Elimination of Impulsive Disturbances From Archive Audio Signals Using Bidirectional Processing

In this application-oriented paper we consider the problem of elimination of impulsive disturbances, such as clicks, pops and record scratches, from archive audio recordings. The proposed approach is based on bidirectional processing-noise pulses are localized by combining the results of forward-time and backward-time signal analysis. Based on the results of specially designed empirical tests (rather than on the results of theoretical analysis), incorporating real audio files corrupted by real impulsive disturbances, we work out a set of local, case-dependent fusion rules that can be used to combine forward and backward detection alarms. This allows us to localize noise pulses more accurately and more reliably, yielding noticeable performance improvements, compared to the traditional methods, based on unidirectional processing. The proposed approach is carefully validated using both artificially corrupted audio files and real archive gramophone recordings.