Getting rid of pops in music

[Kinoko]

I'm using an old piece of public domain music in a game and I need to get some rather nasty pops and clicks out of it.

The song is "Nashville Nightingale" by the Charleston 7, and I can only point you here: http://www.archive.org/details/Charleston7 because my FTP isn't working.

I'd really appreciate if any of you could help out.

I posted about this at the end of last year and largopredator helped me with the problem, but I've recently started looking at my music again and I'd like to see if I can get it improved even more.

Here's the old thread with largo's version: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=29467.0

[Nikolas]

Kinoko,

It is NOT that bad really... I mean, I hear some pops and clicks and the whole muddiness of the recording, but I think that if you want to go for such a kind of music, the above issues/problems become qualities. In the past I've tried to emmulate such music quality, and failed!

What I mean, is that maybe in the game you're working on (for which we know nothign about! BAD Kinoko! BAD!), maybe the tune works as is?

Either way I've downloaded the mp3 (btw, bad quality mp3 at 128 kbit... ) and will give it a try later on today.

Take care and glad to see you posting.

EDIT: Yes... Ahem... Heard the whole thing. The end is totally unacceptable.

[markbilly]

I think the pops add to the feel of the piece. It sounds like an old recording, and the style of the music suits that.

[Nikolas]

markbilly, if you go to the ending of the piece, there are some REALLY ugly digital clicks that are not from the record (the 78 rpm) but from the digital transfering, and really do not fit. I thought the same as you, but when I opened the file, I pretty much freaked out.

I'm also done with cleaning it, so will post in 5 minutes or so...

EDIT:

Ok

There we are!

www.nikolas-sideris.com/AGS/kinoko.mp3 (192 kbits)

It's not perfect really, there are few that got away really, but don't have any more time to deal with it right now.

There were 2 kinds of clicks in there, the clicks coming from the record, which did give a nice feeling, as Markbilly mentioned, but also towards the end some really nasty ones, that totally destroyed the piece. I removed both.

In the process I made the track rather... too clean I think. All static is gone, most pops are gone, hisses are gone, etc, and it simply feels plastic and digital right now...

Your call Kinoko...

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

There's a program you can get called goldwave www.goldwave.com that has a lot of useful filters like noise and pop/click reduction.  I've used it before on old samples to clean them up.  Goldwave is pretty much free since it works based on something like 20 actions performed before stopping and every time you open it you can do 20 more.

[Nikolas]

Didn't think of that ProgZ. Thanks!

Yes.

I used the plug-in, developed by Cockos (the developers behind repear), which can be found here: http://www.kvraudio.com/get/2671.html

I used it inside Cubase, but any plug-in oriented sequencer will do (I got the VST version, don't know if there are any other versions). Other than that it seems really nice for a free plug-in...

[Kinoko]

FA-NTASTIC!

Thanks SO much, Nik! And everyone else for the advice. It's perhaps a -tad- cleaner than I'd like but not much. I'm honestly amazed you got rid of those pops so thoroughly.

Nik - you are a genius with the medium of sound.

Of course you will be fully credited when the game is finally out ^_^