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This is a term used to describe any useful improvement which can be made to the sound of a recording. This may range from gentle reduction of tape hiss to the removal of thyristor noise, major clicks, crackles and/or surface noise from a rare old vinyl or acetate disc. Ideally these unwanted sounds should be reduced or removed without affecting other aspects of the sound quality. These days we find most sources from the pre-digital era can benefit from some degree of restoration of this kind. In addition to the usual equalisation and filtering options we also employ a number of other PC-based software restoration packages, many of which deal with reduction of clipping distortion and the correction of mechanical distortions such as long- and short-term speed variations. In the past we have carried out work on restoring recordings which were originally made in the 1950s on wire. These were of surprisingly good quality and the main problem was dealing with the speed variations which ocurred at the time of the original recording and on subsequent playback. We were able to do this very successfully. In many cases we can restore recordings from disk to the point where they are at least as good as the original master tapes. We have also successfully 'salvaged' a number of projects which clients had previously considered unsuitable for release! |
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