Plugin: Vinyl restoration tool

Plugin: Vinyl restoration tool (VRT)

Description of effect:
With this plugin you can restore the original sound of those round black... things, or whatever they was called.

This tool features pop & click reduction, rumble reduction, white noise reduction and room ambience simulation.

The philosophy behind this tool is to favour intact music to too much restoration. This might very well be called a "discrete restoration".

The plugin is divided into 4 modules; groove & rumble reduction , pop & click reduction , white noise reduction , room ambience. Each of these modules take a specific amount of processing time, and when they are all enabled, it may very well take up to 3 times the playing time to restore a waveform. Each module takes a fixed amount of processing time.

If you need a tip, please have a look in the cookbook.

Description of parameters:

Attenuate grooves & rumble Module

Strength slider will set the amount of low frequency removal. This function acts like a low-frequency-only noise reduction.

Pops & click removal Module

Sensitivity slider, will set a threshold to how to detect impulses. If this slider is set to high (depending on the material) then some "musical" content will be "detected" as being impulse-noise too. If set to low, some obvious pops may go undetected.

Strength slider. This setting should only be used, if some of the detected clicks / pops have been detected, but not entirely removed. Leave it at 50% otherwise.

Double pass: The algorithm that searches for impulse noises may sometimes be fooled by several impulses being too close together and only seeing the largest ones. If that is the case, then use the double pass option to re-scan around that area.

Use internal S-Comp object. This option take up 10 % extra time, and may not produce audible results normally. Use this only when you can hear low frequency distortion during heavy pop-removal.

White noise reduction Module

Strength slider. This function is very much alike the generic noise removal function in the 'Special effects | Generic noise removal' menu.

Room ambience Module

This module applies the room simulator to the result. You may use the rooms from the room simulator plugin in the 'Special effects | Plugins | Room simulator' menu as the file format is identical and that means that you also can design your own rooms. A recommendation is to only use this module for really heavy restoration. It dampens the noise and clicks as well as creating a nice ambience, but you will find that the natural ambience of a recording may be preferable. Use this function when the restoration has damaged the natural ambience.

Use global S-Comp object
An S-Comp object is a functionality that allows any effect to do a "before & after" comparison. This allows the effect to actively "know" what turned out good and what turned out bad, and then do an appropriate counter-action. Using a S-Comp object may take up to 10 % more processing time.

Material was originally in mono.
This could be a useful option for really old records! It is a feature of the global S-Comp object which therefor must be checked. The S-Comp object uses the fact that music that was recorded in mono put played with a stereo pick-up must have two stereo channels that are very much alike (perfect match in theory) while the vinyl noise and impulse noises are totally random. If you listen to a mono record that was sampled by a stereo pickup you can here the pops & clicks all around in the panorama, while the music lies still in the middle. The S-Comp object tries to combine the common factor of the two channels. The result will be a stereo waveform where the two channels are identical.

As a reminder; do not use this option on a waveform with stereo properties.

Preview: Press the 'Preview' button to test the effect to see if it is tuned properly. It is quicker than applying the effect and making an undo...

For more information: info@pristinesounds.com