RickD
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Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
I am trying to restore a recording of a song written and performed by my grandmother in 1942. It was recorded on a 10 inch, mono, 78 RPM shellac disk (too bad she didn’t have SONAR). The disk was played on my modern turntable at 45 RPM and input to a stereo audio track in SONAR. I then did a time/pitch adjustment to account for the difference between 45 & 78. As would be expected from a recording like this, the voice and piano are buried in noise. I’ve tried some filtering and other processing but was wondering if any experts could give me their advice. Here are the links to a short clip of the song. They contain only part of the first verse since the intent is to give you just an idea of what I am dealing with. The wave file is 5.0 MB and is a clip cut from the actual SONAR project. The MP3 file is exactly the same clip but smaller in size (583KB) due to MP3 compression. http://216.194.91.30/song/contented.mp3 http://216.194.91.30/song/contented.wav I would suggest downloading the wave file only if you intend to do a little experimenting yourself.
< Message edited by RickD -- 2/21/2004 6:37:32 PM >
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b rock
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RE: Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
February 21, 04 6:47 PM
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wondering if any experts could give me their advice. That certainly wouldn't be me here, but i think I would have approached this a bit differently. First of all, I would try to find a turntable that would play back your recording at the original 78 RPM speed. Stretching the pitch and time by a factor of almost 2 is bound to introduce severe artifacts in this process alone. I would also look into any vinyl restoration plug-ins you can find (the names and links escape me for the moment) to try to get the cleanest, most natural initial recording into Sonar. Perhaps then some minimal EQ and mastering tools (nothing too intrusive) might tweak this into something you like. After all, it is a song from the '40s and part of the charm will be having the sound, warts and all, that places it in that era. I didn't listen to the clips on your links, but my opinion would still be to re-record the song, if only to preserve it as an archive.
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Fred Holmes
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RE: Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
February 21, 04 7:02 PM
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absolutly agree with "b rock" Find someone with a 78 rpm turntable and stylus to playback yourr disk. trying to time shift will just add in too many artifacts. Soundforge "Noise Reduction" has vinyl restoration plus many more possibilities. I have Soundforge "Noise Reduction" and would be willing to try processing your wave file if you can get it recorded via a 78rpm turntable Fred
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bobleft
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RE: Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
February 21, 04 7:22 PM
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Pyro 2004 also has audio restoration plug-ins. I am sure the Sonic Foundry noise reduction is better, but it might be worth a look. Also there is a program called Clean! by Pinacle (Steinberg).
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Boogie
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RE: Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
February 21, 04 7:25 PM
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B Rock and Fred are both right about re-sampling the record at its proper RPM. If you have Cool Edit/Audition, it has it's own Noise Reduction filters that allow you to map a noise profile by selecting a section of just noise (like the lead-in) and apply that profile to the audio. This effectively removes the noise but leaves the audio virtually untouched. Then use a mastering plugin like Ozone to liven it up. I recently did this to an old and very noisy 1/2 inch 8-track master with excellent results. There's also a click/pop eliminator in CE/AA that I've used to archive some of my vinyl. Go easy with this though, and don't use the presets. If there are tons of clicks you're better off not trying to remove all of them, because it will likely take some audio with it. Good luck and please post your final results!
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John Page
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RE: Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
February 21, 04 7:34 PM
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I have been doing alot of this stuff recently and I have come to this conclusion "You cant polish a turd" no matter what noise reduction your using. I agree with everybody else about getting the right record player. If it sounds just as noisy Im sorry to say the record is just to worn or damaged to be any good. My guess would be it will sound alot better on the right player. Good luck
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Boogie
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RE: Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
February 21, 04 7:41 PM
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Rick, Could you post a snippet of just noise from this recording? I tried to map a noise profile to your clip but I need a noise reference. The piano sounded good, but the voice was wrecked. I suspect that the time stretching might have had a lot to do with it, but it's hard to tell without having a noise reference. There's so much noise in this that you're probably going to have to deal with some noise. It's not all bad though, the noise may help keep the recording in its historical perspective. Your grandmother is quite a talented lady...
< Message edited by Boogie -- 2/21/2004 4:50:42 PM >
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ohhey
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RE: Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
February 21, 04 8:12 PM
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You need to get on e-bay and find a turntable and stili that was designed to play that type record. Modern cartrides have too much fidelity and will pick up all that noise. I have the same problem with modern records. If you use my Shure V15 I get no end of noise, if I use a cheap radio shack cartrige I get just what I need. You can always BBE the thing if the highs are dull but it's much harder to get rid of stuff you don't want.
< Message edited by ohhey -- 2/21/2004 8:16:34 PM >
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RickD
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RE: Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
February 21, 04 8:22 PM
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Thanks everybody for the comments. Years ago when I had a record player that had a 78 speed setting, I played this record and made a reel-to-reel tape of it for archiving purposes. That reel-to-reel is virtually unplayable today because of improper storage but I have heard it enough so that the sound sticks in my memory. When I did the pitch/time shift in SONAR I was absolutely amazed at how well it worked despite the extreme settings. I thought that the noise problem was much worse than any artifacts that would affect the voice and piano so that is why I decided that this method of recording was sufficient. However, just the fact that everyone says find a 78 RPM turntable first is enough to convince me that is what I must do. In the meantime, I'm still looking for restoration techniques that will work with what I have now and with a new recording once I find a 78 RPM machine. The record has held up quite well for 62 years. My understanding is that it was made on a home recording machine that cut audio tracks into blank shellac disks. It was, in fact, probably the 1942 equivalent of SONAR. ORIGINAL: Boogie Could you post a snippet of just noise from this recording? Here are clips of just the noise. The first one is about one second long from just after the lead-in groove to just before the piano hits its first note. Is that enough to work with? http://216.194.91.30/song/noise.wav This clip is from the end, just after the music stops, to just before the lead-out groove. There is some additional strange noise here but it's all I have without re-recording the song. http://216.194.91.30/song/noise_end.wav Also, thanks for noting that Pyro contains some basic noise reduction tools. I've tried it out and it seems to offer some hope. If SoundForge does a better job I will probably be looking into that also. This is a really cool project. I'm looking forward to getting a first-rate digital remaster.
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thorne
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RE: Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
February 21, 04 8:49 PM
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I have a digital turntable with 78RPM. If you like, send me the record VERY WELL PACKED. I'll record a WAV file for you at any bit rate and depth you want and email it to you. I'll return the record in the same packaging you send me. If interested, reply to thornev@us.ibm.com. Thorne PS - The turntable I have is Stanton STR8-80.
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Boogie
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RE: Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
February 21, 04 9:06 PM
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I made another attempt using the noise clips you posted. The noise clips themselves, especially the noise_end.wav, sound like they have suffered from artifacts due to the time stretch. Ohhey's probably right about the turntable you're using. A lo-fi 78 RPM machine will likely pick up less of the noise and you won't have the time stretching artifacts. Let us know if you'd like more help. (I must admit that I'm no expert.) I'm quite interested in hearing the final result so keep us posted.
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michael japan
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RE: Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
February 22, 04 4:45 AM
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soundforge-- noise reduction. click and crackle removal, vinyl restoration. Aural activator/smooth enhance. You might even try normalizing it (you can always undo. You just need to experiment with Soundforge and go by your ears. Keep it natural and scratchy. You will want to add more translucent highs while getting rid of the upper mid ones. A bit more 10k sheen and a bit less around 2-4k.
< Message edited by michael japan -- 2/22/2004 4:47:12 AM >
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kylen
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RE: Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
February 22, 04 6:01 AM
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You might try popping over to http://www.audiomastersforum.org/amforum/index.php where a lot of the Cool Edit Pro 'old timers' hang and see which ones you could ask about this - like Andrew Rose (UK) to name drop one of the Pros. I guess you could even get a pro to do the transfer if it's only that one cut so you don't have to worry about buying a 78 turntables, etc. As far as the old reel-to-reel tape goes maybe you could 'bake' it and bring it back to life long enough to get your earlier transcription from it.
< Message edited by kylen -- 2/22/2004 3:03:28 AM >
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krizrox
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RE: Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
February 22, 04 10:05 AM
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There is another excellent program out there for this kind of work and I highly recommend it. It's called Wave Repair and can be found at www.waverepair.com This program's claim to fame is the ability to redraw waveforms with a mouse. Great for repairing vinyl noise that the usual repair techniques miss. It also includes great hiss and noise removal tools. A real bargain considering the price of $30. Also, just for grins, has anyone seen this: http://www.elpj.com/ The laser turntable? If I had six or seven grand laying around I'd buy one :-)
Larry Kriz www.LnLRecording.com www.myspace.com/lnlrecording Sonar PE 8.5, Samplitude Pro 11, Sonic Core Scope Professional/XTC, A16 Ultra AD/DA, Intel DG965RY MOBO, Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz processor, XFX GeForce 7300 GT PCIe video card, Barracuda 750 & 320GB SATA drives, 4GB DDR Ram, Plextor DVD/CD-R burner.
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lagom
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RE: Restoration of a 1942 song by my grandmother
February 22, 04 11:24 AM
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If you come across a 78-turntable do several recordings. Then try to match the recordings in time -which might be impossible though, due to the fact that each playback from a analog device will be unique as speed will vary constantly. If you are succesfull with the match then mix all the recordings together. If the noise you are suffering from is kind of random then this method will turn out quite well. Good luck! /Christofer
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