acg -
I have used CD Spin Doctor's filtering feature to remove noise from digitized analog recordings with mixed results:
If I set the slider to a point where all the noise is removed, the resulting music is noticeably duller and missing most of the high end; if I set the slider to a point where the high end is not dulled, there is still audible noise. I conclude that it's not a very 'smart' or sophisticated filter, but more of just a high-end equalizer. Use at your own risk, YMMV.
I have had much better success removing clicks and pops from recordings of vinyl records 'manually', but the procedure is labor-intensive and very time-consuming. In any good waveform editor (I use FeltTip SoundStudio, which is $50 shareware - try before you buy - so you can actually use it 'for real' and determine for yourself whether it will do what you want and like how it works before you have to pay for it), simply expand the waveform display to maximum (or nearly so) and the pops become nearly vertical lines that can be carefully highlighted and deleted without adversely affecting the rest of the music (and even basic editors such as SoundStudio feature at least one level of Undo, or you can save the file or a portion of the file with and without the Edit, so that you can do a 'before and after' comparison of the music the first few times you excise a pop to convince yourself, as I did, that this methodolgy is both effective and not degrading to the musical fidelity). The only downside to this solution (as I mentioned above), is that for a very pop-and-click filled recording, this can run into a LOT of time overall. Typically, however, clicks and pops are only REALLY obnoxious in the opening quiet portions of a track, during a fade-out, or between tracks (and those you can usually, and often want to, edit out completely without any loss of music).
I have read about a product from Arboretum called RayGun, which I believe is supposed to remove clicks and pops, but as I have never used it, I can not attest to its effectiveness or its lack of degrading effect on the music's fidelity.
- kbeartx
