Cedar Audio for Pyramix 64 v8
CEDAR for Pyramix 64 comprises six advanced modules that allow users to eliminate a wide range of common problems and significantly improve the sound quality of their audio. Each process within these has been derived from our multi-award-winning CEDAR Studio and CEDAR Cambridge flagships, and provides unsurpassed results, quickly, and with the minimum of fuss and user intervention.
As well as offering improvements in other modules, the latest version delivers all of the benefits of the latest machine learning and AI capabilities of Retouch 8™ to the Pyramix platform.
The Modules:
- Auto declick
- Manual declick
- Auto decrackle
- Auto dehiss
- Dethump
- Retouch 8™
Cedar for Pyramix 64 Auto Declick
With both manual declick and auto declick capabilities, CEDAR for Pyramix 64 performs at high speed without sacrificing CEDAR quality, and addresses the widest possible range of scratch and click removal problems.
Auto declick incorporates a better impulsive noise detection and a better interpolator than any previous declicker available for Pyramix. This results in superior performance across a wider range of material than ever before. Indeed, this performance is so good that, in most cases, it’s not possible to hear that the signal was damaged prior to restoration.
Cedar for Pyramix 64 Manual Declick
With both auto declick and manual declicking capabilities, CEDAR for Pyramix 64 performs at high speed without sacrificing CEDAR quality, and addresses the widest possible range of scratch and click removal problems.
It is based upon an advanced algorithm optimised for long clicks and scratches and is capable of restoring clicks and other problems (such as drop-outs and digital errors) of up to 2,000 samples duration. Simply mark the offending signal and Manual declick will eliminate the problem.
To extend its flexibility and ensure effective restoration in the widest possible range of cases, two declick models are provided:
Model A:
- The general purpose manual declicker; the optimal choice for many situations
Model B:
- Removing extended clicks in the presence of high levels of background noise can lead to a hole in the background, even though the music or speech signal is reconstructed correctly. Model B retains the atmos, even when restoring the longest and most intractable clicks and other impulses
Cedar for Pyramix 64 Auto Decrackle
Based upon the technology that underpinned the renowned CEDAR CR-1 and its award-winning successors, Auto decrackle boasts a remarkable ability to dig into a damaged signal to identify and remove all manner of ground-in and grungy crackle without damaging the wanted audio. It also removes some forms of buzz and some amplitude distortions from material ranging from cylinder recordings to current broadcasts contaminated with lighting buzz.
It’s amazingly simple to operate and as applicable to film soundtrack restoration and broadcast as it is to traditional audio restoration jobs such as CD and DVD remastering.
Cedar for Pyramix 64 Auto Dehiss
Many plug-in dehissers are prone to side-effects known as twittering and glugging. Auto dehiss embodies an advanced algorithm that enables the software to determine the broadband noise content and remove it without the introduction of those artefacts or other unwanted side-effects. A manual mode is also offered for fine-tuning the results when wanted.
Remarkably simple to use, Auto dehiss is nonetheless a fully-featured package for cleaning up audio for post, CD and DVD mastering, soundtrack restoration, broadcast, and sound archives.
Cedar for Pyramix 64 Dethump
Thumps can last for many hundreds of milliseconds, so conventional declicking processes are unsuitable for restoring audio containing them. Furthermore, the spectral content of thumps will usually overlap the genuine signal, so simple high-pass or band-reject filters cannot remove them without damaging the wanted audio.
Dethump uses the data in and around the damaged signal to build up a picture of what the low frequency data should have been had the thump not occurred. The process then replaces the thump with restored low frequency audio, leaving the undamaged high frequency audio unaffected. This makes dethump ideal for removing many of the previously intractable problems associated with optical soundtracks, as well as for restoring damaged cylinders and discs, and for cleaning modern recordings when, for example, microphones and stands are bumped. No other process can analyse and restore damaged signal of up to 100,000 samples duration.
Cedar for Pyramix 64 Retouch
When it was introduced, Retouch was a huge leap forward in sound processing technology. Unlike conventional restoration tools, it provided a wide range of time/frequency editing (TFE™) capabilities, and allowed you to define the temporal and spectral content of the sound you wanted to remove. Nowadays, it allows you to mark and process complex areas in its spectrogram using the types of tools commonly found in powerful photographic and image manipulation software. This makes it possible to identify all manner of sounds and noises which can then be manipulated using any of the processing tools at your disposal.
Matching
Using machine learning to identify problems…
There are many occasions when you will encounter similar instances of unwanted sounds in a track – things such as hi-hat spill in a multi-track recording, over-excited sibilants and plosives in a vocal track, or even the repetitive noise caused by a piece of machinery in the background. Traditionally, one would remove these sounds by identifying each event individually and then defining it manually prior to processing. But this is time consuming… sometimes very time consuming. So wouldn’t it be nice if your spectral repair tool could look at the first instance that you identified and then go on to find all of the others? Well, it can.
Match allows you to mark one of the offending sounds and then ask the machine learning algorithm in Retouch 8 to find all of the other instances within the recording. A threshold control even allows you to bias its decision making toward including more or fewer possibilities so that you can find the level that includes everything that you want to remove but precludes events that seem similar but are actually wanted signal.
Having identified all of the matches, you can then eliminate them using the approporiate Retouch tool. You can process them individually, authorising and applying the chosen tool to each, or you can process all of the matches as a group, whereupon Retouch 8 will fly through the whole file in a tiny fraction of the time needed with human intervention. The increase in productivity is absolutely remarkable.
The Tools
- Interpolate
- Patch
- Copy
- Erase
- Volume
- Repair
- Cleanse
- Revert
Cedar for Pyramix Retouch Tools
Interpolation
This is the classic spectral editing mode that suppresses or removes problems seamlessly. It allows you to define an unwanted sound, remove it at the touch of a button and replace it using powerful models that analyse the surrounding audio and then rebuild what would have been there had the noise not occurred.
Patch
Patch mode allows you to replace an area of audio with another of the same duration and the same range of frequencies (although not necessarily of the same frequencies). Think of this as copying the data from elsewhere in the spectrogram to the region that you initially defined. It includes a pitch shifting algorithm that takes into account the relative pitch of components within the audio selection, greatly aiding the correction of harmonically rich material and even allowing you to correct the pitches of incorrect notes within musical material. It’s also invaluable when working with atmos.
Copy
Copy mode allows you to move an area of audio to another position. You can think of this as copying the data from a defined region to anywhere else in the spectrogram. Again, this tool includes a pitch shifting algorithm that takes into account the relative pitch of components within the audio selection, greatly aiding the correction of harmonically rich material and even allowing you to correct the pitches of incorrect notes within musical material. And, again, it’s invaluable when working with atmos.
Erase
This mode provides a quick and simple way to erase unwanted audio quickly and accurately and replace it with background (atmos) calculated from the surrounding audio.
Volume
You may affect the amplitude of the signal within a region, and independently affect the amplitude of the signal lying outside that region. This allows you, for example, to reveal individual sounds or utterances within a file, either by amplifying the wanted sounds or by suppressing the rest of the audio, or both. By marking multiple regions simultaneously and reducing the amplitude of the ‘outside’ to its minimum, you can also use this to retain only the sounds or words wanted in an audio file.
Repair – Putting the AI into Spectral Repair
If you use spectral editing regularly, you already know the scenario – you mark a region and you want to affect a single sound within it, suppressing or accentuating it while leaving the background untouched. Repair uses AI to achieve precisely that. Just mark the sound and some of the surrounding signal in the usual fashion and then use a single knob to suppress or accentuate it. Unlike other spectral editing tools, only the significant signal within the region is identified and processed; all low level signals as well as the ambience are left unaffected.
Cleanse
Despite the power of Interpolation, Patching and Copying, there are times when those modes are unable to eliminate unwanted sounds quickly and efficiently. Examples of this include restoring sounds such as wanted speech in the presence of strong, but relatively short-lived background noises such as gusts of wind blowing across a microphone. Cleanse mode was developed specifically to help in these situations, and will separate the wanted signal from the unwanted and allow you to suppress the noise at the touch of a button. Don’t be misled – this isn’t a rehash of existing noise reduction methods, but a powerful new patented process that achieves results never before possible.
Revert
Revert allows you to define any part of the spectrogram and return it to its original, unprocessed form. Much more powerful than stepping backward and forward through a list of actions, this allows the user to reinitialise any part of the audio no matter where it came in the process history, thus leaving later work untouched. You don’t even have to Revert whole Retouch operations. If you like the result of a single process at, say, the end of a note, but feel that you could do better at the start of the note, you can reinitialise and reprocess this section of the audio no matter how many Retouches you have performed elsewhere since then. It’s so quick and so powerful that you’ll wonder how you ever worked without it.
In short…
With its enhanced capabilities, Retouch stands alone as the spectral editor of choice for mastering studios, mix suites, post houses, forensic laboratories, and anyone else who needs to be able to identify, isolate and manipulate individual sounds within an audio file.
When all else fails… Retouch gives you complete control.
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