[abbeynormal]

sorry for the length of this post, but i was reading other posters'
comments about phonographic disc reproduction of music, and how some
of them insisted that noise and distortion could be salient features
while others contested this assertion. i won't enter that controversy
but i have to ask readers out there if they are familiar with the sony
columbia 1999 CD reissue of Benny Goodman and his Allstars 1938
Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert? this Phil Schapp-produced 2-CD set
purportedly offered the complete "real-time" concert recording for the
first time ever, but also quite regrettably left in ALL the noise,
with no attempts made at any kind of crackle reduction, in the theory
that any professional noise reduction techniques [as of 1999] were
simply not up to the task of tamping back the surface noise without
also tamping back the music.
i am not an audio professional so i can't vouch for the truthiness of
that philosophy, but i can say as a music lover that the loud and
persistent "bacon-frying" crackling noise seriously obscured my
perception of the inner voices of the music, in a similar manner as
how automobile windwshield glare keeps me from seeing the road ahead
unless i wear polarized sunglasses. so after one tiring and
unsatisfactory listen, i determined that i would try to get rid of
this horrible crackling noise and then listen anew to the program. so
to test Phil Schaap's assertion that no noise reduction system could
do a better job than one's own hearing mechanism, i tried feeding the
CD audio through a CEDAR DC-1 Declicker, to see if that could quiet
the crackling, and quickly found that the CEDAR unit made mincemeat
out of the brasses, especially the trombones, turning brass into
cardboard. so i quit the CEDAR and put the music on the hard drive
and went to work on it using Virtos Noise Wizard NR tools, just the
declicker set to 2-3ms @ 15% processing depth, made a noise-inversion
then filtered that @24 db/oct below 3k [thereby sparing most of the
music from posibly being adversely affected by processing], then
invert-paste-mixed that back in to the original soundfile, and found
90% or so of the crackling was gone, with no audible change to the
timbres and metallic sheen of the brasses and the shiny metallic edge
to gene krupa's drumkit. to deal with the remaining crackles, i
reversed the soundfile and repeated the operation. the result was
totally clean of crackle, which for ther first time truly exposed just
how deteriorated the original transcription discs were, with much
scuffing and rumble and groove roar and a stentorian hiss everpresent
on the portions which were obviously from 2nd generation disc dubs.
but it was still sufficient for me to hear for the first time, subtle
details of gene krupa's marvelous drumming, including his subtle wire
brush work on the cymbals and snare drum, details that i simply could
not readily hear above the rushing crackle.
incidentally, this record should be in the dictionary as the
definitive description of swing jazz. it truly rocks. gosh, what that
Carnegie Hall concert audience must've heard that january 1938 night.
i'd really be thankful to hear from anybody else with this particular
CD album who also had issues with hearing the music under the
crackling.