss, it’s spectacularly bad at dealing with pops and clicks. These products typically take the approach of having you identify a sample of the noise you want to remove, and then unleashing their filters on the audio track to hunt down and destroy the bad noise. Even the excellent Sound Studio, which I’ll mention again shortly, has some basic audio “repair” tools. #CLICKREPAIR BYTES 96KB PRO#For example, Sound Soap Pro retails for $599, while a product called Waves Restoration will set you back $1,200! I’ve never tried either of those, because shelling out $100 for RayGun and another $100 for SoundSoap 2 was already more than I wanted to spend to remove the clicks and pops from my converted vinyl audio.īesides RayGun and SoundSoap, the only other noise-reduction options you have for less than $100 are the filters available in audio recording/editing tools such as Amadeus, CD Spin Doctor (a stealth product from Roxio that isn’t available except in a bundle with other software), and the free, open-source Audacity. (Fortunately, I saved the original recordings of the files I had RayGunned, so when time permits I can go back and clean them properly.)īy the way, RayGun and Sound Soap both have bigger brothers that are more expensive still, and whose prices are dwarfed by some of the “professional” audio restoration software products you can buy. #CLICKREPAIR BYTES 96KB TRIAL#In both cases, cleaning a file required often lengthy, subjective trial and error to come close to an acceptable outcome. Both of these products cost $99 or so, and neither was able to achieve my primary goal without damaging either the high frequencies or low frequencies (or both) in the music files I was trying to clean up. Last year, I bought the new Sound Soap 2 from BIAS, hoping it could match the company’s marketing promises. Before OS X, I had used RayGun from Arboretum Systems, and I would have upgraded to try their OS X version, but it took Arboretum more than 3 years to get with the OS X program. In tackling “pops” and “clicks”, other tools butcher the audio so badly I would prefer to hear the noise than listen to what they offer as cleaned audio. In my experience, the audio noise-reduction packages available for Macintosh before ClickRepair were simply too expensive, too much trouble to use, or too unreliable. (The latter problem is the single biggest reason why finding 45’s from the 1950’s and 1960’s in mint or near-mint condition is so challenging–and costly!) There are other forms of audio degeneration on old vinyl records, but “pops” and “clicks” are the most common and the most frequently troublesome on records that have managed to avoid damage by worn needles, substandard record players, or clueless teenagers. I’ve purchased the excellent (and expensive!) Nitty Gritty vacuum-powered record cleaner to care for my collection, but my turntable’s diamond needle still encounters specks of dirt and grime that cause audible noise when the record is played. However, all it takes is one teeny tiny scratch on a vinyl record to produce an audible “pop” or “click” in the music. I’m pretty picky about the 45’s I buy, so most of them are very clean and have beautifully clear audio. So I’m continuously recording 45’s on my Mac and adding them to iTunes. What is it, exactly, that I need this kind of software for? Well, as a record collector I have a huge stock of old 45 rpm vinyl records, and as an iPod/iTunes user, I want to take my collection with me when I leave the house. And he makes this possible for an investment of only $25. In the best shareware tradition, a mathematics professor in Australia named Brian Davies has applied his mathematical prowess and his knowledge of digital audio to produce a java application that succeeds in a spectacular way where many commercial packages have failed: With his ClickRepair application, music lovers everywhere can now clean up audio files transferred from old vinyl records without compromising the sound quality of the underlying music. I’m diverging a bit from the usual topics to share my discovery of a small software miracle that will truly elicit “Oohs” and “Aahs!” from readers who spend time digitizing their old vinyl records.
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