It all depends on the shape of the record. It takes anywhere from a two or three hours to all day to a week. I don’t really have any albums that are in such horrid shape that I’d spend time trying to fix them up if there was a chance I could get another copy in better shape on the web. I don’t, as a rule, fix up albums that are available on CD, unless there is something different about the album.
If the LP is in really nice shape with fairly minor, random clicks and pops, it usually takes me most of a day. However, I’m real picky about it, and I remove every single noise that isn’t supposed to be there. I also pitch correct every track to A=440, because an appalling number of records are pressed at the wrong speed. In Audition, this takes about a minute and a half per track, the majority of that 90 seconds taken up by matching the pitch to a keyboard. The actual process takes seconds. In other software, it’s a trial-and-error process that adds a bunch of time to the project. When you listen to the finished version of an album I’ve restored, you would not be able to tell it was a record, and you could play an instrument along to every track without having to retune. For many people, this would not be the goal. I’d even go so far as to say that for most people, this would be overkill. But I’m picky. I couldn’t restore something for commercial reissue, or for broadcast, that wasn’t absolutely perfect.
The Younglove Method, as described above, dramatically reduces the amount of time I have to spend on declicking. I have no idea what other software you could use to replicate it, as it was developed on Cool Edit / Audition. I don’t use anything else. I have GoldWave here at home, but it hasn’t been opened in years. I have Steinberg WaveLab ($$$), but it’s going to waste because Cool Edit / Audition is so much better for this purpose. I don’t make mp3s of anything, because I have this aversion to using software that removes actual information from a recording to make the filesize smaller. For others, this may not be a consideration.
I’ve spent most of my time restoring singles, most of which have never been issued on CD. Some of these take an hour, some take a whole evening, but that’s rare. There are times when I’ve gone to all kinds of trouble to remaster a record, only to find it’s just come out on CD. The most recent were “Artificial Paradise” and “Rockin’” by The Guess Who. A month later, they were both issued on CD for the first time, in Canada. :smack:
Syntrillium, makers of Cool Edit 2000 / Pro, no longer exists. They sold out to Adobe last August. Now Adobe makes Cool Edit Pro under the name of Audition. Cool Edit 2000 was discontinued. That’s a shame, because it cost $69, and the NR and filter plugins were each $49. I kid you not, I got better results from it than I’ve heard on commercial CDs of records, where they used thousands of dollars’ worth of hardware and software on restoration, but didn’t fully understand how to use it, and got crappy results.
I’m the wrong guy to ask about freeware audio programs. Usually, you get what you pay for. If you’re serious about wanting to restore your records, I recommend purchasing Audition. You can use the methods I’ve described to make stunning restorations!
I find it so much easier to process the WAV file (at most, 10-12 minutes for processing) and then split it into tracks. The processing time for the big honkin’ WAV file is the same or less than the combined total for the individual tracks, since you only have to do those copy/paste steps once…
), since the clicks are at such regular intervals.
