Re: [ARSCLIST] Cedar

[Don Cox <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 21/05/07, Tom Fine wrote:

>> From Richard:
>> I find it is possible (and there is a trend) to over-use the noise
>> reduction, but, when applied
>> well, it is excellent.
> 
> VERY true about over-use. To my own ears, tick/pop removal can be very
> effective to a certain degree, especially with fidelity-challenged
> formats like 78's and transcription discs, but even then must be used
> with care and careful listening to before and after sound quality. As
> for hiss/noise reduction, this is the most over-used tool in the box.
> Use it more than a tiny bit with anything approaching high fidelity
> material and it sucks and air and life out of the top end, first
> noticeable as loss of space around treble-heavy instruments or loss of
> room tone/reverb. The next degree of over-application is turning tape
> hiss into digi-swishies. You'd think this would never occur but it
> happens all the time. All I can think is the mastering "engineers" in
> these cases don't listen while they hit computer keys or are so

Most computers have fan noise which would make it hard to hear the
ambience on a record.

And there is the question of what monitors are being used.

> hearing-damaged they can't hear digi-swishies (which sound somewhat
> like FM inter-station interference but worse). Graham Newton has
> shared some old radio transcription transfers he's cleaned up and they
> are free of artifacts. For something like old radio or spoken-word
> recordings, especially if you apply treble attenuation before NR
> filtering, you can take out a large amount of background noise and
> make it more audible without artifacts, but there seems to be a line
> that all digi-filters can cross that makes it worse.
> 
> As with all good audio work, it's up to human ears and human judgement
> when applying technology. Yet another argument against vast robotic
> processes.
> 

Regards
-- 
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx