My dad is recording LPs to CDs on the computer using the Ripvinyl software program. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have a feature to minimize background noise, i.e. pops & hisses. So during a quiet part of a classical recording, all one can hear is the noise and not the music. Any good software programs that can do that?
Noise Reduction by Sonic Foundry is an excellent product for that purpose. You can use it in a quick-and-dirty way, or spend some time and really work wonders.
Quick-and-dirty is often enough to get decent results… For surface noise, you sample a part of the record that is supposed to be silent, and the software suppresses bits throughout the entire recording that match the profile of that noise. Sometimes it takes a bit of tweaking, if the “silence” you pick has a pop or scratch that is too close to the frequency range of something you want to keep, the whole recording ends up sounding flattened-- just pick another part and try again. I love it.
If you’ve got a large library to work through, it’s probably worth the investment. (The software is in the $200 range.)
One other thing… Older versions of Sound Forge (also by Sonic Foundry) have an early version of the noise-removal feature, which works pretty well. If economy is important, you may be able to pick up a used copy somewhere, and it’s probably good enough for most people’s purposes. (Caveat– I’ve only used the noise reduction in Sound Forge to remove ambient noise from live (taped) recordings. I imagine it would work for vinyl, but Noise Reduction is purpose built for vinyl-restoration (among other things) and the algorithms employed by it are bound to be better. Quite apart from it being newer.
Also, to use Noise Reduction, you need a stand-alone wav-editor that accepts plug-ins. (Does RipVinyl?)
FYI, this describes an interesting technique for decrackling LPs using CoolEdit or a sound editor with similar functions:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010410094157/http://www.audioforums.com/forums/Forum7/HTML/000796.html
There’s also the shareware program Popfix, which I’ve used a few times. Pretty easy to use, and does an adequate job.