Audacity alternative for mastering & vinyl restoration/mastering?

[DJMaytag]

I've been using Audacity for years now, and have gotten to know it fairly well, but I'm been running into some issues with really old vinyl that's either pressed poorly, mastered poorly, or has a good bit of clicks n pops.

I don't have any plugins specifically to deal with noise/clicks/pops, but I have a ton of quality plugins for mastering, and have done a decent job of "fixing" issues with some old records to get the digitized version on par with today's DJ/dance music. I'm looking at upgrading to something better, specifically where it would save me some time dealing with click & pop editing. Also some good loudness tools built in would be awesome, so I don't have to keep opening up the window of a plugin that shows the LUFS-i measurement.

I really only know of Wavelab from Ian Shepherd's YT channel, but I'm open to other suggestions, as my experience with Cubase was a nightmare (I simply abandoned the app years ago). As far as I can tell, I wouldn't need Wavelab Pro, as Wavelab Essentials seems like it has enough of what I need.

[sinkmusic]

Acon Acoustica?

[Virteffx]

I'm a fan of Sound Forge, Wavosaur and iZotope RX. And I had heard good things about Soundop.

[DJMaytag]

Acon Acoustica?

Downloading a trial right now. Price/features ratio seems better than Wavelab, upon first glance.

[thecontrolcentre]

Sound Forge

[osiris]

Soundforge was how I did all my old vinyl. (But that was when Sony owned it.)

[El°HYM]

Acon Acoustica?

+1

[Tj Shredder]

Another one for Acon Acoustica. Responsive developer and often enough with insane discounts…. I’d rather pay the full price though…

[whyterabbyt]

So you're doing a decent job of mastering with 3rd party plugins in your editor, but have decided to switch editor entirely for vinyl restoration?

so why are you not looking at 3rd party plugins for that too? Like starting with RX Elements; that pretty much gets given away on a regular basis.

Also; if you do decide to go down the change-of-editor route and settle on Soundforge, wait till the next time it comes up on HumbleBundle as part of a £20 deal for Music Maker or Vegas (and you'll probably get RX Elements with it.) It'll be a slightly older version by a major version or rwo, but silly-cheap.

[DJMaytag]

Does Acoustica not save a project file with the contained audio in it (either recorded or imported), or does it always reference an external audio file?

[DJMaytag]

So you're doing a decent job of mastering with 3rd party plugins in your editor, but have decided to switch editor entirely for vinyl restoration?

I'm having some issues with Audacity, so it's more than just switching editors for shits and giggles. One thing I like is that Audacity contains the audio inside its project file, so I can retain the 32-bit float audio in the project file and then export to 16-bit/48KHz when I'm done. What I'm having an issue with is destructive editing of the plugin settings in the project file. If I make changes to the file, I can't close the project file and revert those plugin changes back to what they were before (if I'm not satisfied with my changes).

Audacity's direct editing of the waveform/non-realtime editing leaves something to be desired where it comes to click removal. It tends to remove far too many transients that I want to retain, so I have to zoom in and use repair to remove clicks and pops. I was working on a file the other day, and removed a shit ton of them from a record that wasn't in great shape, and an hour later.... I had only fixed the first 15 seconds of the song. Not good!

Audacity has no spectrum analyzer or loudness metering built in. I can use FF Pro L2 and Voxengo SPAN to get that visual feedback, but I can't defeat the realtime plugins to A/B the before and after without losing those two plugins. That's a downvote for continuing with Audacity. I was considering using Reason (my main production DAW) since I can use Combinators to have separate plugin chains, that can be individually defeated, but Reason has no waveform editing tools and I don't think it has jack shit for applying an effect directly to an audio file (to bounce in place).

Acon so far is decent, but I'm not digging that it seems to reference an external audio file, rather than containing the recorded/imported audio in its own project file.

[osiris]

Soundforge will also let you edit CD markers which I found useful when I ripped a couple of ELO CDs. These were all concept albums and the songs are mixed into each other, but on the CD there's a Track Marker so you can skip to different songs. You have to delete that so the song won't fade and end to go into the next track.
I managed to do that with the Boris Midney Evita album and the cleaning was about as good as I could get because I pretty much wore the grooves off that vinyl.

[DJMaytag]

Soundforge has been discontinued for MacOS, from what I understand. It's a shame what happened to that company. A lot of the Sonic Foundry guys would come into the music store where I worked in the 90's, as they were blowing up.

[DJMaytag]

So I bought Acoustica today (on sale at Plugin Boutique), but it seems like I'm just using it to clean up audio files, as it's "interpolate" tool is FAR more powerful and usable than Audacity's "Repair" tool. Am I missing the point of Acoustica, that it can't save a project file with at least all my effects and a history of my edits to the audio file? If you can't save any of that... what's the point, other than to edit an audio file... and then import in into another app for mastering?

The Acon plugins are nice, but it's a major bummer that Remix doesn't work in Audacity. At least their other plugins seem to work.

[Tj Shredder]

I always hated the concept of project files in a plain audio editor. When doing repairs, I do it in one go. Its nothing I have to go back…
If I need that for a bigger or multitrack project, I use those plugins in a real DAW. Any DAW is better than Audacity in that regard…