Hello Al,

It's been a long project, and finding time to work on it has difficult. But I think I can now see an end to it. The quality of the tracks on each donor LP was extremely variable, ranging from near perfectly clean tracks to those that sound like listening to the track inside an old tin hut hut with heavy hail pounding on the roof.

Of the three copies of the LP I have available the similarity of the distortion points to pressing problems, rather than just wear. In fact one of the LPs appears to be absolutely pristine, yet the same tracks are affected. Also the the using a wave form display, the distortions and clicks are often on only one side of the stereo image, which points away from scratches across the LP, which would appear as clicks on both channels. In general the outer tracks are the best quality and the inner tracks are worst.

Of all the copies of the Stay Not Late album I have been able to try, two tracks have been very problematical with massive amounts of distortion, clicks and pops.

None of the one-pass systems filter systems managed to remove all the problems, and any the got close dulled the sound so much it was unpleasant to listen to. I have tried software implemented aural exciters, which couldn't really work as the HF information was so suppressed by the filters it produced some rather unnatural effects.

I have had to resort to a combination of automatic filtering and second and third passes using manual techniques from a variety of fairly high end software packages that allowed me to audition the track down to sample level, identify the artifacts and apply one or more algorithms to reduce the distortion, and rebuild the wanted audio.

Track 7 - It's Over Now, (Side one last track) was by far the worst affected track. A spectral analyser identified over 38000 possible distortions where the a click signal was above -40 dBm and thus in theory audible. In practice a one pass click reduction software package reduced this but still left about 3500 very audible clicks and crackles on the track. These I had to tackle individually on a click by click basis.

It has been a judgment call as to the trade off between freedom of noise, and audible distortion of the wanted signal. I have deliberately erred on the side of keeping Jean's vocals as clean as possible perhaps at the expense of the guitar accompaniment.

The results are far from perfect, but to my ears far better than source LPS I have.

Anyone interested in more information and availability please contact me on.

Rightsound@aol.com

In other news about Jean. She has settled in to her new home. We are working to build up her stamina and voice. We have started to put together some new songs - ones she has often been requested to sing, from a wide range of styles;. Some folky, some jazz and some classics/hymns. She is keen to get some recorded with a view to a new CD.

She has recently returned to the stage for a short support spot at the Chase Folk Club (at the Foresters Tavern, in Burntwood). I'm certain more will follow as she gets stronger.