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Restoration - Fixing the Sound
This is beyond the average record owner because it requires specialized hardware, computers and software. Records brought in for restoration generally suffer from clicks, pops, crackle and hiss. This is removed with sophisticated computer programs and frequently labor intensive manual modification of the actual audio data to remove or mask the offending sound. This is much more than the "restoration" plug-ins that come with consumer-level audio editing software. Below is a picture of a bit of audio data from the mildewed album pictured on Restoration page one.
This album was purposely not cleaned first for this example. The music we want to restore is the dark cluster of objects in the center and right side of the audio. The spikes are pops and clicks that come from mildew clogging the groves as well as scratches on the record itself. You can see from the amplitude of these spikes that some of this noise is louder than the music. The smaller, almost rhythmic lines on the left side of the data are crackle and they continue throughout the actual music. What can’t be seen are the high pitched hiss and low frequency rumble that is in almost all records. After restoration, this is what we now have.
As you can see, all that stuff is gone leaving just the sound of the music. This was a particularly nasty album cut to restore, taking more than an hour of work. It involved the use of 6 different computer programs and quite a bit of manual editing of the file as well as specialized equalization afterwards to restore the dynamic range. Most restoration goes much quicker. This type of restoration work is beyond the average home computer user with a software program. In many cases, restoration also includes significant editing where bad sounds or musical notes are replaced with good ones found elsewhere in the file. It's best to leave important or irreplaceable audio to the pros.
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