Groove mechanic sweeps with a very broad brush & can do an OK job. I used it three times & gave up. I've done well over 100 LPs with W repair & am very happy. I recently did an old james Brown record I bought from the US "Thinking About Little Willie Johns & A Few Nice Things" The claim was that it was mint. I played it & it had quite a few clicks, pops, smears & some occasional noise. I recorded it into waverepair & processed it manually & the CD is now a close to mint as my ears could hear. WR will point to individual clicks etc, you can zoom in & slice it off, replace it with a matching section or EQ it away. If the record is rare, greatly loved, not released on CD etc - in other words it's worth the effort - WR is the go. If the CD can be had for US$7 or so - the work involved in doing a great job isn't worth it.
Waverepair can be brilliant - the degree will be up to you. None better at present than WR. I've spent years on this I did a LOT of research.
The quality of the CD will relate to source material - I lot can be fixed. Really bad LPs can be made OK, EQs, filters, compression. amplification, channel manipulation, clicks, pops, smears, background & mechanical noise can all be dealt with in WR BUT the worse the prob, the longer it takes to get good results. Hiss, crackle & noise removal can degrade the quality if poorly managed.You need to record the lead in & run out tracks as well as the space between tracks to get the "fingerprints" needed to treat these things.
