A Classical Before and After

[Craig Maier]

A member of the Forum, Robin Hinkley, performed a real nice restoration job on some classical music and was kind enough to share a sample. He used DC6. If you want to hear his "Before and After" results, it can be heard at this link:

http://www.diamondcut.com/BeforeAfter/usersamps.htm

If anyone else has an example of a "Before and After" that they want posted, let us know.

[Robin Hinkley]

Thank you for your kind comments, Craig.

Do you recall some time ago encouraging us to "blow our own horns" by giving a before and after sample to the project requestor? I did just that with this cantata job and he was extremely impressed. I told him that as for credit, it's 80% Diamond Cut programming staff and 20% me. I do think I'm showing some progress, though, because last year it was 90% DC and 10% me.

Thank you again for providing such awesome tools so we users can shine.

[Craig Maier]

Quoting Robin:

"Do you recall some time ago encouraging us to "blow our own horns" by giving a before and after sample to the project requestor?"

---------------------------------------------------

I vaguely recall that. It does make sense. Otherwise it is hard for the requestor to understand what you started with and where you went with it - - - it provides some perspective.

Anyway, nice job!!

[Geebster]

I personally really like hearing these "before's and after's". It gives me (as well as probably others) a benchmarch to see how we are getting along with the software ourselves. It's hard to judge how well we are doing (especially me, since I am so ultra-critical anyway) unless we hear what others are doing.

Good job with your restoration, and it also gave me pride as well, because I have been getting very similar results.

What recently has given me the most satisfaction, is with a very well used copy that I played daily at the radio station, that I recently restored. I thought it was beyond hope. With a good cleaning, good software (DC6) and patience, I produced a very respectable restoration job on a piece that I thought I would HAVE to just buy a replacement on CD.

I used to just take the easy way out and buy a replacement if the job was too challenging. Those days are gone. In fact, I rather enjoy the challenging restorations even more than the "routine" clean-up jobs. Given a little time, I think ANYONE can acchieve similar results.

GB.

[Robin Hinkley]

Thank you, Geebster.

Like you, I have spent hours on a single track, knowing full well the CD was available somewhere if I cared to look. When you win at that game it feels SOOOO good. But the best opportunity any of us who play this game can hope to get is the restoration when it is just flat impossible to find a copy anywhere, even in an old LP record store. I've only had one of these.

Two years ago a buddy asked me what I could do with a vinyl LP (transluscent green, no less) of his 1960 Vermont Allstate Band/Orchestra/Chorus. It was a mess. He graduated over 45 years ago so he had two choices: (1) find one of his classmates in the scant hope that they had a better copy, if at all, or (2) me. He had tried option 1 but unfortunately the only classmates he could still locate either didn't have the record or didn't know what he was talking about.

I worked almost 40 hours on that record and got something that was less than perfect but so much better than the original that he still occasionally thanks me again. Those make you walk tall.

But as I said earlier in this thread, the real praise goes to the DC development staff. There are all kinds of so-called noise reduction applications on the market these days but evey time I open DC6 to go to work the Beach Boys' song "Little Deuce Coupe" goes through my mind. You don't know what I got.

[Geebster]

But the best opportunity any of us who play this game can hope to get is the restoration when it is just flat impossible to find a copy anywhere, even in an old LP record store.

How true!! I have quite a few "one of a kind" albums, LP singles, out-takes etc. from my days at the radio station and up until recently I was afraid to even attempt restoration on these. I just archived them the best I knew how, hoping for a day that I would get expert enough to be able to restore these releases with confidence.

With a commercially available release you always have in the back of your head... "well, if I screw it up bad enough, I can always go out and buy a replacement".... That's not the case with a situation like yours or some of the material I have.

I have been slowly dusting off these albums (sometimes cart's or tapes) and begun to restore them with excellenct results. Of course, since these are not commercial releases and have been played little or not at all, most of them are in pristine (at least for their age) condition. So, there really isn't too much restoration that needs to be done, aside from putting them down on current media. It still gives you a sense of pride successfully transferring these transmissions.... and at least in my case .... when you don't screw anything up!!!

GB..

[cromag]

Nice, Robin! I faced a "challenge" similar to yours a couple of months ago when I cleaned up a couple of selections from Operas that my Dad had on '78 -- I don't have anything like that in my library!

I gave him one set of CDs exactly as they came off the turntable and one set that I had cleaned up, but even on the cleaned up versions I included a short opening track with the needle hitting the surface and a few initial scratches. He can choose not to play it easily enough, but I thought he might still like to hear where these CDs came from.

[Rick Barber]

I "found" a 5 LP record set of The Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band at a garage sale which was almost brand new. A lot of the music was transferred to lp from 78's. I know this because some of the music could only be cleaned up by using 78 type filtering. I spend hours getting this music cleaned up. It still amazes me how what appears to be pristine lps can be such a PITA to clean up. And I wish I would have been able to have a before and after to remember where I started.

I listed to all three of those examples and everyone did a fine job.

[Ringmaster]

The samples were very good. What makes it so nice, is, we are able to compare the jobs we do on some of the old stuff, and use these as a "marker" to help us decide where some of our difficult restorations "fall", in determining the quality of our restorations. I wish I had saved some of my tough "before & after" projects to post, but I'm always cleaning my files to make room for new "stuff". The "Forums", and personal Emails have really helped me be able to do some really good restorations.

Personally, my biggest problem is trying to be a "perfectionest" (my biggest "downfall"). I want to thank everyone on the "Fourm" for helping me get where I am.

[Drew]

Hey Craig;
How about creating a page for all of us on the forum to post before/after samples of our work? Maybe with a blurb about their workflow and what they did to get the end result.

Or, maybe a place where we can get our work critiqued?

I think it would be very educational to hear what others have done with their work and give us incentive to become more adept at what we do.

Would it take up too much disk space over time to put that together?

Maybe that is what the page in the link is for?

I, too, include a 10-15 second sample of the "before" audio on the CD when I burn it to show what has been done to improve the music.

BTW- the samples were very good. Great job Robin.

Drew

[Robin Hinkley]

Cromag, Rick Barber, Ringmaster and Drew;

Thank you all for your kind comments.

I think it's only fair to mention that this Bach Cantata project was made much easier than many I've done because there was no harsh brass in the music. I was able to use aggressive settings on impulse removal, something I wouldn't dream of doing on a Danny Stiles/Bill Watrous track, for example.

I encourage you all to submit samples via e-mail for Craig and/or Rick to put on the Before and After page. Show the world what you're accomplishing!

Robin

[Craig Maier]

Hi Drew,

The forum has limitations in terms of file size which would make it difficult to post audio samples in a meaningful way. The would have to be extremely short and highly compressed.

But, if you send us a copy of your before and after, we can post it on our website and then we can link over from the forum. That should work. Send your sample to:

dctools@aol.com

or

rickc@diamondcut.com

Try to keep your samples to around 20 or 30 seconds in length and include the before and after in the same clip.

[Drew]

Actually, I was thinking of the website as opposed to the forum. Sorry, I didn't proofread my post very closely.

My thought was to have a "Members Only" type of page to post our audio samples for different purposes (i.e. horn tooting, critiqueing, troubleshooting, etc).

I for one have had trouble in the past being onomatpoeitic on the forum with regards to a bit of audio I'm trying to fix, and it might be of help to others to be able to hear the querulous audio in question.

Again, it may not be feasable, but I thought I'd throw the idea out to see where it landed.

When I get the samples together, I'll send them to you.

Thanks....

Drew