Removing cracks & pops from LPs

[JamesWoods]

hello,

I have a rather large jazz LP collection which I would like to burn with my newly acquired CD burner. Unfortunately, my albums have been rather beaten by time and I need to get my hands on a piece of software that will help me remove cracks and pops from the music. Has anyone heard of good (and preferably freeware) software that will help me in my latest project?

Thanks

James

[S8-N]

Are you THE James woods???
Different programs have different versions of a "hiss/pop/crackle" eliminator. Cool Edit Pro is the one that I am familiar with and I must say that I have had little success with it. It creates serious artifacts that annoy me more than the noise itself does.
Like Frank Zappa said... That noise you are removing contains music.

[BigKahuna]

I bought Sound Laundry 2.1 a couple months ago. I use it to restore old shellac and 78rpm records as well as old reel to reel tapes. These recordings are in very poor shape, but this program really does reduce nearly all of the click and crackle. It does affect the hi frequencies, so some EQ is needed to bring it back.

It's not free but you can get a 'compact' version of the software for $149 http://www.algorithmix.com/home/index_products.htm




[This message has been edited by BigKahuna (edited 01-25-2000).]

[Evgueni]

I've tried several such programs and found Sound Laundry and CLickFix (plug-in for CoolEdit200 and CoolEditPro) to be the best among automatic declickers.

ClickFix seems to have has harder time eiminating small constant crackle than Sound Laundry, but for other types of clicks it does good job, and it's much cheaper ($30).

Both of them have "real-time preview", that is, you can tweak the settings and hear immediately what the result will be.

BigKahuna gave already the URL for Sound Laundry, the URL for CLickFix: http://www.fpage.com/tearoom/clickfix/index.htm

It has to be said, though, that best results are achieved only through not using the automated procedures, but doing declicking manually. This way you can make sure that you do remove only clicks and leave all the musical content undamaged. But this consumes A LOT of time.

There are several tools for making manual declicking easier and more effective. Some people like "WaveRepair" program, which can be found here: http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~abcomp/wavrep.htm (this site also contains very good introduction to doing "LP to CD" conversion: http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~abcomp/lp-cdr.htm)

I also wrote for my own use the plug-in for CoolEdit96/2000 to facilitate and speed up manual declicking. I've put it on a Web: http://employees.vadem.com/che/sw/ceplug/
It is almost undocumented, being non-commercial product, but you are welcome to ask questions if something in its interface is not clear

[tbowen]

Here is a company that does this kind of stuff, i know a guy who sends all of his old recordings and messed up bootlegs to this company and they are supposed to do a really nice job:
oh well i couldnt find it, but you can try these guys: www.cdmarksman.com