Re: [ARSCLIST] Cedar

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

One thing to consider about CEDAR. You might want to buy some of the CBS/Sony reissues of their 78 
catalog from the earlier era of CD's, for instance any of the 2CD Duke Ellington sets. These were 
heavily CEDAR'd. I believe metal parts were used where available. One could also check out teh 3CD 
Billie Holiday set from CBS/Sony Legacy label. If you have original 78s (which would of course be 
vastly inferior to metal parts), you might want to listen and compare and decide for yourself. As 
I've said, I'm not as opposed to various NR schemes for stuff that my ears tell me is low-fi anyway, 
ie anything from the 78 era. The CEDAR, as used in those examples, seems to remove a lot of 
physical-contact noise (whoosh, ticks and pops) but does seem to remove "air" and "space" around the 
music, assuming that was ever captured in the low-fi medium. For my ears, there might be a slight 
edge to careful tick and pop removal through editing and some EQ to reduce noise. This method was 
tried and true until CEDAR came along and you can hear excellent examples from Frank Abbey at I 
think CBS on most of the Time-Life Legends of Jazz series of LPs. But the things that I don't like 
that I hear on the CD's might also be lousy A-D chain or a variety of non-CEDAR artifacts. So, 
again, just to state clearly -- I am not a Luddite and do agree that there are some examples where 
digital tools perform miraculous changes on older low-fi media to vastly improve audibility. One 
could take just about any of the Bluebird/BMG recent reissues done by Doug Pomeroy to hear what I'm 
talking about. I think Doug is on-list and will correct me if I'm wrong but I believe his method is 
use well-cleaned metal parts whenever possible, play back very precisely and use digital tools 
judiciously in the computer after A-D conversion. Finally, I'm sure this is stating the obvious but 
even if you are successful in removing much of the background noise, a 78 still has very limited 
frequency response and will this never approach "fidelity" by the dictionary definition of being 
true to the source.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "D P Ingram" <darren@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 4:06 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Cedar


> On 22 maj 2007, at 18.59, Eric Jacobs wrote:
>
> > You may want to check out the ELP Declicker.  It was
> > engineered and manufactured by CEDAR for ELP and uses
> > the full CEDAR declickle algorithms.  The difference
>
> Yes, by coincidence I was communicating with ELP's UK agent yesterday  and he stated that he went 
> on behalf of ELP to visit CEDAR prior to  production and that ELP's product is "...not directly an 
> implementation of a single product, but was custom designed by CEDAR  for ELP."
>
> I have the declicker product and in my trials I believe it makes some  difference but to get the 
> most benefit you seem to need to "turn it  up" a lot and it appears then to take a bit away from 
> the overall  sound. I need to sit down and do more detailed work with it though as  I often 
> reprocess imported material "lightly ELPed" through a  software cleaner (presently).
>
> Darren
>
> ---
> Darren Ingram (darren at ingram.fi / www.ingram.fi)
> Provider of many things including research, media, innovation and  consultancy services.
>
> "Insert pointless, humo(u)rless quotation and ASCII art here"
> "Insert lengthy, boring and meaningless corporate and copyright  disclaimer here"