[Ardour-Users] Plugin help

[Thomas Vecchione]

On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 7:09 AM, Ralf Mardorf
<ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net> wrote:
> Thomas Vecchione wrote:
>>
>> Restoration and Noise Removal is one area Linux lacks in
>> significantly.
>
> IMO restoration and noise removal is something that is uninteresting for
> audio engineering. I prefer vinyl, but if vinyl is broken, then it's broken,
> there's no way to do any useful restoration with any tool for any OS. How
> should this work? It's impossible. But okay, people have got different needs
> and I believe that there are tools that do the best that is possible. Maybe
> Wine/ Wineasio can be used to get some of the better tools to do noise
> removal for vinyl.

I would STRONGLY disagree.

I DO agree with your premise we should concentrate on noise
prevention, however I am not always working with recordings I make.
The recordings I make I rarely have to worry about.  For instance I
just had a client come up to me with a reel to reel recording from 15
years ago he wanted to digitize and clean up.  It was recorded with
the gain to low, and noticable hiss.  What am I supposed to tell my
client, sorry you should have done a better job recording?  The guy
was a music director at a church, not a sound engineer, and did the
best he could(Which honestly wasn't a bad mix in most places, not
great, but not bad).  That recording for him was a once in a lifetime
thing with some talented musicians playing music he composed as he has
since stopped doing music professionally.

> The only useful way to eliminate noise is to
> do it manually in silent parts, because this needs human thinking.

As demonstrated above, this is incorrect.  I removed noise, a
combination of cracks and a not insignificant amount of hiss from the
recordings itself, with minimal artifacts.  That is what I was paid to
do, and the client walked away happy.

> For some
> noise it's better to fade in and out to a lower level, related to other
> tracks, were no silence is. Completely auto cut or auto reduce noise most
> times will have an audible result.
>

You are correct in that a complete cut at any point is not useful as
it will be audible.  However I wouldn't be used a complete cut.  A
downwards expansion at a slight ration for the silent parts works
wonders in my experience.

     Seablade