Re: [ARSCLIST] 78rpm EQ and postprocessing

[Charles Lawson <clawson@xxxxxxxx>]

Tom Fine wrote:
>Hi Charles:
>
>Would you be willing to share some of your before and after sound files,
>just snippets are fine?

Sure.  I'm pretty busy at the moment, but I should be able to get some good
samples together before very long.

>I'm always interested in how far one can push the
>various digi-fixes before they go artifact-crazy or start taking out
>meaningful chunks of musical content. My experience is you can push much
>harder with voice-only content or mainly-voice content, although taking out
>too much "air and space" around the human voice greatly reduces audibility.

I'm sure that I'm not offering much news here, but most of the time, people
are far too aggressive with noise reduction.  Often, a job takes several
passes with gentle settings rather than one pass with aggressive ones.  I
have been guilty of being too aggressive, also--especially when a client is
particularly pushy--but nothing works better than patient, gentle noise
carving using several different algorithms.  It is rare, indeed, when you can
remove all the noise without introducing comical or nauseating artifacts, but
you can reduce noise to an incredible degree with even very low-cost software
if you are willing to take your time.

The fellows at DiamondCut are solid engineers/programmers.  The product is an
outstanding value and occasionally leaves much higher-priced competitors in
the dust.  It is rarely my *only* tool on a particular project, though.

Chas.

--
Charles Lawson <clawson@xxxxxxxx>
Recording/Production/Broadcast Engineer
WETA Radio <http://www.weta.org/fm/>
Washington, DC