[78-L] Re; 78's to Computers

[Steven C. Barr]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ken Matheson" <kenmath at yahoo.com>
> Most of you out there have a lot more experience than
> me at transferring 78’s to CD’s. I have Sound Forge 9,
> and I find it does not remove the really bad pops without
> leaving some residual. So I listen to the recording after I
> have put it into a wave format, and when I come to a bad
> pop I expand the wave out and, copy the other channel,
> or copy and past a cleaner wave form from near by, or after
> highlighting the offending pop hit replace, or manually
> rebuilding the wave. Then I will take the best track and
> copy it to the other side. After doing that I use click and
> crackel remover. I usually get a very good recording when
> done. The bad part is sometimes it takes 3 or 4 hours to do.
> I have heard professionally restored 78’s that are not as
> good. It is not easy transferring 78’s to the computer and
> getting as good quality as one might expect. I have also
> found that using the correct input level to the sound card,
> and the proper record level when recording the wav file
> helps a lot. I have found using –6DB peek works better
> than 0DB. When you transfer a recording to a CD, or MP3
> player you can adjust the level.
>
Okeh...! Note that I haven't tried this, since I refer the "mental
editing" that I have developed over half-a-century* or so of
listening to 78rpm phonorecord...BUT...?!

Would it not be possible to view the waveform of the offending
sound signal (in electrical form)...and...since a "click" or "pop"
caused by a damaged record surface would appear as a sudden
"spike" in that image, could one not hand-redraw the waveform
with the spike removed...?! Of course, I realize that this would
depend on the "peak" being of brief enough duration that no
shorter-duration signal data was "covered up" by the sudden
peak of the "spike"...or is that the inherent problem here?!

...stevenc