mastering & restoring A/D clipping?

[joeshambro]

i'm trying to restore a clip for a special project with national visibility, and it features some really nasty A/D clipping. the material is not complex -- think ambient recording. i'm trying to restore the clipped portions so they don't sound so seriously damaged. it's in 24/96.

is there any way to handle this? i've tried a few "clip remover" plugins and, curiously, they crash upon tackling the area in question.

any suggestions of something to try?

alternatively, if anyone is interested in taking on the task, please drop me a PM. i'm more than happy to work out a fair deal to have someone take care of it.

[Wow]

RX Advanced, but it's quite pricey....it's incredibly powerful...I absolutely love it,

W

[t.o.t.s.]

if the damage isn't too severe you can use the Clipped Peak Restoration function in Soundforge (ver. 8 and 9 only i believe). I've had some really great results with that.

[Franco]

In this situation, I would most likely use Audition 3 in Spectral Editing mode, the Photoshop-style paint brush tool that's built in and my graphic tablet. I've done some pretty shocking restoration work (having a couple cold beers nearby helps tremendously also).

[thermos]

Originally Posted by Wow

RX Advanced, but it's quite pricey....it's incredibly powerful...I absolutely love it,

W

Doesn't the regular RX do all the same stuff, minus src? I got amazing results with RX on a crazy distorted project.

[Hane]

Though this is slightly OT, what would you use for reducing distortion from analogue sources?

[masterizer]

Originally Posted by joeshambro

i'm trying to restore a clip for a special project with national visibility, and it features some really nasty A/D clipping. the material is not complex -- think ambient recording. i'm trying to restore the clipped portions so they don't sound so seriously damaged. it's in 24/96.

is there any way to handle this? i've tried a few "clip remover" plugins and, curiously, they crash upon tackling the area in question.

any suggestions of something to try?

alternatively, if anyone is interested in taking on the task, please drop me a PM. i'm more than happy to work out a fair deal to have someone take care of it.

Try the Waves NR plugins, EQ, Izotope RX ect. Try as many restoration ideas as you reasonably can and see which one reduces the damage the most.

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by joeshambro

i'm trying to restore a clip for a special project with national visibility, and it features some really nasty A/D clipping. the material is not complex -- think ambient recording. i'm trying to restore the clipped portions so they don't sound so seriously damaged. it's in 24/96.

is there any way to handle this? i've tried a few "clip remover" plugins and, curiously, they crash upon tackling the area in question.

any suggestions of something to try?

alternatively, if anyone is interested in taking on the task, please drop me a PM. i'm more than happy to work out a fair deal to have someone take care of it.

I'm always interested in seeing a good declipper!

I've been dealing with short clips in Renovator, but it's not the ideal item for that.
I've seen some amazing demonstrations of Cedar's declipper, but it's part of a hardware package that I cannot justify. I hear that Izotope's package contains a pretty good declipper. And finally, most interesting to me but I have not yet tried it is a package from Cube-Tec Virtual Precision Instruments for Sequoia that contains a declipper among other things, available for Sequoia. When I get the budget :-).

BK

[Tropicana]

Originally Posted by bob katz

I'm always interested in seeing a good declipper!

I've been dealing with short clips in Renovator, but it's not the ideal item for that.
I've seen some amazing demonstrations of Cedar's declipper, but it's part of a hardware package that I cannot justify. I hear that Izotope's package contains a pretty good declipper. And finally, most interesting to me but I have not yet tried it is a package from Cube-Tec Virtual Precision Instruments for Sequoia that contains a declipper among other things, available for Sequoia. When I get the budget :-).

BK

Yes the declipper from cubetech is very good. I tried many years ago the whole system of cubetech. In that time I used sadies and cedar hard and software. The cubetech computer was fully loaded with the all software on board (was in that time around 400.000 DM). A guy from cubetech brought it special to me and I had a 2 days training with him. I had the system more then 3 weeks. Part of my job in that time was restoration of vinyl and tapes so I had the change to use every plugin. But when I got back to my cedar stuff I found it sounding more natural. Cedar has a sound I always liked more then the competition.

[doug hazelrigg]

Originally Posted by Hane

Though this is slightly OT, what would you use for reducing distortion from analogue sources?

The best way is to have your analog to digital setup properly calibrated. Many people end up clipping the analog section in the false belief that they need to maximize bit usage, and end up in the red. In the States, −20 dBFS = 0 VU = +4 dBu.

[Hane]

Originally Posted by doug hazelrigg

The best way is to have your analog to digital setup properly calibrated. Many people end up clipping the analog section in the false belief that they need to maximize bit usage, and end up in the red. In the States, −20 dBFS = 0 VU = +4 dBu.

Maybe I should have been more specific; I’m referring to distortion from worn out vinyl records. The output of my phono pre-amp is way below levels that would clip the a/d convertor.

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by Hane

Maybe I should have been more specific; I’m referring to distortion from worn out vinyl records. The output of my phono pre-amp is way below levels that would clip the a/d convertor.

Frequently I use Renovator for this purpose selectively, only on specific sections, subtly softening the harsh frequencies when the Vinyl distortion is most problematic. I may also process with a descratcher or declicker but there are usually artifacts no matter how hard you try to make it subtle. It can either be too strong or not strong enough. So I may process two or three times with different thresholds or degree of descratch/declick and edit between them. It's a labor-intensive process if what you are doing is trying to restore a vinyl for CD release. I don't know of any automatic distortion-reducing facility that can be "set and forget". Enlighten me if there is!

BK

[Jesse Graffam]

I'll give away a secret that I've been keeping to myself for a few years... I think 2-3 people around here probably already know about it, but I haven't seen it mentioned here myself...
Silk: CuteStudio Ltd. Audio, electronics, graphics and embedded software - products/audio/seedeclip
SeeDeClip is unmatched compared to anything else I've tried. It has the uncanny ability to actually RESTORE the audio that was effected badly by the clipping.... such as removing IMD of the treble caused by bass clipping. Even for clipping that happened before the final digital brickwall (if one was used). Check out the demo

Most of the time I'm just using a batch file I made that asks the offset (threshold) and runs a custom command with the command-line version, TxtDeClip. It's a lot faster than going through the GUI.

[DJRossfader]

Nice topic!

Ive got a question which is related to this actually..

Internal clips from overloading a plugin, yet in the final exported mixdown the sound is well bellow.

Is there any way to remove this?

For example every time the snare hits you hear the horrible click noise yet in the mixdown the snare channel is not actually clipping.

[Alexey Lukin]

Originally Posted by uncajesse

SeeDeClip is unmatched compared to anything else I've tried. It has the uncanny ability to actually RESTORE the audio that was effected badly by the clipping.... such as removing IMD of the treble caused by bass clipping.

Would you mind sharing some example? Although this program seems to synthesize some signal above the clipping point, it still sounds almost as bad as the clipped one. I haven't been able to produce any usable results with it.

[dcollins]

Originally Posted by Alexey Lukin

Would you mind sharing some example? Although this program seems to synthesize some signal above the clipping point, it still sounds almost as bad as the clipped one. I haven't been able to produce any usable results with it.

The waveforms looked terrific!


DC

[danika]

Originally Posted by Franco

In this situation, I would most likely use Audition 3 in Spectral Editing mode, the Photoshop-style paint brush tool that's built in and my graphic tablet. I've done some pretty shocking restoration work (having a couple cold beers nearby helps tremendously also).

I've also had good results with the Audition Clip Restoration plug-in.