De-clicking/popping/distorting

[Zoody]

So I'm about as newb as it gets when it comes to taping, but I've visited this site and Dime many times over the years and taken far too much without giving back. I was at a store the other week that had the Zoom H1 on sale and I figured what the heck? It's small and looked easy to use and I had a couple shows lined up to see, so I figured I'd finally take the plunge and give something back to the community.

I brought the Zoom H1 to the Old 97's and used the internal mics. I got a pretty decent recording, at least to my ears. The separation of instruments is surprisingly good and the vocals are clear. One problem, however, is with the gradual crowd thrust towards the stage, I ended up very close to the right PA speaker. As the show progressed, the volume increased, and there are various points in each song, especially towards the end as the band really pummelled through the final songs, that several pops and loud clipping distortions happen that in my opinion really degrade the quality of the listening experience.

I've been trying to run it through Cool Edit Pro's noise reduction and click/pop eliminator this morning but to no avail. The overall sound suffers while the pops and distortion are virtually unaffected. I've attached a jpeg of part of the waveform and highlighted a selection, and within that selection, the points where this clipping occurs. I don't know if it tells anyone anything but I figured it's better than an even more long winded explanation. Is there a good way to fix this or am I wasting time on a lost cause?

Any help is much appreciated.

Mike

[Thulani]

Click/Pop eliminator it is used for vinyl transfers.
The noise reduction is for hiss and other similar noises.

Audacity has a clip fixer tool, but I doubt it will help you.

[Zoody]

So...waste of time?

[co9ol]

wow that looks like some serious clipping.

While Click and pop removers can help cover up distortion they are not built to do it.
They usually only do well when it's just a bit of clipping, but your right channel looks pretty bad. On the other hand your left looks a lot better. What I would do is throw away the right channel during the parts it's distorted and copy over the left. (Rather have good mono and bad stereo). If you can still hear the clipping on the left (doesn't look like you would) you could try the filters again.

Looks like a salvageable recording.

[Zoody]

That's a good idea. I'll give that a shot. Thanks.

[direwolf-pgh]

wow that looks like some serious clipping.yeah, the incidental issues pointed out on the left channel are nothing compared to whatever happened to the entire right channel. that is a fugly looking track.

[lintoni]

If you are going to try using a declipper, you need to reduce the volume (9-12dB usually does the trick) BEFORE using the declipper. But, as suggested earlier, you may be better off just taking a mono track from your recording.