Repairing a digital clipping issue-Am I out of luck?

There may be a better solution than what I'm about to mention. But I'll mention it just in case there isn't :-)
 
There is a program called Wave Repair (you can find it easily through Google) that (among other things) allows you to fix digital clipping by smoothing over, or rounding off, the tips of waveforms. It has the tendency to kill some of the high end in those spots but you can surgically find just those peaks and deal with them at a subatomic level. The fix is probably going to sound better than what was there originally anyway and since it's just a small blip in time, your ears may not even notice it had been fixed. It also has a pencil tool that allows you to manually draw a waveform (you would normally use it just to correct very tiny sections of a waveform).
 
The problem is that Wave Repair only works on 16 bit stereo files. It was mainly designed for dubbing audio from records and cleaning up the surface noise. It hasn't been updated in a long while. So if this is a 24 bit mono file, you will need to export it out of Sonar as a 16 bit stereo file in order to work on it. Once the fix is in place, you can always import it back into Sonar and make a mono clip out of it. This back and forth, in and of itself, might cause a problem but again, you might not notice it in the final analysis. The only other gotcha is that I think it only works on 32 bit OS. I'm not sure about Vista. I know it works in XP.
 
The bright side is, the program only costs like around $30 so it's a cheap alternative to Wavelab or SoundForge. Hopefully there is a better, less labor intensive solution out there. But if not, try Wave Repair. I'm almost certain it will solve your problem.
 
PS - I have Samplitude and it also has tools for this type of work. I only mention it as another, albeit expensive, solution. Wavelab or Soundforge probably have similar tools.
 
PSS - I forgot to ask - this spot where you have the problem - is there not another good section somewhere else in the song you can copy and paste from? Usually choruses are repeated more than once.

Waves has also a couple of wave restoration plugins that are excellent. I think one is called X-crackle, and another one is X-Clicker. I just finished an album, and the guy who mixed the album made excellent use of those. When you use it to correct a clipping less than 10 ms, it becomes totally unnoticeable.

i think a depopper/decrackler type program may work too-thanks

soundsubs


i do this ALL the time for various reasons. mostly "oops"

heres my solution:
run this track out of a 1/4" output and re-record through either a tube preamp or an analog processor (i use a sansamp) and it will clean it up, almost miraculously.

Interesting solution!. Might have to try that myself some time. Forgot to mention Reaper. That might also have tools for this type of work (never used it I'm just guessing). About double the price of Wave Repair but probably a better solution since it's basically a a full-featured DAW.
 
Now that I'm thinking about it, surprising that Sonar doesn't incude better tools for this kind of work ain't it? Not that I need it all that often, but at least a decent set of clean-up tools would be a welcome addition to the program.

If you find yourself having to fix things like this more than once...I'd go ahead and spend the money on iZoptope RX.  You'll be glad you did.

krizrox


 
Now that I'm thinking about it, surprising that Sonar doesn't incude better tools for this kind of work ain't it? Not that I need it all that often, but at least a decent set of clean-up tools would be a welcome addition to the program.

agreed-Something for the Sonar 9 wish list

John


I really don't see how sending a clipped file out and recording it can change anything. It may obscure the clipping but it is still there. One would think.

The clips are due to the AD converter being overloaded and sending that audio stream to the HD clips and all. They are not going to be eliminated simply by rerecording it. At least I don't see how.

You're right John - just re-recording the file won't do squat to fix the overs. What soundsubs is seeing is the meters not going into the red or showing the overs when he re-records. The actual sound of the overs is still there. The only way to fix this after the fact is to either try Soundforge's 'Restore Clipped Peaks' tool (which I've used) or the corresponding one in Izotope rx (which I've not used).

Erm

Get in there and fix it manually hopefully the clips are actually very very short, just split the clip at that point pull back either side of the clip, and then fade out and back in respectively.

It won't work on long clips, but on short ones it will and give you a very clean sound.

Try this first as its free :)