Audio Restoration Services: Robert Duffy, Audio Engineer

Frequently Asked Questions

The amount of noise reduction employed will depend on how much noise is in the recording, your tastes, and budget. The Minimal NR service removes roughly 35% of the noise, The Standard NR around 60%, and the Extensive 75 to 90%. If you are not sure, I often can tell by listening to short samples. With the Extensive Noise Reduction, the level of noise removal is employed until the point of diminishing returns is reached.

Personal Checks, Bank Drafts, and Cash (U.S. dollars) are accepted.

When shipping, the "box within a box" method with plenty of packing material will usually suffice. Please make sure your boxes are sturdy and labeled as Fragile. Discs can be placed between 2 pieces of cardboard and placed inside a strong box. Other shipping materials and methods are available at your local post office. Please include all shipping information inside the box, as well as labeling this on the outside. If using Fedex, please include a filled out return shipping form with the correct options checked to ensure the return order is shipped as desired. If there are multiple return shipping addresses, please specify which address is valid. Shipping insurance and other options are also available at your local post office. Please insure, as we are not liable for shipment damage.

Under the Fair Use Act, the purchaser of a copyrighted music product may make one copy of the work for their own personal use, and not resold to any other person or 3rd party or entity. The purpose of our service is to sonically upgrade and restore legally purchased or acquired audio recordings in accordance with the Fair Use Act.

We would be happy to work off tape copies although working off the original record may produce a better result. Please insure, as we are not liable for shipment damage.

Some older players may have trouble skipping playing cd-r's because the cd-r's are not as reflective as a conventional compact disc. It is best to contact the manufacturer of your cd player.

The results will vary, but are often quite dramatic. A new record can often sound like a brand new cd. It upgrades the sound of an older record. Many ticks and pops can be removed, while distortion due to worn record grooves can often be reduced but not fully removed.

The Minimal Noise Reduction is for new records and tapes with very little noise. The Standard Noise reduction is best for records and tapes in good condition with moderate noise. Extensive Noise reduction is meant for records and tapes that are very noisy and require a greater amount of time and labor for satisfactory results. A Minimal Noise reduction or Standard NR could be used in this situation, but the results would still have some noticeable noise leftover.

Yes. I often use two methods to clean discs. Gentle record cleaning is employed with the Discwasher 4, a record cleaning system The Library of Congress uses for their archived records. I also employ a wet/scrub vacuum suction method for heavily contaminated discs as needed.

The software repairs ticks, pops, and tape hiss. It does not simply provide a frequency cut. 32 bit Noise Reduction tools are employed at 8, 16, or 24 bit sampling rates.

Restoring vinyl records usually requires a greater amount of time and labor than tapes. That's why this service is more expensive. Discs usually require two noise reduction processes-one to repair the ticks and pops, and another to reduce or remove the groove wall sound.

On most 78's the sound can be significantly upgraded, but it may not be possible to remove all of the noise. With very worn 78's a point of diminishing returns is reached when using Noise Reduction.

If the voice is heavily distorted, such as by talking too close to a microphone or telephone receiver, this may or not be possible to clarify. If the voice is well recorded but buried in noise, it may be possible to remove the noise surrounding the voice. Telephone and Answering Machine recordings generally require Extensive Noise Reduction processing since they are likely to have high levels of noise. If the recorded audio is very weakly recorded with very high noise levels it may not be possible to clarify the speaking voices.

Tape Dropouts are momentary lapses in sound on aging magnetic tapes. If the dropout is limited to a second or two, it can usually be restored. Tape dropouts longer than 2 seconds may or may not be repairable. If the tape is damaged and producing a garbled type of sound, that may not be fully restorable.

It's generally a good idea to digitize and transfer old tapes to cd before they start to deteriorate. Tapes nearing 50 years of age can break, requiring splices.

Yes. During the digital transfers I can splice and repair tapes as needed. If your tapes have extensive damage it is best to seek out a full-fledged tape repair service. If your tapes have previous tape splices these sections might require resplicing.

I do not restore or transfer 8 track tapes at this time. If you can record the 8 track tape to a cassette tape I could transfer that to cd-r.

Recordings made on an answering machine or over the telephone cannot be made into high fidelity recordings. Recordings in which the speed warbles or varies from slow to fast generally speaking is not totally restorable. Distortion or Sibilance caused by speaking too close to and overloading a microphone may not be restorable.Some voice recordings, esepecially made on portable tape recorders, may or may not be able to make into Hi Fidelity recordings. Recordings in which the noise level is 3 or 4 times the audio may be partially restorable. Records that are pressed off center can create a wow and flutter effect. This can be corrected by enlarging the center hole of the record and realigning the disc on the turntable platter, but that is a radical solution I would only employ if requested.