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Groove Mechanic cleans up music digitised from vinyl or tape. With tape recordings it reduces the hiss, and with vinyl recordings it reduces the clicks and pops caused by dust, scratches and sheer old age.
It also reduces rumble - low-frequency noise that may not be audible but can damage speakers. Rumble is rarely present on an original record, but can be added inadvertently during digitising if the turntable picks up vibration.
To use the software you can either capture sound straight from tape or record, or use a previously captured WAV file. You can't just plug a record deck into your sound card, though: you need to 'equalise' the sound by running it through a pre-amp. We got good results by connecting the deck to an amplifier and running the tape recorder output from the amplifier to the sound card.
Using Groove Mechanic is simple. You adjust the input level using the standard Windows volume controls, and record. Having captured your recording, you can set about repairing it. Although there are various options for analysis and repair, the simplest way is to use the 'batch repair option'.
You can then play through the cleaned-up recording, marking tracks for extraction; this is the most tedious part of the operation as the editing facilities are minimal. Finally, Groove Mechanic will extract the marked tracks to separate files.
Using a record in poor condition, we found Groove Mechanic efficient: it got rid of most of the scratching, with only a slight loss of sound quality. It probably wouldn't be good enough for true hi-fi buffs, but then, they'd never let their vinyl collection get into that state in the first place.
Contact
Coyote Software: info@coyotes.bc.ca, www.coyotes.bc.ca
See also:
Turn emails into a multimedia experience by including sound and graphics. 24 Jul 2001
All Audio Recording, Editing & Mixing
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