Re: [ARSCLIST] De-clicking

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Doug:

Thanks for the further info. I had never heard of this oxide-scraping technique until today.

Now you have me curious, so a followup. How come you'd be working with old tapes from Davies and 
Towers instead of their source disks? Are there cases where an old disk-to-tape transfer is 
preferable to going back to the disk, or is it more likely the case that the original disk is lost 
or destroyed?

Finally, like I said I only did the tape method very little and have done almost all of this kind of 
work in the computer. I learned from standing over Art Shifrin's shoulder when he was working on 
some problematic disk transfers. For loud ticks and pops in spoken word, it's usually OK to just 
zoom in far enough to grab the microsecond of waveform and zap it. I was surprised in one case that 
I zapped 50 such waveforms, spending a solid 4 hours at it, and it eliminated all of ... 1.5 seconds 
from the program time! In a half-hour spoken-word program, this is undetectable. When it comes to 
music, it's not so simple. I've found that human beings' own time-counting is "musical" (ie 
non-robotic, ie imprecise) enough that some of these ticks and pops can be zapped, especially in 
pauses. Where it doesn't work is in percussion notes or even a fast stacatto (sp?) of any acoustic 
instrument. Back when I first got into computer-aided audio, I would select the tick/pop waveform 
and reduce its level to something lower than the surrounding music and that usually made it quiet 
enough to not be detrimental to the listening experience. Then Art taught me how to write out short 
ticks and pops by learning how to recognize what the correct waveform SHOULD be and simply writing 
it in using the pencil tool in Soundforge. This works great with what I call a linear disturbance --  
ie when the needle doesn't jump the groove but merely rides over a scratch or piece of crud or 
little vinyl zit. When the needle jumps the groove like with a gouge or a big vinyl zit, all bets 
are off because there is no underlying music to mimick. I try to avoid records in that bad shape but 
sometimes you get 'em. After years of doing this, I've come to the conclusion that the most 
natural-sounding solution is just reduce the pop waveform to the level of the accompanying music. 
Any listener to a disk transfer will know that the medium is mechanical and thus there will be 
surface noises on even the best examples. That said, I'd love to see the waveforms coming out of a 
laser turntable on similar surface injuries. I would guess they'd be similar because a gouge or a 
big vinyl zit is a manufacturing or handling error that actually destroys part of the groove, so 
there can by fact be no underlying music to patch in. By the way, I know a musician would cringe at 
this, but there have been a few cases where the players so carefully replicate a phrase in its 
repeated passage that I've been known to "loop" the undamaged phrase over where there was a bad 
surface injury. The only time this has worked is when the phrase is repeated so perfectly that there 
is no time-shift. Some musicians are amazingly accurate with this, and yet don't sound robotic like 
a synthesizer.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Doug Pomeroy" <pomeroyaudio@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 8:28 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] De-clicking


> Hi Tom,
>
> I assume the reference to "Jack" is a reference to Jack Towers.
> He will tell you he got the oxide scraping technique from discussions
> with the late John RT Davies. I have worked with some of John's tapes,
> and I can report his scraping was VERY carefully done.  I have also worked
> with some of Jack's tapes, and I have to say Jack usually took off too much
> oxide, producing an obvious dropout; I had to fix lots of these, using
> crossfades, or by careful deletion of part of the audible silence.
>
> doug pomeroy
>
> > From: Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Reply-To: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List              <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx>
> > To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] De-clicking
> > Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 19:52:44 -0400
> >
> > Hi Parker:
> >
> > I'm sorry, I misunderstood what you were describing. Now I understand. That would absolutely work, 
> > but what an art form! Wow, I wonder what Jack experimented on to learn the art.
> >
> > -- Tom Fine
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Parker Dinkins" <parker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 8:14 AM
> > Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] De-clicking
> >
> >
> > > on 7/26/07 8:06 PM US/Central, Tom Fine at tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > But if you do Jack's method, you're left with the same problem as Terry -- a
> > > > microsecond of blank space, which is just as noticeable and annoying as the
> > > > click.
> > >
> > > By scraping off only the precise moment of the click, you're in effect
> > > creating a high speed fadeout and fade-in. It's audible, but less annoying
> > > than the click itself.
> > >
> > > There's an overview of analog and digital de-clicking at
> > > http://www.cedaraudio.com/intro/declick_intro.html - but without a
> > > description of manually scraping off the oxide.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Parker Dinkins
> > > MasterDigital Corporation
> > > Audio Restoration + CD Mastering
> > > http://masterdigital.com
>
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