ClickRepair is an application to assist you in restoring the sound archived from old records (vinyl or shellac). It is cross-platform, currently available for Mac OS X and Windows, and will be released for any Java 1.4 enabled platform (Linux, Windows, Unix ...) early in July. Site navigation is via the tabs in the left-hand frame. Unless you are experienced in archiving your old records, I suggest you explore all the pages.

Noise problems fall into two classes, localised and global. Localised degradation is typically in the form of clicks, ticks, and crackle. The origin is usually scratches and/or dust particles. Neither can be physically removed from the record, although there are methods for cleaning records quite thoroughly, and even playing them back "wet".

Global degradation takes many forms, particularly hiss, rumble, and distortion due to non-linearity in the play-back equipment. These last two are equipment problems. Only hiss and rumble can be reduced by available software, although there is research into the repair of some types of non-linear distortion. Hiss and rumble are reduced by global filtering. Hiss should not be a problem with Vinyl LP records, because the equalisation employed for recording and playback suppresses it. Things are different with the older 78 records. Hiss and rumble reduction are not in the domain of ClickRepair.

Click and crackle removal is a two-stage process: detection followed by repair. The samples between the damaged ones should not be changed by the repair process, whilst the damage itself should be replaced by a plausible interpolation based on an analysis of the surrounding sound.

ClickRepair is a program for locating and repairing damage due to scratches, dust specks, etc. It is equally useable by Apple Mac or Windows users. It is not a plug-in, so it's use does not require an editor which supports plug-ins.

I hope that the program will offer high-quality click removal for users who do not wish to purchase more expensive solutions (particularly since the demise of CoolEdit, which worked with the ClickFix plug-in). As a long-time Java developer, another objective is to make the same software available to both Apple Mac and Windows users, with exactly the same interface. I might also release the program for Linux users once I have time to do some testing on that platform. (See my Chaos site for an example of software which runs equally well on all three.)

Limitations:

· 15 day trial