Crackly source tracks

Anyone had any experiences with ripping and compressing noisy source tracks? (Noisy in the audio domain).

I'm currently toying with compressing at high bit rates/high quality.

Any help/anecdotes welcome; however, please don't go on about cleaning up the tracks/audio processing/etc., as in this case it's not possible; what I am looking for is advice on this tolerating the noise. Does it affect the compression?

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

Wow, interesting question.

Crackly noise in the source audio could be characterized as very high frequency random noise. And this is what's hardest for an encoder to compress accurately.

I would think that encoding at lower bit rates would tend to smooth out the crackles... as one of the natural artifacts of overcompression (loss of high frequency definition). Have you tried very LOW bit rates?

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Tony Fabris