Polished

[murray]

I have noticed for a while that people have been discussing ...That they have been polishing audio [VOICE] what is the basics for doing it ????. is it worthwhile in polishing [MUSIC] what are the fundementals to this..????thanks murray......

[Craig Maier]

I know that professional Voice Over specialists polish their signal making sure to get rid of any breathing sounds or other spurious sounds created by the mouth when speaking. Perhaps that is what this is about? But, I am not really sure.

[quartet87]

Murray, I think what you refer to as polishing I refer to as sweetening...but no matter. If you're talking about re-equalizing and otherwise changing the tone etc of a older recording, this is something I've played around for years.

With DC7, the goal is much easier to reach. All of my work is on gospel quartets LP recordings so that's primarily the content perspective I work from. My routine is now as follows:

1. Transfer the record via flat preamp at 96KHz and 24 bits, then apply RIAA with Virtual Preamp, then normalize the audio level.
2. Open up EZ Impulse filter, choose a suitable preset via previews (all with narrow crackle set at zero and the "Solo / Brass" box checked"), then manually remove any remaining pops
3. Open Narrow Crackle filter, choosing a suitable preset via previews
4. Run High Pass filter, usually at 20Hz / -24dB Butterworth
5. Open Ez-Enhancer, choosing Audiophile Quality preset and lowering Exciter level to 10
6. Re-eq if desired using the 20-band EQ, I usually end up dropping the 2KHz thru 5.6KHz area 2 or 4 dB....matter of taste...otherwise on many recordings the vocals are bit too harsh and rough. When in doubt about the accuracy of your monitors or headphones, forget the EQ until and if you think different later
7. Run CNF with FFT (after taking sample) at 16384, attack at 40, release at 80, attn at 69, then globally raise the filter threshold to taste, smoothing off
8. Run CNF in Artifact Suppression mode (after taking sample), again with FFT at 16384, adjusting threshold to taste
9. Bust resolution down to 44.1KHz / 16 bits

That's how I do it currently...subject to change, of course.