Content area
Full Text
Today there are almost as many audio cleanup software products as there are applications for them. They can scrub distracting background noise out of interview footage, reduce wind noise from outdoor location shots, or clean up clicks and pops on vinyl recordings.
I recently took a look at Bias SoundSoap Pro, a whimsical name for a powerful new restoration and cleanup software. Originally sold as a prosumer product named SoundSoap, the pro version provides four individual tools to clean up vinyl records, cassette tapes, noisy location recordings, and even studio recordings.
SoundSoap Pro is a plug-in for any compliant audio program such as Bias Peak or Steinberg Cubase, Cubase SL/SX, or Nuendo. I tested it in Peak, the sound mastering software also developed by Bias. I had been planning to revive some old reel-to-reel recordings anyway, and so had an actual project on which to test drive SoundSoap Pro.
My reel-to-reel tapes are all music recordings of various bands I was in a very long time ago. Surviving members of the bands maintain that our solos are not worthy of audio, but I'm the one with the tapes, and so the restoration begins.
SoundSoap has set out to make the interface and process of cleanup as simple as possible, and for most basic restoration tasks you can achieve good results after spending about an hour on the tutorials. These, by the way, are very useful.
Naturally, it makes sense to bring in the cleanest possible signals. I played the 1/4in. source tapes on a restored Akai GX-625 open reel machine. The Akai was connected via Monster cable to an Edirol UA-5 converter box, a professional A/D audio interface. This was connected to my Mac G4 via USB cable, which is far cleaner than the notoriously noisy mini-pin input found on most PCs. I could have converted the audio at 24 bit, but let's be serious, I'm transferring live recordings made in clubs with less than stellar acoustics. CD-quality 16-bit 44KHz was adequate for the test. I transferred all the tunes to Freeverse Sound Studio 3 and saved them as individual AIFF files. Next, I imported them into Peak.
Once...