Removing distortion. How???

[MARKEG]

Chrissi and I've got this wicked track we did but the top end is all distorted. Not hugely distorted but enough to make it unreleasable in our eyes. I think we might have done it after a few Stella's hehehe.

Now, I've tried everything I know. I've been on the old EQ until I've actually ended up making it worse I've spent so damn long on it, but I've never had this prob before so I'm really pulling my hair out right now. Done a google search for 'removing distortion' 'mastering' and it's just a mass of crap. Arrghh!!!!

Has anyone here had this problem? Is there a plugin out there that singles out the band you need and somehow gets rid of the crap you don't want. I have a feeling there's a quick fix for this, and it's a secret. Perhaps a restoration plug. Damn I dunno. I've been on this long enough already, really need someone's help.

Anyone?? :)

[loopdon]

Hi Mark!

Just some ideas from me. This could prove difficult, as the waveforms will be clipping i guess. i have two ideas you could try. if the distortion isn't to bad, maybe play around with a de-esser???? guess you have tried that before... or cutoff the annoying part and replace it with a new undistorted high freq section. like if you mix one record that has the highs pulled out with the highs of another record for lack of better explanation. if it where mainly percs in the offending region that could work, i suppose.

you could try a bandpass/bandreject filter (like grm bandpass --> pm me if you need that one...) . only problem is filling up the gaps in the spectrum later on.

no chance of going back to the track in the sequencer??

where is the distortion sitting frequency-wise and how broad a region does it affect? this info would be very helpful...

hope this is of any help?

maybe noise reduction or hiss removal algorythms could help, too, like the soundforge noise reduction etc.. but one must be careful not to overdo it coz it can cause artifacts itself if you are not careful. or zoom in and trim the peaks yourself :roll:

you got my brain burning ;)

i am definitely not as experienced as you are, but i will try and help as good as i can. if you really can't get that stuff fixed, i would be more than willing to have a look at a little snippet of that track but i am sure
you will get it worked out.

;)

[loopdon]

"I think we might have done it after a few Stella's hehehe."

is what you said, alc really does shit when playing with the high frequncies, i heard and from my experience it's true

[loopdon]

something i have found but the general message is the same:

from: http://preview.videosystems.com/news...ing_bad_audio/

Distortion and Clicks

Audio distortion is the worst of the problems, and the most intractable. Distortion occurs when an audio input is too loud for the input of the next stage to reproduce cleanly. Consequently the tops of the audio waveforms are clipped off, hence the term "clipping". Distortion generally imparts a "raspy" quality to the sound, and in extreme cases can make your sound unintelligible. While analog distortion is the most common, digital devices are also susceptible to distortion. Analog devices distort in a gradual fashion as gain is increased, but when digital devices distort they do so at one particular threshold level, and the result is instant unpleasantness.

The best way to eliminate distortion is to prevent it before it happens. There are few remedies for distortion once the recording is done, especially in extreme cases. If the amount of distortion is slight or the distorted segments are short, then you can use your software audio editor's Pencil Tool to literally draw smooth tops on the waveforms.
But if the distortion is severe or prolonged and there's no chance of re-recording the sound, you may be best served by taking your distorted audio files to a facility that has Sonic Solutions' NoNoise, which is part of their Sonic Studio HD product http://www.sonic.com/sshd_home.html.

NoNoise is a venerable computer program specifically designed to eliminate unwanted noises from audio recordings, and it is particularly effective when dealing with distortion. It can even generate resynthesized audio to replace damaged sound. NoNoise is also your best choice for dealing with dynamic noise that does not respond to filtering. It is the industry standard in noise elimination, but a NoNoise system comes with a hefty price tag, so it's best to farm this work out. Depending on where you live, expect to pay anywhere from $60/hour to $150/hr for NoNoise work. Your budget may not like it but sometimes there is no other option.

[MARKEG]

hey loopy who's saying you're not as experienced as me?? that's the great thing about this - you're always learning from someone ;)

hey, yeah high freqs definitely DONT mix with alcohol :) hahaha

ok, the freqs that concern me are from about 5K-15K ie the whole top end. but the thing is, the track is beautiful at first and then as everything builds OMG, all the crap comes in and by the main section it's just all distorted and horrible :(

[MARKEG]

drawing the waveforms in with a pencil WOW



christ that would take me years.

:) hahaha

i like the thought of this nonoise thing.. let me check this out

nice 1 :clap:

[detfella]

have u tried converting the project to 32bit bfeore mixing down?

[dirty_bass]

yeah, I was gonna say, once a signal is distorted and recorded, you can`t really un-distort. You can kinds smooth it out, but it effects other things as well.

[MARKEG]

Well, I'm getting everything together ready for tomorrow now. Here's what I'm trying from what I researched into today. Let me know if you can think of anything else ;)

Distortion removal:

Adobe Audition
Steinberg Spectral Design's Declicker
Prosoniq SonicWORX has some very good algorithms, also Emagic Logic's Spice Reduction still does a fairly good job.
Every major sample editor should have some function for clipping removal
The Smooth/Enhance DX plug by Sonic Foundry can clean things up a bit when set to "smooth"
GenieSys have a plug that can smooth out digital clipping.
Sonic Foundry Noise Reduction 2.1 has a clip restoration plug as well.
GenieSyS made a clip removal plugin (DX). Their plugs are now available for free download at http://www.silksound.com/geniesys/
Declicker (N2)
Sonicfoundry do "Clipped Peak Restoration" DirectX Plug-In ;
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/products...uct.asp?PID=14
Sonic No-Noise
Bias Sound Soap??

Also, gonna try some more hard multiband limiting coupled with some good eq work....

[loopdon]

aaah, looks like you've done some solid research :!:

this might be interesting to, referring to the wave bundle and 'noise prints'. tell us how it went, will ya

http://emusician.com/dsp/emusic_wave...e_restoration/

[dirty_bass]

Can`t you just re-record it?
No matter how much "fixing" you try to do, it`ll never be right.
Kinda like a cup fixed with superglue.

[detfella]

or make the distortion a feature of the sound, like lee perry

rockers techno

[MARKEG]

once something's done, i really can never go back. dunno what it is about that, but i just get bored. i'm sort of like that in general - love the new stuff but the old stuff is, well just old.

ppl say you can't polish a turd, well i believe you can in a strange type of way. i love mastering, it's a total artform - turning something shite into something, well kind of innovative and different. the shiteness of the original sort of means that you put less effort into the production and more into the spotiniety at that point. then bang on a load of eq and weird plugins when you come to listen to it again and make it rock.

i've never actually had this distortion prob before and i think it's cause i just didn't watch the recording level on the DAT. hmmm but usually DAT overdrive is actually quite nice. so perhaps this is when i went through that stage of recording directly into the PC. either way, if i can get round this, you'll be the first to know ;)

[Mirsha]

Experimental suggestion here. Can't you record some of the high solo then mix it back into the track as a negative copy of the wav and just see what happens? I know I've tried this mixing a negative wav once and it sounded bollocks as I was just playing about but you never know, it might make more sense to you and you can get something out of it.

[MARKEG]

wow. ok so straight cut out the rest of the freq below 5k.

then do a -ve copy?

don't know what you mean. but i'm excited :)

perhaps you mean invert the waveform?

please xplain. would love to get into the theory behind this.

but have a feeling you're just being experimental hahahaha.

if anyone knows how this would work, please post ;)

[Mirsha]

It was something I said in answer to someone quetions of "can I get the vocals from a track". My answer ws based off part of a Tomrrow World thingy I saw ages ago where they were talking about having ap air of headphones that would read the sound outside the headphones, then play it back as an inverse sound wav so that:

Sound in headphones: Input + external noise. And by playing an inverse of the external noise with the sound in the headphones would reduce the external noise leaving a clearer input, which was supposed to lead to you being able to turn down the volume in your headphones and keep it sounding decent without annoying everyone else beside you.

I think part of the basic idea could go along hte lines of the peaks on the negative are accented as they should exceed the limited volumes on the main signal thus amplifying them whilst cutting some of the clipping distortion. I have no idea if this will work as I'm pissed and may just be ranting Betty Swallocks but you could lways try it and maybe piss about it and see what happens.

Oddly enough I was chattign with a few mates at the weekend and commented on the fact I'd met this guy on the BOA forums who'd done this great track, but when probed had no idea what a compreesor actually does. My mates then admitted they had no idea what a compressor actually does and I told them and they were all like "oh ah" and I started to ask them just about how much does it matter to know what happens versus how it sounds.

A topic I may very well bring up on these here forums when I sober up.

[loopdon]

wow. ok so straight cut out the rest of the freq below 5k.

then do a -ve copy?

don't know what you mean. but i'm excited :)

perhaps you mean invert the waveform?

please xplain. would love to get into the theory behind this.

but have a feeling you're just being experimental hahahaha.

if anyone knows how this would work, please post ;)

tbh, i have been thinking about this, too. only principle i know is adding a phase-inverted version of a track to a non-inversed track. this should cancel out everything that is the same in both tracks. used to extract vocals by using an full and an instrumental version..

but simply adding up a phase-inverted version wouldn't help you at all, as far as i know, because it would cancel out everything.

i would try the tools you listed yesterday, they sound more promising to me.

[Mirsha]

Grumble. If you add a phase inverted wav to a non phase inverted wav,which just so happens to have clipped lines, the negative wav will show on the average and the averaging between the two will not sound shit or something.

I'm ****ed. On Alchol. And **** you. Honestly. Just ****ing try it. Then you can say "Hey Mirsha, your suggestion was about as sghit as a pound of shit in your face" and we could have a verdicty. TOhersie you can try it and say I was talking bolloks. Either way I don't ive a ****. Just ****ing try it. You know ain't that what is techno is meant to be all about?

Try it?
Love it!
Tell me it was shit?!?!??!?!?

One should never crink aclhocl on mongsday.

[loopdon]

i wasn't trying to stop him ;)

btw, that was quite a lot of f**ks in yer post, you could be right about drinking on monday. :lol:

[Mirsha]

Drinking on a MOnday?

Oh shit. You eamn it's Moday? Not Tuesday? Shuizt.