I have been using the "Clean up audio" feature to remove clicks and some background noise from old 45s 78s and 33s as well as a couple of tape cassettes. However, maybe I can actually improve what I am doing. Unfortunately, the Roxio helps don't give much information.

In the Clean dialog, the defaults for Declicker and Decrackler are 0% as the "Intensity". Does this refer to decibels or what? Does this mean that any clicks and crackles above 0% are removed or is it the other way around? For example, if the slider is moved to 100%, does that cause all clicks to be removed or none of them? I do not understand what the "percent" means -- percent of what?

The default for Denoiser is -2 decibels and has a range from 0 to -60. Again, I do not really understand the negative value. For Noise, the default is 0 and ranges from 0 to 5. Is this decibels or what? Finally, is there a realtionship between Denoiser and Noise.

On a different item, I learned the hard way that if "Difference" is checked when close and save the file, the "difference" is what is saved. Is this intentional -- whay would anyone want to just save the deleted noise? (Fortunately, I do all of my work on temporary copies so I could recover any files I messed up.)

This is a very good forum -- many thanks to all of you for your help on this post and all of my past questions.

Actually, since you've found that you can save the "difference" file, you now have the perfect means to help determine exactly how each of the elements work.

For instance, working with the Declicker/Decrackler; set the control at some level (and turn off the other options), save the difference file and listen to it. Now repeat, with the control set differently and have another listen. (You may want to save both files so you can compare them.) At some setting, you'll probably find that you're hearing drum and cymbal hits in the difference file, which will tell you that the program is removing music from the file, not just "noise". So the setting is probably too high. I honestly don't know just what all the control "levels" mean, but I'm a firm believer in working by listening to the final results.

You can obviosly repeat the above steps for the Denoiser and Noise options. On those, you'll with a moderate setting you'll probably find that mostly you'll only hear hiss in the difference file, but as you set it to be more aggressive, you'll get cymbals sounds, the top end of guitars, saxes, and vocal esses. When I've used those, I've wanted to use them very sparingly as you can easily make the final music pretty "dull".

So, hope that helps!

Wow! I had not thought of using the difference file that way. A very good idea. Many thanks.