About Sound Restoration  
LP Restoration and Vinyl Transfer
Costs
What Types of Material do we Restore?  
What Media Do We Work With? 
What Services Do We Offer?   
Forensic Audio Restoration  
Who Uses Us?   
Technical   
Badly Damaged Masters - What We Can Achieve
Postage  
Contact us

About Sound Restoration

As one of the UK's foremost specialists in sound enhancement and restoration, we cover a great many aspects of the trade. You may be looking for services as diverse as the simple clean-up of a favourite LP, the mastering or re-mastering of an album or recording you have produced, or for a commercial service , e.g. to improve the sound quality of a range of university lectures, or identify voices and words from a recording required in a legal case. We deal with forensic analysis of telephone conversations, and archiving for public bodies alongside the improvement of your family's favourite audio data, LPs or home recordings, and so we have tried to make our site accessible to all comers.

Consumer sound restoration and transfer to CD service
Please click here if you are interested in restoring LPs from your private collection, or family recordings.

Professional custom restoration work
Please click one of the links below if you wish to have a recording enhanced for professional reason.

About Sound Restoration - What Does our Restoration process Involve?  
LP Restoration and Vinyl Transfer 
What Types of Material do We Restore?  
What Media Do We Work With? 
What Services Do We Offer?
Costs       
Who uses us?   
Technical   
Badly damaged masters-what we can achieve   
Forensic Audio Restoration  
Postage 
Contact us



What Does Our Restoration Process Involve?

Sound Restoration involves both skill and technology to an equal degree. To be successful, the audio restoration company must offer technicans who are both expertly skilled in audio interpretation and who use and exploit highly technical sound processing and data processing technology.

When an original recording is analysed for treatment, the following factors are all important:

* The original medium, be it cassette, CD or LP....
* The amount of damage to the original recording
* The types of foreign or undesirable sounds found on the recording
* Whether there is speech involved or music
* The desired end use of the recording

Each factor affects the time and process through which the recording must pass.

When it is finally completed, the recording must be checked to ensure that no new problems have occurred as a result of the process it has undergone. If problems have occurred then it must be re-submitted.

What Can Be Restored?


* Radio broadcasts, band demo tapes, old and rare records and cassettes.
* Speeches and lectures These can then be edited and duplicated for distribution and even made available on the Web! This is particularly useful for professors and professional speakers who would like to make their intellectual properties available to their audiences.
* Many schools have record and tape-based educational materials that cannot be used because of lack of playback resources.
* Recordings of family members young and old (Granny and Grandad describing the "good old days", your child's first piano recital...)
* Vocal recordings where the speaker is indistinct, e.g. legal evidence, interviews, study material to be duplicated.

What Media Do We Work With?

Our service offers transfer from Vinyl, 78RPM, Cassette, 8-Track, Reel to Reel, CD and  Minidisc

What Services Do We Offer?

Services offered: Music Mastering      Transfers to CD with Re-Mastering        Video Transfers to DVD (contact us)

Sound Restoration   including:

* Digital noise printing and reduction
* Subtractive synthesis
* Click removal
* Pop removal
* De-essing in preparation for radio play
* De-hissing
* Vinyl restoration
* Hum removal
* Machine noise removal
* Multi-band dynamics
* Compression/limiting
* Digital enhancement of very poor sources such as audio cassette to produce high quality CD representation

Costs

Who Uses Us?

Bands, Musicians, Performers, Private Individuals, Libraries, Archives, Radio Stations, Collectors, Universities, Schools, Criminology Departments (Forensics) Radio Stations, Historians, Lecturers, Schools, Musicians....Anyone who wishes to have a valuable, unique or important recording restored.

Mantra CDs and Recording is a high-spec commercial studio and uses a top-of the range professional digital technology for transfer and re-mastering work. LPs and cassettes are recorded, edited, and cleaned-up and "peak limited", in other words the volume levels on your CD will sound consistent throughout - you won't have to constantly adjust your volume settings whilst listening.We use a whole range of hardware and software to ensure that we get the best results from our restoration service; Yamaha 02R96 digital mixing console combined with TLAudio 5051 ensure that we get the best condition signal from your source material into our hard disk editing system. We use a MOTU 2408 A/D converter soundcard (recognized for its industry standard and quality) to transfer your material into the digital domain and onto our hard disk systems. Once on hard disk we use a combination of software packages and restoration plugins from Sonic Foundry, Steinberg, Waves, and so forth to carry out the processes required to clean, re-eq and re-dynamicise the recording. The results are then written to CDROM and/or CD Audio for reproduction and backup purposes.

What We Can Achieve with Badly Damaged Masters

If your media is extensively damaged or difficult to listen to, please email us and we will guide you as to costs for further restoration work.Restorations depend for their success on the quality and format of the audio source (i.e. tape type, vinyl...). Common repairs include the removal of hiss, pops, crackles, background noise, and hum. We can also enhance the sound once we have restored it. We can elevate the sound levels, enhance the tonal quality of the recording, and improve the clarity of the recording. Since we transfer your original recording to CD, you will be able to use and enjoy the recording for years to come.

Areas dealt with: Voice identification - Audibility analysis - Enhancement - Authenticity checking - Sound identification- Dialogue deciphering - Other signal analysis - Telephone Recording

Mantra CDs and Recording is a specialist in forensic audio restoration and forensic audio enhancement. We serve the criminal justice system, the legal community, private investigators, broadcast and media, as well as private individuals. Our service comprises clean-up, enhancement and improvement of low-grade audio from a wide variety of sources.

Our technology during this process is professional digital equipment. The majority of these projects are of a forensic audio nature in which involve muffled recorded dialogue or conversations. To eliminate the problem we suppresses or remove background noise to leave the words comprehensible. We can provide one or more copies of the restored sounds on CD.

Postage

Valued media such as cassettes, records etc should be sent in protected packaging, and by secure mail, especially if they are unique or rare recordings. Payment is by cheque and will be required with your LP or cassette material, so please check on amounts before sending your parcel.

Contact Us