[guygee]

Originally Posted by rerem

The SF2 Soundforge Noise Reduction plug-in (direct x) is much better than others. I personally have a low tolerance for analog hiss. There are DL's I did-and deleted because they were beyond the range of what I can stand,beyond what I can fix. I built a set of very revealing speakers-meaning I hear the good stuff-and the flaws,so I want to enjoy the good stuff without a lot of crud.

I agree, I also have a low tolerence for tape hiss, and although I didn't build my own speakers, the Pro Studio speakers in my system bring out the details over the spectrum pretty well. As the owner of many "medium-gen" cassettes, I would agree that some NR with the proper tools should not be objectionable, especially if better source material is not available. Also (personally) I want to hear the singing well enough to understand the lyrics, I want to hear the bass guitar, I want to hear the top hats, and if the mix is bad, some judicious dynamic EQ'ing can bring these aspects of the music more out to the front. I am also interested in harmonic enhancers, these tools can really bring the music back from the dead, especially if the original recording is overly band-limited

Originally Posted by rerem

I really have no appreciation for the Audio-Vegan mindset that insists every flaw,mistake and shortcoming of the recording process has to be preserved-and yet some folks do butcher the job. The "damaged" recordings referred to above....who has the pre-processed version? Are you SURE it got NR effects and what you heard is not the effects of a badly recorded original,a bad transfer to digital? or just age?
Some recordings I have DO have some NR artifacts or other processing flaws-but were salvage jobs of a recording that was unuseable wreckage otherwise-would have joined a little stack of discs I burned before I realized how awful the sound was.

You make some good points: if the tape is really high-gen, old or partially demagnetized, the music is badly damaged to begin with. But I think part of the question is, what do we want to preserve for historical purposes? So I can also appreciate the view of the "Audio-Vegan mindset" . The technology of audio restoration will advance. 2nd generation wavelet filtering, dynamic neural network filtering based on particular artists voice prints and "instrument prints" (and high on my list, the "YeeHaw Cowboy Yell Remover Tool")...who knows what the future will bring? In that case, we want to have a copy of the original analog recording with the highest bit resolution and sampling rate preserved, in its purest "granola" form, without any previous signal processing applied. So for our present listening pleasure, remaster (if you prefer), and do it well (including careful documentation), but also archive those 192k/24b A/D files in their raw form for future generations.