Before & After declipping
Imagine you have a sound file that was badly recorded, with no possibility to re-record, and with no clean version : how to deal with the clipping, the saturation, the distorsion ?
Imagine you have a mix/(pre)mastering that was crushed-to-death in a “loudness war” fashion and you have lost all the original files :
how to fix this mess ?
Is there a possibility to clean / smooth the sound ?
how to “unsaturate” ?
can i have declipping ?
-> no <-
it’s too late, we can’t go back to the clean sound!
But we can do our best to limit the damages.
here’s some informations : http://www.wavosaur.com/forum/can-distortion-be-removed-or-minimized-t1262.html
And now a selection of plugins to help fixing the clipping disasters :
I won the loudness war
Declipper plugins :
Some editors provide plugins that can add some improvements, Izotope has developed a suite, intended for repairing audio : this include music restoration, “declipping”, noise removal etc.. It’s a bit expensive but if you really need it, you have it all !
Izotope RX3
more info and download demo @ http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/
We have hunted down freeware declipper plugins on the interweb, we only found two, three if we include the “transient designer” (it can heal some overcompressed files) :
Relife 1.42
Relife 1.42 by Terry West
More info and free download @ http://www.terrywest.nl/utils.html
This free VST declipper can bring the oversqueezed samples to life, or smoothes a bad vocal recording. It was used on the clipped sample you can see on the first picture.
Don’t expect miracles, but don’t hesitate to test the three algo, to find which is working best for you.
Declipper DX plugin 2.5
Declipper plugin 2.5
Free download @ http://www.silksound.com/geniesys/
This is a directX plugin, you have to use a DX-VST wrapper (like vb ffx4) in order to make it work in Wavosaur.
This free declipping plugin try to resynthetize the peak lost by the overclipping, It has advanced controls, you can have a look at the help to understand how it works. It aslo has a compress feature.
Bittersweet 3
Flux Bittersweet 3
Informations & Freeware download @ http://www.fluxhome.com/products/freewares/bittersweet-v3
This one is not intented for “declipping” but is a transient designer, and it can help to get a smoother sound. It’s subtle, and more important : it has a big knob !
Don’t expect wonders, once a signal is clipped / saturated / overclipped / distorded, you can’t go back to a clean signal.