Using good head phones seemed really helpful.

I was going crazy today trying to restore a digitized transfer of a 1964 pressing of a mono LP record.

I used all the good noise and click/pop reduction tricks but thought there still seemed to be some noise. Lots and lots of light reduction passes.

Then, I took off the headphones and used my speakers and it's remarkable how little noise there is left to hear.

Unlike mixing etc., the headphones proved really useful for highlighting both the noise and the artifacts of the noise reducing filters so I ended up working extra hard at minimizing the noise while not creating artifacts.


Good news.

I thought I'd share the experience as I don't do this type of stuff often and it seemed to work really well today.


best regards,
mike

Mike that is a very good point. I have done a lot of post audio mixing for TV, mixing music dialogue and effects etc. I have often had to clean up poor dialogue tracks using noise reduction techniques and I always used headphones for doing this. The phones being so close to your ears have an ability to really hear what is going on and I agree that even after applying noise reduction what seemed to be still not perfect in the headphones played out well over speakers.

You can also apply this approach to cleaning up music tracks that may have odd noises and things on them that are hard to pin down on speakers. Get on the phones and you will often find it easier to track down offending tracks and apply the appropriate measures to clean them up etc..And as you have said once you are happy with what you are hearing on the phones the speakers will be perfect.

+1 to both posts. I too do all my noise reduction and processing with my cans. Even editing, all through cans. Ever do a punch-in on Sonar or something else? Even though you have auto-crossfade set, you still need to over-lap the clip on both sides of the punch points slightly. If you don't, you may not hear the little click sound through your monitors as your time line passes over the punch points...but you sure will hear it through your cans.

You know why that is? Yeah, you probably do...lol...but in case some don't....the cans (even open backs) are more isolated so noises will jump out at you. The biggest thing though...stick a sound meter in your headphones....you'll be surprised at what dB level you're listening at. Having that directly into our ears like that...it's actually louder and more up close and personal than your monitors being super loud. This is a really important thread. Everyone should consider noise shaping and editing in cans for times when you really need to be focused on these types of elements in your mix.

-Danny

I don't often use noise reduction techniques ..... but I do agree 100% that you can hear the "deeply buried" miscellaneous things in the mix with cans that you will totally miss in the speakers. 

Thanks for sharing, Mike. I think of headphones as a microscope, speakers as the big picture. Each gives you something the other misses.

+1