Tips for (extreme) declicking

Hello all,

i’m currently working on a file restoration for a vinyl reissue

using mainly sonnox & RX, and some hand editing i have been able to get something that the mastering & label are OK for the main part of the song

But i have a 1 minute intro from a vinyl records thats is buried in clicks ( mainly because there’s just a guitar playing quietly ), so i’m trying some stuff with SL pro…
NB : i recorded the original 45 and i’ve done everything that was doable on such an extremely rare record to remove clicks and crackles IRL :wink:

Here’s my attempt so far :
harmonic selection tool… not usable in this particular contrext, it takes “too much” even with the sharpest settings…

copying and pasting notes / harmonics to a new layer with frequency tool is by far the best i’ve found,
but sometimes the frequency selection just go crazy because of the clicks ( jump from one harmonic to the one upper or lower, or even worst make short 1 or 2 octaves bumps )

Also the transient detection tool is kind of tricky to use, as sometimes it dectects the harmonics and don’t select the start of them ( great ! ) and sometimes it does, and a really little move in the mouse position changes the way it detect, so it’s hard to get it right everytime…

Any help will be greatly appreciated :wink:

i would be happy to submit an exemple,

I use 2 things for declicking: the SL declicker, and Waves X-Click. Any additional repairs are done by hand in SL.

BTW, if you’re trying to get results from a beat-up piece of mass-production vinyl or polystyrene that rival the sound quality of the original master tape, give up now.

i’m not trying to get close to the master tape quality, just getting something less crunchy :wink:
the master tape from this is long gone unfortunatly…

the SL decklicker for this task is far inferior to the Rx declicker, i’ve tried waves & sonnox, and Rx was the best for this track ( the main part )

For the intro i’m trying from the unprocessed rip file…

maybe denoising could help harmonic & transient detection… will try this

those threads could be helpfull to someone in the same king of situation :
( i’ll add as i found some )

https://forums.steinberg.net/t/how-to-remove-raspy-sounds-vocal-fry-crackle-from-voice/726768

Using unmix components helped way more than anything else i’ve tried !!

now i just have some artefact removing to do, but 70% of the job is done :wink:

NB : still on SL7, if i tick “unmix transients”, i get a blank screen, my computer shuts down @ 56%
( i’m working with a 48K 64b file - win 10 - 18 core processor Intel - running only SL in standalone)… looks like a serious bug

I experience a lot of declicking when unmixing, the de-clickerb within spectralayers works well, however I still find myself manually having to edit out those clicks. It all depends on the project though.

As far as tips, I would suggest to get familiar with the de-clicker (it works when you know how to use it)

FFT Size and Resolution will have an affect on some of the algorithms including the Declicker algo

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I woul zoom in on the click as close as possible, cut to new layer, then do my business. Dont try a mass management of this. If you do the de-click tool to its best result and you have what is left left, all I know as a noob would be to zoom in. For this process I like to cut each part first to new layers, then work on each seperately. Time is your friend if you have it.