Tech: Any Goldwave users?

Subject: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 31 Mar 03 - 07:33 AM

I know there are one or two! There doesn't seem to be an official GW user group (and I'm not clever enough or free enough to start one), so I though the Mudcat would be a good place to ask around. I've been using GW for a while, and I know all the easy stuff; I'm happy to experiment to get familiar with the less intuitive stuff. But are there any real DSP whizz-kids among us who can pass on useful tips?

Steve

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Mar 03 - 07:58 AM

It's what I use, having being put on to it by Mmario of the Mudcat. It does the business - I'm not into anythin too complicated, just use it to get stuff I've put on audio tape into the computer, and top and tail it a bit, to take out the clicks when I switch on, and fade in and fade out, if appropriate.

Here's a page I wrote about the whole business of making a CD of home recorded material, with Goldwave being a key part of it - How to put music from a tape onto a CD

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 31 Mar 03 - 09:18 AM

Thanks, McG: that's the kind of thing I'm up to, along with transcribing my old recordss (as in Sound archives decaying). It's the clever bits you refer to that I'm particularly interested in, as I'msure there are a lot of things I won't pick up without a bit of nudging in the right direction. It would be nice, for instance, to be able to change the equalisation curve to the one appropriate for the particular recording, or remove noise more accurately than I do now, or ... how can I separate the two stereo tracks into two distinct files?

Over to you, folks!

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: MMario
Date: 31 Mar 03 - 09:38 AM

There is some information here

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Mar 03 - 06:08 PM

One rather low tech way to separate the two tracks would be to record one with the balance on the tape player right over to the left, and the other with it all the way to the right, or something like that.

But I'm sure there's a neater way to do that.

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 02:33 AM

I'm mostly recording from 78 discs. 500 [approx] records = 1,000 sides @ 3 minutes [approx] = 50 hours playing time. (In fact, it's probably more than that: I'm not allowing for 10 per cent or so on 12" discs.) That's about two styli; but, since I frequently have to record more than once to get the levels right, it's maybe four or five styli @ £30.

I suppose I could splash out on Diamond Cut, which automatically selects the better bits from each track to produce a mono final product. Much better not to have to spend the extra cash!

Steve

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: GUEST,MCP
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 03:17 AM

To separate the stereo tracks in Goldwave you can select the whole file, use Edit/Channel/Left or Edit/Channel/Right to select the channel you want and use File/Save Selection As to save the selected channel to file (You can alter the save format at this time too if you wish). (For some reason Save As saves in stereo by default).

Noise reduction is fraught with hazard, the ususal advice is to select the noise profile for removal by taking it from a silent part of the recording (no music playing) and use that.

(You could also try Steinberg's Clean as a fairly cheap (around £40 in UK IIRC) way to clean and restore the old vinyl (or anything else) with mininmum intervention.)


Mick

Mick

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: GUEST,MCP
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 03:22 AM

(I was assuming you did mean noise reduction there of course, rather than pop/crackle)

Mick

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 06:38 AM

Surely pop crackle is a significant element in the kind of noise you might want to reduce?

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 09:49 AM

Yes, McG. Even the most pristine of shellac 78s has plenty of hiss -- it's due to the structure of the material. Its an astonishing fact, that I only discovered in the last couple of years, that the run-in groove was intended to wear down the steel needle to a "neck-and-shouders" profile suitable for playing the recorded length of the groove. This was made possible by embedding hard particles in a soft matrix. Once the soft smooth surface has worn away, you have introduced a white noise to the signal.

But once the disc is out of the sleeve, the rice crispies begin to appear. Any knock or bump while it's playing can cause the needle to jump -- and remember the soundbox and arm weigh several ounces, and the pressure on the needle's point is way up in the cwts/in²: more than enough to do damage.

I have to supress the hiss as far as is practical: too much, and a sort of burbling appears. I also have to remove the clicks and pops. I could do it by hand, but it would take forever just to do one side; although I may do a minute or so to see how good I can get it. Maybe when I retire...? Meanwhile, I'll keep the dirty recordings for when the software improves.

If anyone's interested, I can do occasional updates on my progress, and pass on any clever tricks I may think of.

Steve

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: GUEST,MCP
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 10:41 AM

Kevin

Yes pops and clicks are a significant part of removal, but digital audio restoration usually makes a distiction between these (short bursts - pops, thumps and the crackles of old recordings) and other broadband noise (hiss). See for example Digital Audio Restoration by Godsill and Rayner (Springer 1998), or any of the many papers by these authors (many are available online). (Some of the more recent models attempt to model and fix all types of degradation at the same time). There are also models to attempt to fix wow/flutter type distorion too.

Goldwave itself has a pop/click removal function (Effects/Filter/Pop/Click), but I haven't tried it.

Steve -

Personally with a lot of discs to clean, I'd invest the £40 on Clean. Or there are other shareware packages available on the net that do a decent job with minimal intervention. It's some time since I had a look at these but I seem to recall that DePopper was very good - you can download a copy of that and try it. (Sadly Steinberg don't seen to have a trial version of Clean. If you want to see the effect you could e-mail me a section in MP3, for space saving and accept the loss from coding, and I'll run a default convert with clean and send it back to you - MCPearce0ATaolDOTcom with suitable substitutions - that's a zero after my name). It's also possible to invest a lot more money in profession restoration programs.

Mick

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 01 Apr 03 - 11:24 AM

Thanks Mick: I'll see if I can find you something suitable that won't take hours (or minutes!) to download. Meanwhile, I'll have a gander at DePopper. (Although it does sound like it takes the fun out of it!)

Steve

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: GUEST,MCP
Date: 02 Apr 03 - 03:24 PM

Steve - revised price for above. High Street price for Clean is £25 and for Clean Plus £60. (The Plus version includes a preamp for turntable input to PC, but if you have a decent output already you won't need that).

Mick

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 03 Apr 03 - 02:26 AM

Thanks Mick. I'll be away for a few days from the weekend, so I'll have a proper look when I get back. (26th wedding anniversary: going to Harlech to the place we used to stay when we were first spliced ... romantic, or what?)

Steve

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 28 Apr 03 - 10:48 AM

I'm back ... if anyone's thinking of having a second honeymoon, don't leave it till you get to our age!

Ok, the story so far: I tried the trial version of DePopper and it's not bad, but not quite up to what I need. GoldWave seems to do it pretty well. What I've found the best approach is ...

Record in stereo

Copy the run-in noise to the clipboard, then select the whole file and click on Noise reduction

Set the parameters to Use clipboard, FFT=12, Overlap=95, Scale=100 and run it

Click on Pop/Click and set the parameter to 1000 and run it

Select the left channel and click Save2 to save it to a mono file, "left"

Do the same with the right channel, saving it as "left"

Save it again as "mono" (either chanel -- it's just to create a receiving file)

Close all the current files and open "left", "right" and "mono"

Click on f(x) (the expression evaluator) and type in (wave2(n)+wave3(n))/2, where file #1 is "mono", file #2 is "left" and file #3 is "right"
(Save this as a new group/expression for use another time)

Run the expression: it will calculate the average (arithmetic mean, if you're fussy) of the two channels and put the result in file "mono"


What we end up with is (almost) the finished product. Some of the noise is on one channel only, or occasionally some of it is in anti-phase, so any remaining differences ("noise", by definition) will reduce or even cancel out in the averaging process. If there are any remaining clicks/pops after all this, they can be hunted down manually and removed by selecting a smallish surrounding area and running pop/click with a lower setting of 750 or 500. (This is very clever: it doesn't just smooth out the jump, it "guestimates" what the signal should have been and replaces the jump with that; it sounds very good.) If the dynamic range is a bit extreme, it can be expanded/compressed.

So far so good ... it only takes about 30-40 minutes to clean up a whole disc! 5,000 hours is about 200+ days ... but at one or two discs a night, that's ... a lot of nights! I'll have to see if I can run GW in command line mode or something.

So, the last problem (which really ought to be the first job) is to redo the equalisation from the modern RIEEE curve to the appropriate one for the recording. Hmm ...

Steve

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: bradfordian
Date: 28 Apr 03 - 12:37 PM

Steve
Can you confirm it is left to left and right to left as well, or should that be right to right?
Brad

Subject: RE: Tech: Any Goldwave users?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 29 Apr 03 - 03:11 AM

Sorry Brad -- well spotted! I was cuttin' and pastin' and made a pig's ear fo it. It should read:

Select the left channel and click Save2 to save it to a mono file, "left"

Do the same with the right channel, saving it as "right"


Mr GoldWave tells me that version 5 comes out this week, which will have a batch processing feature that will make things a bit easier: I'll be able to kick off a whole series of jobs amd go and make coffee or learn a song or something while they run.

Steve