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78 rpm restorations home
Summary Techniques

Here is a summary of the steps I take when performing noise reduction/restoring a 78 rpm recording based on the steps previously described:

  1. First pass transcription - incase the record gets damaged during cleaning!
  2. Clean the record - warm, lightly soapy water, rinse well and dry quickly.
  3. Play the record - small stylus dry run to clean out residual muck in grooves.
  4. Transcribe record - use optimal stylus (or styli), STEREO, FLAT preamp and 96kHz sample rate if possible.
  5. Save Original - important! If you recorded at 33/45rpm, correct this and any RIAA equalisation now.
  6. Auto De-click - forward, backward, different settings getting more aggressive.
  7. Selective De-click - target areas with leftover impulse noise, distortions.
  8. Convert to 44.1kHz - if you recorded at a higher sampling rate, now is a good time to drop back to normal.
  9. Manual De-click - If you are dedicated, use spectral editing mode.
  10. Equalise and Filter - Low pass filters (10-12kHz, 6-18dB roll-off), parametric equalisation of electric recordings, high-pass ~50Hz
  11. Dynamic Suppression - see previous denoising steps.
  12. Selective Dynamic Suppression - aggressively target distortions etc, use spectral editing mode.
  13. Channel Blender - Blend all frequencies to mono below ~1kHz.
  14. CNF First Pass - perform light noise reduction on Left and Right channels independently.
  15. Convert to Monaural - Blend Left and Right (if both of acceptable quality).
  16. CNF Second Pass - perform on monaural recording to taste.
  17. Enhancements - further equalisation, harmonic generation etc.

Well that is a lot of steps, but most can be done quite quickly!
Regarding the CNF, I have been using an FFT size of 2048 on the first (stereo separated pass) then 1024 on the final monaural recording. You may prefer to find out if a particular combination and order of stereo, mono and CNF size works best on what I have demonstrated on previous pages.