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 > >