Click removal dilemma

[dlivezey]

Hi,

First of all, thanks for a great product. It really makes the process of capturing and cleaning up vinyl recordings easy. Nice job on the layout of the interface--it's easy to learn.

I'm having a bit of a problem with the click removal, and am wondering if you can offer any pointers. I have found that for some tracks, if I employ click removal--even with very non-aggressive settings (low sensitivity and high PP)--I end up with tempo distortion, or the appearance of same, in the end result.

The problem doesn't happen on all tracks. For example, it is particularly noticeable on The True Wheel from Brian Eno's "Taking Tiger Mountain." I record to MP3 at 44kHz and VBR 0. Then I do Scan for Clicks with a sensitivity setting of 1 and a PP setting of 4. Finally, I save to MP3 with Sample Rate <as recorded> and VBR 0, "Save Corrections," and "Perform fast MP3-to-MP3 copies." In the end result, the tempo in the start of the song (prior to vocals) seems distorted. It's somewhat subtle, but definitely noticeable. I cannot say for sure whether it is actually a tempo difference, or whether it might be that the "edges" of some of the percussion are trimmed off, leading to an overall sense of being off beat.

If it would be of any value, I'd be more than happy to create and send some short samples that illustrate the problem.

The only solution I found with this particular track was to remove the corrections for that portion of the song. When I do that, does the software perform a "fast mp3-to-mp3 copy" of that portion of the song? I'm wondering if it has anything to do with the re-encoding.

Anyway, I would like to find a strategy that can help automate the process as much as possible, as it will be pretty time-consuming to come back and remove corrections selectively after listening to the finished product to hear whether the problem occurred on some of the songs. I'm ripping a pretty sizable collection.

I would appreciate any advice. For example, if the problem might possibly be related to switching between fast copy and re-encoding (not sure if that's even a plausible scenario), then if I disable the fast copy could that help?

Thanks very much,
Don Livezey

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

Hi,

This is not an issue we have heard of before.  Could you upload a short sample please?  You can upload files here:

http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk/VinylStudio/upload.aspx

Please upload 'before' and 'after' samples so I can hear the difference (and examine the waveform display).  You can generate the 'before' samples by saving with 'Save corrections' disabled.  Also, if you could let me know via email when the samples are there I would appreciate it - I won't know otherwise.  Thanks.  You should have our email address by now.

In the meantime, you might like to try saving with 'fast copy' disabled.  I would be interested to know the outcome.  And could you also try saving as WAV?  That might tell me something.  You are correct in assuming that VinylStudio performs fast MP3-to-MP3 copies of those sections of music containing no click repairs.

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

Update (things have been happening offline):

Don very kindly supplied some sound samples that demonstrate the problem, and there is indeed a subtle bug in VinylStudio in this area.  It's not normally audible, but you may hear an occasional 'skipping' sound in music recorded in MP3 format, declicked, and then saved in MP3 format.

If this problem affects you, you can either:
  (a) - record to WAV format (which most people do anyway)
  (b) - disable the 'Fast MP3-to-MP3 copy' option when saving your tracks (and then save them again if needs be)

This problem affects VinylStudio V6.00 - V6.02 inclusive.  We apologise for this error and will fix it in the next release.  Many thanks to Don for his help in this matter.

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

This is just a note to say this this problem is fixed in VinylStudio V6.10 and you can go back to using 'perform fast MP3-to-MP3 copy' when saving tracks.