What is the best practice to remove the clicks/pops from the needle drops?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by BrilliantBob, Jan 11, 2019.

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  1. BrilliantBob

    BrilliantBob Select, process, CTRL+c, CTRL+z, ALT+v Thread Starter

    Location:
    Romania
    Personally I use with very good results the Multi-band (random clicks) algorithm, no click widening, and I start with the Sensitivity 0.5; then after cleaning, I listen if there are any clicks/pops at sens 1.0 and so on, until sens 3.0. Before that, I removed clicks and pops manually, like a greenhorn.
     
  2. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    When you start a thread like this, it's best to tell us what software you're using, as there are so many. Based on your settings, I assume you're using iZotope RX Essentials or RX 7.

    I just downloaded the Essential version for $29. It has a couple of useful features, but nothing I can really replace the other programs I use with until I upgrade to RX7. At this writing, I am doing some declicking on a 70s Journey album I had sitting around. Slow as molasses, but we;ll see how well their current declicker stacks up against the older one I have been using, and the other programs I have. It's definately going to slow down my workflow, but my philosophy is whatever, and however longer it takes to restore the vinyl to it's new, pristine state.
     
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  3. sathvyre

    sathvyre formerly known as ABBAmaniac

    Location:
    Europe
    Best software for declicking vinyl rips is WavePurity. You have to mess around a little bit until you find the right settings, but there is no other software (RX, ClickRepair etc.) with such great results !!!
     
  4. bataclan2002

    bataclan2002 All You Need Is Now.

    Listen to the CD. That’ll do it.

    Sorry, I tried but I couldn’t resist! :D
     
  5. andrewskyDE

    andrewskyDE Island Owner

    Location:
    Europe
    I remove loud and noticeable clicks'n'pops via Audacity manually after I recorded the vinyl with the same software.
    Would be time consuming to remove hundreds of them, so the record itself should be much clean as possible in the first place.
     
  6. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    There is lots of stuff you still can't get on CD, even to this day. And, if you can find it, they probably smashed the hell out of it. This is why many of us do needledrops. OK?
     
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  7. BrilliantBob

    BrilliantBob Select, process, CTRL+c, CTRL+z, ALT+v Thread Starter

    Location:
    Romania
    Indeed, I use RX 6 Advanced. The click remover is amazing! The best tool I used so far. It removes every clicks/pops. I just denoized and cleaned "The Alan Parsons Project - Vulture Culture" LP, Arista 208 884, 1984, a very good pressing, DR14, and the whole album sounds like new. I bought this LP VG+ with $5. I use for repairs Adobe Audition v3.0 (free) + RX 6 Advanced. The AA 3.0 has also a very good multi-band compressor from iZotope. Besides The Vintage Tube Saturator free VST give warm and old style sound to the needledrop. Actual CD's can't output the old vinyls very good quality. You can check the LP on youtube, I'll upload there soon. Hipsters must see, the CD's loudness can't replace the vinyl quality.
     
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  8. MikeM

    MikeM Senior Member

    Location:
    Youngstown, Ohio
    I have not at all kept up with more recent technological developments, and I'm the least expert person on the entire forum when it comes to audiophile matters.

    But I've had good success with ClickRepair for several years now.
     
  9. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    But, remember: CDs aren't inherently compressed. The mastering engineers do that to the music.

    I've just declicked a Journey album, and the declicker is very slow, but does an excellent job! I like that you can adjust clicks in certain areas of the spectrum. I can't wait to upgrade the Essential version to the proper RX7. I wish I could afford the Advanced or the professional versions! I already use Ozone.

    Then, my next step is getting Magix Spectral Layers. I've set aside music restoration and mastering for too long in favor of my other expensive interest.
     
  10. elaterium

    elaterium Forum Resident

    Clickrepair. I’m always amazed by it.
     
  11. BrilliantBob

    BrilliantBob Select, process, CTRL+c, CTRL+z, ALT+v Thread Starter

    Location:
    Romania
    SpectraLayers Pro 5 looks interesting. Works on WAV 192 kHz / 32bit float? This is the format I use for restoration and mastering and the final record I keep in WAV 48 kHz / 32bit float (compressed with wavpack).

    I finished work on my old 1984 VG+ vinyl "The Alan Parsons Project - Vulture Culture". Full of dynamics and soundstage, DR14. Almost all new CD's I bought last 6 months are full of loudness and sounds flat, like a dead fish. Where this world is going? I keep my ripped vinyls in my YT "The Analog-to-Digital Vinyl Collection"; for educational purposes, listening and of course, in $$$ benefits of the copyright owners who see these as marketing tools and monetization opportunities. I haven't any copyright infringement so far.
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2019
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  12. ashiya

    ashiya Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    I've only used Audacity and only the manual repair function because anytime I've used the click removal function for a whole song (or a few seconds of music) the overall sound quality is degraded, whereas it's not noticeable at all with manual repairs. Don't those of you who apply click removal to a whole song have this problem with sound quality and if not, what settings do you use for threshold (sensitivity) and maximum spike width? Or is it just that other programmes have better algorithms?
     
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  13. Tuco

    Tuco Senior Member

    Location:
    Pacific NW, USA
    Grant, he was having a bit of fun.
     
  14. BrilliantBob

    BrilliantBob Select, process, CTRL+c, CTRL+z, ALT+v Thread Starter

    Location:
    Romania
    Back in the days I used too the manual hard work of de-click; it's a waste of time. Besides, I destroyed the audio files quality.

    As I said before, now I use the declick tool from iZotope RX 6 with the Multi-band (random clicks) algorithm, no click widening, and I start with the Sensitivity 0.5; then after cleaning, I listen if there are any clicks/pops at sens 1.0 and so on, until max sens 3.0. I cleaned "The Alan Parsons Project - Vulture Culture" LP five times (0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5) and now the recording is crystal clear. 100,000-150,000 click&pops removed and the recording sounds perfect.
     
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  15. ashiya

    ashiya Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    Thanks for the reply. I'm fairly new to this btw so I'm a bit confused. Let me get this straight - there's no degradation of sound quality when you declick at maximum sensitivity? In which case why not start at maximum sensitivity instead of repeating the process five times?
    I notice a reduction in sound quality even at a fairly low sensitivity if I use click removal in Audacity, but manual de-click has never affected SQ for me.
     
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  16. BrilliantBob

    BrilliantBob Select, process, CTRL+c, CTRL+z, ALT+v Thread Starter

    Location:
    Romania
    The iZotope RX 6 claim to be the "standard industry" and I can confirm, they have very good tools. The vinyl restoration process is a very complex process and I get into little by little, to remove only the unwanted sounds (the noise floor, clicks, pops, crackles, etc.), very carefully to not destroy the original sound of the vinyl and to not create artifacts, distortion and other bad side effects which can arise from a brutal restoration or mastering. 0.5 sensitivity is very little, but after cleaning I listen if any leftovers remains and then I increase sens with another 0.5 little step. And so on. There are situations when I don't need to go up to 3.0 sens and the recording is clean and transparent. I use many old vinyls for their good old sound quality and cheap prices. Today I uploaded some repaired tracks on YT from an old, full of scratches vinyl and now the sound is perfect. The dynamic range is 14 that means the vinyl was very good mastered (well, Alan Parsons engineering) and perfect pressed. Nowadays the music quality is cheap, they sell loudness not art.

    -Update- At the click remover tool from iZotope the near zero sens is the lowest sensitivity, with minimal effects. Increasing the sensitivity generate a stronger cleaning process.
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2019
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  17. eelkiller

    eelkiller One of the great unwashed

    Location:
    Northern Ontario
    No room for fun on an audiophile music forum. :)
    Look at the bright side, we found someone not on his ignore list.
     
  18. What are you talking about? I have fun every time I listen to my gear! :D
     
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  19. Former Lee Warmer

    Former Lee Warmer Emotional Rescue

    Location:
    NoBoCoMO
    I do mine one by one, if they're big enough to see on the waveform, I just zoom in and take it out manually.
     
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  20. Former Lee Warmer

    Former Lee Warmer Emotional Rescue

    Location:
    NoBoCoMO
     
  21. paul62

    paul62 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Down to Earth
    Wave Corrector Professional Edition is freeware and works well:
    Download
     
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  22. Nightfly3000

    Nightfly3000 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Woodland Hills
    Sweet Vinyl's Sugar Cube SC1 or SC2 are options as well. I have the SC2 and love it. Play your vinyl in real time and hear instant results. I use Izotope as a post production user and I have tried it with vinyl as well with excellent results but I'm not a fan of sitting in front of my computer all night. I already do that all day so that's where the Sugar Cube saves me.
     
  23. BrilliantBob

    BrilliantBob Select, process, CTRL+c, CTRL+z, ALT+v Thread Starter

    Location:
    Romania
    That's how I started too... Now I have tools.

    The tools I use for ripping, restoration and mastering are:

    - Sony Hi-Res Audio Recorder (vinyl ripped in format DSD 5.6 MHz 1bit) - for Sony PS-HX500 TT only
    - TASCAM/TEAC Hi-Res Editor (converting DSD to WAV 192kHz/32bit float)
    - Adobe Audition 3.0 (free on Adobe site)
    - iZotope RX 6 Advanced
    - and some good free VSTs for different purposes (the Vintage Tube Saturator VST is free now, last year was $150 about)

    The High-Resolution Audio is a new standard of digital processes and formats that allow the encoding and playback of music using higher sampling rates than the standards used in CDs (red book 44/16).
    [​IMG]
     
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  24. Marty T

    Marty T Stereo Fan

    Location:
    NM - North of ABQ
    Declicking software performance is also a function of the instruments being declicked. I had the old DCArt declicking software and it worked great on guitar/bass and drums but turned horns into kazoos and organs also came out distorted. Hence I also stick with manual repairs and look for the best copies of the LP. I also search to see if a reel to reel version is available. I'm only needle dropping albums not already available on CD or when the CD version is extremely poor (has dropouts and other errors) or is not available in stereo on CD.
     
  25. numanoid

    numanoid Forum Resident

    Location:
    Valparaiso, IN
    Get the CD if possible. Recording vinyl that is available digitally is an exercise in futility. Most of the time different or “better” mastering a doesnt outweigh the inherent flaws in the format.

    I’ve found recently that a lot of stuff I listen to either isn’t available digitally, or if it is, it’s only lossy which is a bummer.

    As for the question, I agree with the other posters recommendation of Izotope. Clean vinyl I only do a light declick of 1 to 1.5 on fade ins or fade outs, maybe quiet passages too. I don’t have many beat up records but encountered one the other day that has like 7min of audio per side of 7” record playing at 45rpm. That required 6.0 on quiet passages, 4.0 during music, and some light denoising in quiet sections.

    Also, removing all the BS below about 50hz is a must. It cleans up a lot of rumble, and most stuff down there is just noise anyway because the lacquer more than likely had a high pass filter.
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2019
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