Restoration Question

[lpx]

Hello people of the forum, I am new here and I hope to find answers to my questions. So here goes...
Last week I took up a restoration/remastering job. The meterial that I am working with comprises of 16 old monophonic, probably radio recordings of a Greek singer (by the way I am from Greece) that was a big name here in the late 60's. I have to deal with a lot of noise (mostly hiss and hum), a poor dynamic range, and generally a dull sound. The best tools that I have at my disposal for the job are the noise reduction plug-ins that came with Cool Edit Pro 2.0, some good dynamics and EQs from the Waves family (Q10, Ultramaximizer+) and finally T-Racks 24 for the final touches. I promised to do a sample first, so I did, and I think I've done a good job, although I heven't yet sent the sample to my customer for aprooval. The bigest problem that I had to deal with was the well known "burbly" bacground artifacts that Cool Edit's noise reduction plug ins left behind. Although I managed to cope with the problem. mostly with heavy post-EQing, I had to spend a great ammount of time and effort. If I finally take the job, I want to find another piece of software that, if possible, does not induce these artifacts. Anyone with prior experience with restoration projects is welcome to drop a line on this matter, and ofcourse any other usefull advice. Thanks a lot guys...

Lefteris Xenos
Greece

 

[kylen]

Hi lpx,
I've been using Voxengo Redunoise lately for broadband noise removal. It can be adjusted for artifact-less hiss removal and is about to get an update that will provide a noiseprint feature. Once it gets that I think it will be my best hiss removal tool:

http://voxengo.com/redunoise/

Other noise removal I have is Cool Edit Pro, Sonic Foundry NR, Ionizer, Virtos and the latest Cakewalk NR. Redunoise is my 'top shelf' choice currently.

Redunoise does take some effort to learn to adjust so try the demo and see what you think. There's a forum to ask questions.

Note: Redunoise requires a VST adapter - I use Cakewalks.

kylen

 

[fenix]

i have the waves restoration package and it does an incredible job at stuff like that.

 

[kylen]

hey fenix - Waves eh, big surprise He He ? I'll bet that kicks butt !

lpx - one more thought. Sometime I seem to use less NR if I rebalance the wave a bit first. In other words if there are a lot of highs and hiss and I don't hear or see (I use a spectrum analyzer also) an appropriate amount of bass in the signal then I'll try and bump the bass up.

What I usually find, more often than not on older recordings, is that the actual content of what is down in the bass region is not what I want at all. It may be some mic proximity, or mic handling or some other resonance I don't need. If I simply bring it up with an EQ then I get garbage.

If that's the case then I'll throw something like this Baxxpander (VST) on the mix first:

http://www.kvr-vst.com/get/491.html

It brings out the good bass and otherwise constructively adds to the bottom end. If that doesn't work then PSP has a MixBass that is available in their MixPack:

http://pspaudioware.com/indexen.html?url=http://pspaudioware.com/plugins/mix.html;

I guess fenix might even mention how he likes the Waves MaxxBass (you got that one fenix ?) that probably sounds pretty good also !

Anyway my point is sometimes the more highs and hiss you hear (because the audio is not yet balanced) the more you try to get rid of hiss. Getting rid of hiss costs in most cases - I generally leave a bit rather than deal with too much loss of audio. Generally I can't hear it when I'm done.

kylen

 

[fenix]

^ i haven't really had a need yet for the maxbass plug

 

[sjoko2]

I'm with fenix - the waves restauration bundle is by far the best restauration system on the market at the moment.

Unfortunately for lpx, a system like cool edit is not really a suiteable medium for good restauration.