something else i found, explaining how an older record was recorded, there's a line about dithering too in there:



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I've been asking and searching for ways of cleaning my vinyl wavs and never found anything worthwhile (somewhat). So I went perusing my old archives of messages I had saved. I ran across a nfo file posted back in 7/4/99;
Subject: 160S - vinyl - live - Axton, Hoyt - Boney Fingers.mp3 (00/18)

Contained just what I was looking for and thought I'd share with
others who are in the need.



original message
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Side two, track one of the 1979 Fantasy double-lp Bread & Roses, Festival of Acoustic Music - Greek Theater, U.C. Berkeley. Recorded with CEP v1.2, cleaned with same; encoded with MP3Enc31 -br 160000 -no-is -qual 9.

The album is in pretty decent shape but not without record noise. The procedure:
Recorded with Monitor Record Levels Option having been used so that peaks were between -3 and 0 dB.

Save the wave right now, either track by selected track or all at
once. After saving the album side track by track, I closed the wave. Then I opened this track. I have CEP set up to Options>Settings>Data>Auto-convert all data to 32-bit upon opening. Noise reduction works better that way.

Transform>Amplification>Amplify>Center Wave preset.
Transform>Reverse. Transform>Noise Reduction>Click/Pop Eliminator with these settings:
Detect Column: 60 60 60 Reject Column: 100 100 100 Second Level Verification is checked Pulse Train Verification is checked Detect Big Pops is checked and its value is 60 Link Channels, Smooth Light Crackle, Multiple Passes are NOT checked FFT Size Auto is checked Pop Oversamples 12 samples Run Size 14 samples After all these had been set, Max, Avg, Min Thresholds were filled in with Find Threshold Levels Only. Auto Find All Levels was not used and so its Sensitivity and Discrimination values are not important.

After one pass, a 2.5-second area of "silence" from the lead-in was selected for the noise profile. Transform>Noise Reduction>Noise Reduction with settings: Log Scale NOT checked Live Update is checked Noise Reduction Level 100 FFT Size 6000 points Remove Noise radio button selected Precision Factor 11 Smoothing Amount 1 Transition Width 0 dB Snapshots in profile 300. The record was slightly warped, causing a periodic noise in the lead-in waveform and 2.5 seconds, just my standard time, is sufficient to capture the noise of a complete revolution of the lp. Click Get Profile from Selection then Close (not Cancel) the dialog. Deselect the noise print area by clicking anywhere on the wave; click on the Zoom Out Full button so the whole wave is transformed. Return to Transform>Noise Reduction>Noise Reduction and click OK.

When it is finished Transform>Reverse the wave. Listen to it through headphones for noises not removed by the transforms. In general, narrowly select the noise and use Transform>Click/Pop Eliminator>Fill Single Click Now. This feature is effective on most noises of short enough duration but finding a single little bitty piece of wave that represents the noise is a problem. Read the Help for the Click/Pop Eliminator dialog and use the Spectral view to help you find them. Here's some of what it says about that:

Use the Spectral View feature with the spectral resolution set to 256 bands and a Window Width of 40% to see the clicks in a program. See /Options/Settings/Spectral to adjust these parameters. Clicks will ordinarily be visible as bright vertical bars that go all the way from the top to the bottom of the display.

When you have taken the very few clicks remaining from the wave, sculpt the ends of the wave so that it does not make noise when it starts playing. Leave about 0.35 second of lead-in before the music begins. Transform>Silence the first 0.2 second. Select the 0.15 second after the silence to just before the music starts and choose the Transform>Amplification>Amplify>Fade In preset, click OK. At the end of the wave, leave a few tenths of a second after the music stops and delete everything after that. After selecting the area between the end of the music and the end of the wave, choose Transform>Amplification>Amplify>Fade Out preset, and click OK.

Choose Edit>Convert Sample Type with these settings: Sample Rate 44100 Stereo Resolution 16 bit Enable Dithering is checked
Dither Depth (bits) 0.54 p.d.f. Triangular Noise Shaping (44.1KHz), and click OK.

Check to see if the ends are still proper after the conversion; you
may have to silence and fade in again if the wave makes a noise at its start. Save the wave. Encode it to make the mp3.

Work your fingers to the bone,
What do you get?

End original message

I tried it with a fav album of mine and like the results. I recorded it with an older Kenwood turntable and Stanton cartridge. It's Stanley Clarke's "School Days" lp. I've done the first song so far (School Days) and am posting it in the main group.

Take a listen and tell me what ya think. All feedback welcomed. Always looking for perfection.

The only thing I did that he/she didn't mention was to
Transform/Amplitude/Normalize to 98% before converting the wav back to 16bit.