Needle-drop on a budget.

If you run windows, I'd recommend Audacity for audio capture. Free to use software, on board de-clicker that is not the best by a good distance IMHO, but it can improve things to a degree, just not anywhere near as good as Click Repair in my experience. You can also zoom in on some single clicks and use a repair function though. This only works within a maximum number of samples in a selection though. This seems to be the case on the version I'm currently using anyway.

 

As I mentioned in the Replaygain thread when Audacity came up...

 

Ah, a different animal altogether. Try Clickrepair. It's truly a godsend for needledroppers. wwwclickrepair.net. For those with a few more dollars to invest, izotope's RX is really coming into its own as an audio restoration powerhouse (www.izotope.com).

 

I have one of the better Numark turntables that was ever made, the TT500 and it suits me fine for my needle drops, etc. Even KABUSA sells the better Numark turntables currently made. BTW, ION IS Numark's brand sold to mass merchandisers, and Numark itself is mainly sold at pro audio stores.

 

It depends on what program you use, what settings you use, and your skill. never use presets.

It's very hard to use, and isn't that great. No wonder you had problems.

 

You can get truly fantastic results from Audition/Cool Edit's built-in declicking, but only if you're a total masochist like myself and do it manually. Your mind is a much better judge of whether a click is part of a an attack transient or just surface noise. Besides, different kinds of clicks require different approaches to remove without impacting the music around them.

Automatic settings will *always* either leave some clicks, or remove proper musical material, or both.

 

I was not aware of that. I have been happy with the needle drops I've done in audacity.

 

Click repair can be very pleasingly non intrusive on the correct settings And of course you can listen to just the removed part of your setting in Click Repair too.

 

Yep, and as I've said, is the occasional tiny missing tick really worse than constant snap, crackle, pop!?

 

Then you don't need to do needledrops because you're not playing records.

 

Good grief, what setting did you use - 80? I find Click Repair to be transparent and wonderful when used @ 20 or below. Also, the new reverse mode works very well.

 

+1 on the Audacity with Windows problem. It will look like it is recording in 24 bits, but it is really only doing 16 bits. It does correctly handle 24 bit data if you are just editting a file that was recorded elsewhere in 24 bits, it just does not record in 24 bits.

There is a discussion of the problem here:
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=8653
and a descrition of the software module that is the root of the problem here:
http://audacity.238276.n2.nabble.com/24-bit-recording-on-Windows-td2505042.html#a2505042

It works fine with other platforms (Mac, Linux, etc.) just not Windows.

On the clickrepair issue, it is possible to get overly agressive with the settings and start to degrade the music, but with care, it works great. I tend to go a bit on the light side with the processing, and then if there are still a few clicks left over I manually edit them (I use Goldwave, but Audacity would work for this). If I want to be sure I am not affecting the sound, I use the editor to subtract the output of the clickrepair from the original, which leaves just the sounds that clickrepair removed. Playing that back, you can easily hear if the sound is random (clicks and pops) or rythmic, meaning you are affecting the music. Sometimes I process the album track by track to use the best clickrepair settings for each track. After playing with it a bit you get used to which settings work with different types of music. A little time consuming, but compared to manually editting the whole album (which I have also done), it is much easier.

I highly recommend clickrepair and for editting and recording, Goldwave, at about $40 is great!

Terry

 

I gonna chime in here to say that ClickRepair has been the best value software I have ever purchased. I think it was $30 when I got it. As far as settings go, I hardly ever set the DeClick slider higher than 3. In fact, I often wish there were finer settings for it. A 0.5 setting would be great.

 

Another note on removing clicks: For a lot of rock/pop you can get away with using some of the automatic settings and do reasonably well. I've found that with jazz it's MUCH trickier. Somebody above mentioned that when they removed clicks it affected the horns a lot. This is very true-- saxophones in particular seem to be right in the area that a lot of click removal software seems to target. It can totally ruin many a saxophone solo.

As I mentioned above I just go straight to a standalone burner now and don't use any de-clicking or any other kind of software at all. But that's just me-- I no longer have the time or patience to deal with processing all this stuff on a computer. And the CDs come out sounding great.

 

We all share from our experiences. To my experience unless you are an experienced audio editor with LOTS of time on your hands, CR is the premier budget needledrop component.

 

I'm not sure how much of a correlation there is between budget and expensive software, but I am of the side that says "whatever works". Unfortunately, for customers, name recognition is everything. They hear "Pro-Tools", and they're on your stick. There are engineers who have pro-Tools for show, then use something else when their client isn't looking. I could go out and buy a Pro-Tools lite with an M-Audio USB box, advertise that I use Pro-Tools, and use Audition/Click Repair, and RX.

Tascams cost money. Most people already have the computer, and some type of audio I/O on it, so getting a maybe free audio editor, and Click Repair will run you...oh...$40 or a bit more, as opposed to...how much for that standalone burner, that offers very, very limited editing options, and may not even record at hi-rez? And, most people don't just play mint, or near-mint pressings. They want stuff you can't find on CD, and that means used vinyl.

If I see an old Jerry Butler album from the 70s that I know isn't, and probably never will be on CD, and all I have is an old LP with some clicks and crackle, and I want a clean sound, that software is my friend.

 

+1

 

I absolutely love Click Repair, I have yet to have a problem with it degrading sound on anything I've done.

I also use Adobe Audition 3.0 for any manual declicking and editing.

 

They are nice "minty" records. Ever hear those?

 

Front end vital
Good tt ,cart and pre
Most sensible A to D's will cope with digitiation
As with most digital apps its the analogue parts that need more attention to detail.
Excess LF rumble can easily overload a budget pre and ADC.

 

Chris, I don't really understand what's upset you about this thread.

 

Click Repair is fantastic. the only thing it doesn't handle well is distorted bass (e.g. Radiohead "Exit Music")

 

Not upset. Maybe I should buy records that I would normally pass on, and then get some sound editing software to clean them up. I don't like clicks and pops, but avoid hearing them by playing very quite records. It is great that people can use these things, if they need to.

 

I've also discovered that a lot of those records one might pass on end up sounding fine after a good cleaning (and ironically some that look great end up sounding bad and even a good cleaning doesn't always help).

 

+ 100.

Also, anything but the best Audiophile records have ticks and pops no matter how clean or perfect they are. Even brand new out of the shrink they have tiny ticks and pops. Some of the noise isn't even related to the record surface, but is static discharge from the record being dragged across the grooves. At least this has always been my experience going back to my Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and Sesame Street records in the late 60s and early 70s.