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Topic: What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings? (Read 52133 times) previous topic - next topic
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What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Hello,
Usually, recordings form vinyl have clicks and pops.
What is the best software to remove these things?
Thanks.

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #1 –
I can't say it's the "best", but Wave Repair ($30 USD) does an amazing job by replacing the defect with the just-preceeding or just-following few milliseconds of sound (and a couple of other techniques). 

The downside is that it can be very time consuming to track-down and 'select' all of the defects.  More than once, I've spent a full-weekend fixing-up an LP!  If you are looking for a fully-automated tool, I think there are better choices. 

And, no matter how much cleaning-up and processing you do, the result is rarely as good as the CD.  Most LPs weren't that good when new!  (I assume there are exceptions... with especially good recordings/pressings in exceptionally good condition.)  So, my usual advice is to buy the CD if sound quality is important to you, and if the CD is available.

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #3 –
Quote from: jalexm on
Hello,
Usually, recordings form vinyl have clicks and pops.
What is the best software to remove these things?
Thanks.

the best? if you have a couple of thousands stashed away  just find a CEDAR distributor. there are several software available, some cheap and some uber expensive. if you want the free option use audacity. there's also a plugin pack available from sony creative software (formally known as sonic foundry), these will work with any capable host, and if you use wavelab or samplitude i think they come with their own restoration modules, albeit the ones in wavelab are crap, from past experience. btw i think soundforge 9 comes with some restoration tools if you wanna try that.
Be healthy, be kind, grow rich and prosper

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #4 –
You only have to read a few of the many other threads in this forum on the topic to know that some people are satisfied with minimal improvements over the raw recording. For many of them, whatever will give that result quickly and easily is “best.” There are others who can demonstrate that their work rivals and surpasses commercial CDs. For them, the only tools worthwhile are those that will allow them to work to that level.

Audition has some very good tools -- once you learn to use them.
Soundforge now comes with the Noise Reduction 2 plugin, which is quite good. The plugin is also available by itself, at a somewhat higher price, to be used with many other audio editors. It is easier to use than many other tools.  Those programs that allow you to fine tune the processing, and do manual corrections where necessary, especially Audition and WaveRepair, will give the best overall results, but also take the most effort.

There are many fairly inexpensive programs, and a number of quite expensive ones, each with its own champions who will tell you their choise is best. The professionals will tell you they couldn’t get along without at least a half dozen programs, and probably use two dozen of them on a more or less regular basis..

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #5 –
Like the others, I can't say what is the best since it depends on so many variables. The answer depends a good deal on how much money you want to spend.

If you're looking for something to try out that JUST does click and pop removal and doesn't cost a fortune, you might want to check out ClickRepair for $40. ClickRepair The developer is an Australian math professor and seems to really have done his homework.  He encourages you to read about it, download it and test it out for yourself before you buy.

I suggest you begin with less aggressive settings than the default and give a good listen. Subjective comment: I thought it did a great job of removing the impulse noise without affecting the music at the lower settings and up to the moderate settings. Before you run it, you might want to go in and remove big pops manually in your favorite editor, I usually manually draw in the waveform in these areas using Sound Forge.

DISCLAIMER: I have no relationship to the developer of ClickRepair and receive no compensation from him. I'm just a satisfied user of his software.

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #6 –
Best software?  I don't know but I purchased Magix Audio Cleaning Lab.3.0 several years ago and have used it to transfer a number of classical music LPs to computer/CDs with some success.  It has a built-in wizard which handles clicks, crackles and pops (sounds like a breakfast cereal!) or these can removed manually.    The most important facility is the method of removing cracks, I use a cut and paste system to move the section immediately after the fault back over the crack, in most instances the result is imperceptible.    There are some difficulties, for example using a USB connection to input the signal from a turntable, and it may be necessary to have a pre-amplifier to boost the signal to your computer.

I am also trying to use Audacity, a free program, but I do not find that it is as convenient to use as the Magix software, but I have not used it much and I need to have more practice.

But beware, do not seek perfection, be satisfied with a good recording, as long as it pleases you.


Quote from: jalexm on
Hello,
Usually, recordings form vinyl have clicks and pops.
What is the best software to remove these things?
Thanks.

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #7 –
Quote from: jalexm on
Usually, recordings form vinyl have clicks and pops.
What is the best software to remove these things?

If you want to do this quickly without too much effort, you'll want to use something automatic. Beware that all automatic declickers have limitations in what they can achieve. Sometimes they do a good job, sometimes they makes things worse. Really big clicks are never handled well by automatic declickers: they tend to be replaced by "thuds" and "plops", or sometimes partially muted. Of the automated declickers I've evaluated, I'd say the best ones around (in no particular order, they all have their own unique pros and cons) are: Wave Corrector, Sony's Noise Reduction 2.0 plugin, the declicker in Adobe Audition, Click Fix plugin for Audition, and Click Repair. Note: even though I am the author, I do NOT regard Wave Repair as among the better automaic declickers.

If you're anal about results you'll need to put in a lot of manual effort. You'll need a fairly sophisticated waveform editor. A lot of people use Audacity, and it's a nice general purpose audio editor and has the advantage of being free, but my honest opinion is that it's rather limited for vinyl restoration work. Two general purpose editors which are man enough for the job are Sound Forge and Audition.

Finally, you may be wondering what the point of Wave Repair is. It's a special purpose waveform editor, designed specifically to make the types of editing required for vinyl restoration easy to carry out. (For example, if you find a glitch that needs a similar undamaged section from nearby to be copied over it, it's a far easier task using Wave Repair than with a general purpose editor).

As I'm the author of Wave Repair, take the above with a suitable pinch of salt. But I have tried to be honest: the last thing I want is people to buy my program and then be unhappy with it.

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #8 –

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #9 –
I agree with cliveb of course!

I want to add something though: most of the automatic declickers have a certain sound or type of sound that they just can't handle. You'll think everything is fine, and then a muted trumpet plays a solo, and the declicker mangles it completely.

Other "difficult" sounds include sharp percussive instruments including guitar plucking (which is softened / removed), and some male vocalists (it puts a "frog in their throat" i.e. their voice sounds like they need to cough to clear something out).

Once you notice these shortcomings, you will hear that they are present on many commercial releases of older material. Some people insist on removing all clicks, crackles, hiss and background noise - even if there is little of the original music left at the end of the process.

Try a straight copy from LP to CD first, and listen to the result as you normally would. Then decide just how many clicks you need to remove.

Cheers,
David.

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #11 –
Whatever you do, make sure you save the original LP transfer, before any kind of declicking or denoising. That way, you can always go back and listen to the original or try another tool, without having to go through the time-consuming transfer process again.

Perhaps you'll even find that you actually want those pops and clicks, because that's your record and you've listened to those same pops and clicks for years. My dad has this thing with his original Beatles LPs, he thinks the modern CD versions have nice sound quality and are convenient compared to the LPs, but because he grew up listening to the music on LP, that's the sound he likes, that's what the music is supposed to sound like to him.

Honestly, I would do a very minimal restoration job, just to take down the noise floor a little bit (Constant noise is very easy to remove) and perhaps trim out the very worst of the clicks, but leave the character of that particular LP intact.

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #12 –
http://clickrepair.net/ works wonders. Trust me.

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #13 –
Perhaps I can add a bit here. As my handle implies, I've been specializing in studio quality LP to CD transfers for over 15 years, often for commercial release. During that time, noise reduction and sound processing technology in general has, not surprisingly, improved greatly.

Overall, I can generally agree with most of what the other commenters have written. Much depends on how much one wishes to spend in both time (done even minimally well, LP 2 CD transfers cost A LOT of time regardless!) and money, and what one considers "best." There are two things that are important that have not been mentioned. The first is that it is profoundly important to use a high quality/low jitter analog to digital converter. (I use a Mytek Stereo96 ADC myself.) In most cases, jitter can be ignored. But jitter at the ADC stage is "baked into" the resulting digital file and will compromise and be magnified by any subsequent digital processing. That is notably true of any noise reduction processing. If nothing else, one will waste a lot of time and likely suffer disappointment by using a cheap or built in sound card.

Second, no one seems to have mentioned the audio restoration software very often used for studio LP to CD work (and lots of other things besides!), iZotope RX3. It is fully professional software, but the learning curve and the price tag, $300 street for the basic version, are reasonable for what one gets. The RX3 Declicker module is simple to use, very effective and not at all destructive if used with restraint (I usually start with a sensitivity of "2".)

I should note in passing that many people also use Diamond Cut audio restoration tools. I've not used Diamond Cut and cannot further comment on it.

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #14 –
Quote from: LP2CD on
There are two things that are important that have not been mentioned. The first is that it is profoundly important to use a high quality/low jitter analog to digital converter. (I use a Mytek Stereo96 ADC myself.) In most cases, jitter can be ignored. But jitter at the ADC stage is "baked into" the resulting digital file and will compromise and be magnified by any subsequent digital processing.

Quite true. Jitter added during the recording phase is indeed "baked in".

But so is the wow+flutter of the turntable playing the LP, which as we all know is simply a sort of "analogue jitter". And it's *orders of magnitude* greater than the jitter in any half-competent A/D converter.

Just as the vinyl surface noise overwhelms the quantisation noise in the A/D converter, so too does the W+F overwhelm the converter's jitter.

I'm not advocating using any old cheap built-in soundcard when digitising vinyl, but let's be realistic: pretty much any competent card is way beyond the accuracy required to capture vinyl faithfully.

One thing that seems to get ignored whenever vinyl transfer is discussed is the analogue playback side of things. Getting the best possible signal off the LP in the first place makes any subsequent restoration so much easier. With that in mind, I'd say the most important steps are:

1. Clean the LP properly. If you have a vacuum device (eg. Keith Monks, VPI, Nitty Gritty, Moth, etc), so much the better.
2. Make sure your turntable/arm/cartridge is correctly set up, with a clean stylus in good condition.
3. Use a decent phono preamp with low noise. This is the one aspect of the transfer process where the noise level of another component may not be swamped by the vinyl surface noise.
4. If you want to monitor while recording, do it on headphones. Using loudspeakers will introduce airborne feedback to the turntable which can smear the signal. Even the best turntables are vulnerable to this - it's an unavoidable aspect of the mechanical process of playing a vinyl record.

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #15 –
Quote from: LP2CD on
Perhaps I can add a bit here. As my handle implies, I've been specializing in studio quality LP to CD transfers for over 15 years, often for commercial release. During that time, noise reduction and sound processing technology in general has, not surprisingly, improved greatly.

Overall, I can generally agree with most of what the other commenters have written. Much depends on how much one wishes to spend in both time (done even minimally well, LP 2 CD transfers cost A LOT of time regardless!) and money, and what one considers "best." There are two things that are important that have not been mentioned. The first is that it is profoundly important to use a high quality/low jitter analog to digital converter. (I use a Mytek Stereo96 ADC myself.) In most cases, jitter can be ignored. But jitter at the ADC stage is "baked into" the resulting digital file and will compromise and be magnified by any subsequent digital processing. That is notably true of any noise reduction processing. If nothing else, one will waste a lot of time and likely suffer disappointment by using a cheap or built in sound card.

Second, no one seems to have mentioned the audio restoration software very often used for studio LP to CD work (and lots of other things besides!), iZotope RX3. It is fully professional software, but the learning curve and the price tag, $300 street for the basic version, are reasonable for what one gets. The RX3 Declicker module is simple to use, very effective and not at all destructive if used with restraint (I usually start with a sensitivity of "2".)

I should note in passing that many people also use Diamond Cut audio restoration tools. I've not used Diamond Cut and cannot further comment on it.
  RX3 is the Best thing going on at the Moment.
 

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #16 –
the best? if you have a couple of thousands stashed away just find a CEDAR distributor. there are several software available, some cheap and some uber expensive. if you want the free option use audacity. there's also a plugin pack available from sony creative software (formally known as sonic foundry), these will work with any capable host, and if you use wavelab or samplitude i think they come with their own restoration modules, albeit the ones in wavelab are crap, from past experience. btw i think soundforge 9 comes with some restoration tools if you wanna try that.

What is the best software to remove clicks/pops from vinyl recordings?

Reply #17 –
Quote from: LP2CD on
The first is that it is profoundly important to use a high quality/low jitter analog to digital converter. (I use a Mytek Stereo96 ADC myself.) In most cases, jitter can be ignored. But jitter at the ADC stage is "baked into" the resulting digital file and will compromise and be magnified by any subsequent digital processing. That is notably true of any noise reduction processing. If nothing else, one will waste a lot of time and likely suffer disappointment by using a cheap or built in sound card.


First I'll invoke TOS8 because there are no extant proper subjective tests that I now of showing jitter to an audible problem with even cheap ADCs and DACs , none. There are no technical tests of ADCs and DACs+ that show endemic problems with jitter at audible levels per extant credible papers about the magnitude of audible jitter. 

It is claimed that it is now possible to remove the audible jitter that is endemic in analog recordings:

http://www.celemony.com/en/capstan

http://www.plangentprocesses.com/

IME the demos tend toward being highly convincing.