Doctoring up an old record (snap, crackle, pop!)

[K9SaVeLLi]

I have been presented a project to clean up a really old record. The recording was taken on a mini disk and then dumped into sonar. There is a shitload of noise on the recording...snap, crackle, pops all over the place. Plus the record was slightly warped so there is the sound of the record "rocking" up & down. As well as some "air" in the recording.

I know that I can't get rid of all the bullshit...but i'm having a hard time knowing if I've done everything in my power to clean it up. I have eq'd the shit out of the tracks. Killed the highs and the lows...played with the mids and so on. The waves resoration defalut settings didn't seem to do anything. WTF?
This would be much easier if my computer could handle realtime effects manipulation...but it's an older comp with not enough RAM to handle all the plug ins. Looking to upgrade soon. In the mean time i can only do what i'm capable of.

Has anyone worked on projects similar to this...what did you do? Or what advice do you guys have on handling something like this. Any info is appreciated! I need to know if I can do more or if I've beat this thing to death.

The music is just a piano and vocal...recorded back in the day...anywhere from the 20's-40's...I think.


One more quick question. What kind of eq setting would mimic the listener being in a different room. When I walk out of my studio...into the next room (doors open) it takes away alot of the garbage.

O.K. another quick question (my bad on the long post) I'm pretty sure its originally a mono recording...would it be better to split the recording into separate L/R tracks and pan them out (L/R 50%-100%)?

Thanks in advance!

 

[sonicpaint]

I'll give it a shot for you.

K9SaVeLLi I've done this a couple of times and you need to use more specialized tools like click and pop removers, scientific filters, notch filters and noise reduction. It can be a long process and in the end may not all be removed.

If you don't mind you can send me an mp3 of the file and I can see what I can do for you. It's really too difficult to try and explain how to use all these tools because of all the different factors that come into play. I'm not making any promises by any means but I have done this sort of thing before with good results.

let me know,
sonicpaint

 

[masteringhouse]

You may want to have a look at the Waves Restoration Bundle. It has quite a few of the tools needed for this type of work.

High end systems include those from Cedar.

Have a look at:

http://www.cedar-audio.com/

In particlar the introduction to audio restoration.

 

[K9SaVeLLi]

Thanks for the replys. I attempted to use the Waves Restoration plugins for crackles and pops, but they didn't seem to do much if anything. I only used some of the default settings which probably need to be tweeked to get desired results. Other than that I just eq'd the sheit out of it.

Sonicpaint: Thanks for the offer! I will work on getting the audio on the net or try to e-mail it to you. (need addy). Would you rather have the original or the working audio or both?

Thanks again.

 

[masteringhouse]

Thanks for the replys. I attempted to use the Waves Restoration plugins for crackles and pops, but they didn't seem to do much if anything. I only used some of the default settings which probably need to be tweeked to get desired results. Other than that I just eq'd the sheit out of it.

I believe the default settings have the threshold set at maximum so they won't do anything there.

By default settings I assume that you did try adjusting the threshold in order to make the plugin react? I'm confused by your comment that they didn't seem to to much of anything. The results can be quite radical if you want them to be ...

 

[MichaelM]

Well, I guess it would help if I read this post a bit better before writing a stupid reply.......