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Posted by Mike Rivers on 04/28/06 15:09
swangdb wrote:
> I have many cassettes and LPs I'd like to record to WAV files on my
> computer. I have an M-Audio Audio Interface and Audacity does a pretty
> good job of recording audio. I'd like to be able to remove noise from
> some of the recordings and I want to remove the pops and clicks from
> the songs from LPs. I don't want this processing to ruin the "magic"
> of the original recordings if possible.
> I've heard of SOUNDSOAP, Magix Audio Cleaning Lab and Steinberg Clean.
> Are any of these any good? Are they worth the money? Are there any
> other packages that do the same thing?
As you'll discover after the first dozen or so, this is a very tedious
and time consuming process. Most people with a decent sized collection
give it up before they're finished, so you'd best not invest a lot in
it.
It should go without saying (but somehow it needs saying) that the
first step toward minimizing clicks on LPs is to clean the records
thoroughly before playing. You can spend a grand on a liquid-and-vacuum
cleaner, or you can wash the disks by hand using a mild detergent,
being careful not to get the label wet. At minimum, use a "preener"
brush with a liquid cleaning solution. The less processing you have to
do on the recording, the more accurately the recording will be
preserved.
Let me put in a plug for a non-mainstream highly consumer oriented
program called Spin It Again from Acoustica (http://www.acoustica.com).
It has a recording program, gives you a means to set the record level
easily, automatically shuts off after a few minutes of silence so you
can walk the dog between transferring sides of an LP, and it has a
CD-burning module built in. It also identifies silence between cuts on
a record or tape and inserts the CD track index points automatically
(you can tweak them, and probably should at least check them), which is
one of the most tedious parts of the job if you want to make CDs that
play like CDs. There's also a click reduction tool which works fairly
well. It's a pretty inexpensive program, and you can download a
functional demo version (I think it works 5 times or something like
that) to get a sense of what it can do.
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