I wanted to transfer a tape to CD (for personal use to preserve the
tape) so ran the hard-drive recorded tracks through Audio Cleaning Lab
to take out some of the tape hiss. I find that with a conservative
application of noise removal, I get a good result without noticeable
amounts of the "alien babble" artifacts that occur with overly
aggressive application of noise removal. I find you don't have to
completely remove every last vestige of hiss. If the original track is
hot enough, at normal listening levels the noise is for all intents
and purposes gone.

However, on careful listening, I notice there's an effect on certain
high frequency sounds - brushes, cymbals and other metallic percussion
sounds, the high frequency portions of steel string guitars etc. It's
hard to describe but they just sound "funny". Sort of flat,
2-dimensional, and like some of the sound is gone, even though the
vocal and other lower frequency elements sound fine. Admittedly, a
non-musician casual listener probably wouldn't even notice it but I
can definitely hear it, especially after comparing with the original
unprocessed track.

Can *any* sound cleaning program of any price range take out noise
without affecting anything else in the sound? Or is the effect just of
a lesser magnitude on pricier programs like Cedar?