Mastering old 78's

[Sdesign]

I am currently involved with a project reissuing old 78'records. Does anyone have info that may be useful (frequency response; software for declicking and getting scratches out) I do own alot of software (Waves; SonicFoundry. etc) Is there anything specfic besides noise reduction?
Thanx as always

[georgia]

waves restoration bundle works really well on this stuff. you'll still ahve to do a tinge of EQ and maybe a bit of multiband compression.


cheers
georgia

[Barnabas]

The best way to take out pops and scratches is with the pencil tool, but it takes a long, long time.

I use a compressor on old recordings, but not nearly as much compression as used on modern recordings.

[JoeQ]

be careful with Noise Reduction - you can end up sucking the life out of the sound. A wiser man than me said: 'Better to work towards enhancing the music than to work towards killing the noise'.

getting mutiple copies of the records can be helpful: when you encounter some bad stuff you can switch to another copy that may have _its bad stuff somewhere else. You can draw out pops with a pencil tool, but if it is a bad one, you will be guessing as to what was supposed to be there.

I re- mastered a bunch of opera music from 78s back in the pre-computer era and what worked best, believe it or not, was BBE process, which I think is a kind of mulitband compressor.

[minister]

I re- mastered a bunch of opera music from 78s back in the pre-computer era and what worked best, believe it or not, was BBE process, which I think is a kind of mulitband compressor.

it is kinda. and i think it generates harmonics to tighten things. some remastering people use the SPL tub vitalizer which is like a BBE only more tube and real sounding. (i have both, though i don't remaster.)

[Noiz2]

If you do a web search there is a site that has extensive info on EQ curves for different labels and different years (there apparently was not a standard till pretty late in the game). I would post the link but my bookmarks bit it awhile ago and I don't have it any more, but it was a guy that did high end transfers and also did transfers from the old cylinders.

[Bob Stewart]

I am not sure if this is correct or not,
but
I think that the stylus for 78 records was conical, different than the "modern" version which is elliptical. In my memory, 78's need to be re-recorded using the correct stylus shape, which probably requires a different cartridge as well, to achieve the best result.

[generator]

Here's a very helpful site:

http://www.videointerchange.com/vintage_78s.htm

As for restoration plug-ins, Sonic NoNoise is the way to go. Much more versatile than Waves, plus it works at 96k. Waves only works at 44.1 and 48k (I found out the hard way). You should download the NoNoise demo and give it a try.

[rockridge]

I am currently involved with a project reissuing old 78'records. Does anyone have info that may be useful (frequency response; software for declicking and getting scratches out) I do own alot of software (Waves; SonicFoundry. etc) Is there anything specfic besides noise reduction?
Thanx as always

I haven't dealt with old recordings very offen, but one time i restored an old Nat King Cole album (vocals, piano, guitar, and double bass from the 40's, i think) that was on CD... very weak and thin.

I found that the Waves Restoration software didn't help... maybe because the recordings didn't have much below 250 hz, or much above 10k. I decided to drop the lows and highs out which got rid of rumble and hiss, and brought the middle up 6-8 dB to bring out the vocals, piano and guitar...even seemed to help the bass.

But you're dealing with 78's, which may actually be a better recording than what i had to work with so i can't really say. Anyway, if the restoration software doesn't do it, try the eq trick.