Hey Matt -- the reply-to thing is fixed!

I agree with your comments. What encourages me is that there is so much research -- a lot of it 
funded by government spy agencies -- going on with automated image-enhancement software. Perhaps a 
"peace dividend" outgrowth will be new tools to "heal" damaged groove walls in scans of disks.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matt Sohn" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2013 4:54 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Advice needed on removing / minimizing tape bleed-through


>I saw one of the demos that Haber and his associate did in New York.
> I think that an image-based approach to noise reduction is something that ought to be explored.
> From the images I saw at the demonstration, it is clearly obvious to me which parts of the image 
> are the walls of the groove, and which parts were imperfections in the groove wall.
> If the imperfections were "healed" before the images were converted to audio signals, that would 
> create a more faithful reproduction of the original recording, no?
> Quite a labor-intensive task, though. Having to correct each image individually. I suppose 
> algorithms would have to be developed..
> -Matt Sohn
> P.S. Is my reply-to thing coming through correctly? I am composing through Windows Live, instead 
> of Yahoo.
>
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Doug Pomeroy
> Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2013 12:55 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Advice needed on removing / minimizing tape bleed-through
>
> Hi Tom,
>
> I wish I could share your optimism about future developments.
>
> Haber's work has been concerned with developing and improving his optical mechanism.
> As far as I know, he hasn't done any work on audio restoration (the first demo which he
> released several years ago was quite noisy), as it is not his field of expertise.  But the ultra
> high resolution of his scans offer much information about the nature of disc surface noises,
> which may help those working to perfect noise removal processors.
>
> Doug Pomeroy
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>> Date:    Fri, 25 Oct 2013 08:18:52 -0400
>> From:    Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: Advice needed on removing / minimizing tape bleed-through
>>
>> Hi Ted:
>>
>> Much better!
>>
>> The wonders of modern DSP in careful craftspeople's hands!
>>
>> The next frontier will be figuring out how to grab the just musical content out of a noisy 
>> grooved
>> disk and then un-do the problems of groove distortion and disk wear. I hope Carl Haber's work 
>> leads
>> there -- scan the groove and then come up with some kind of Photoshop-like algorhythm to "heal"
>> groove wear and the material on the groove surface that produces playback noise (I'm assuming 
>> that
>> comes down to rough-surface shellac, which would need to be differentiated from minute lateral
>> changes in the groove, ie soft-dynamic music content). I am optimistic that such a system will
>> emerge in my lifetime. Imagine few-dozen-dollar software that enables you to scan your 78RPM 
>> disks
>> on a high-resolution flatbed, then "heals" the ravages of time and the problems with the original
>> shellac compound and saves a clean,crisp audio file to your hard drive.
>>
>> -- Tom Fine
>
>