Imagine you have a sound file that was badly recorded, with no possibility to re-record, and with no clean version : how to deal with the clipping, the saturation, the distorsion ?
Imagine you have a mix/(pre)mastering that was crushed-to-death in a “loudness war” fashion and you have lost all the original files :

how to fix this mess ?

Audio examples: X-Eight Lite is the free lite version of X-Eight, an 808 and sub bass VST/AU plugin created by Thenatan. While the paid plugin contains over 1000 presets, X-Eight Lite comes with a total of 80 sub bass and 808 presets. You are being redirected. Vinyl - is a free VST effect for Windows that emulates the sounds of old vinyl players.Vinyl recreates the dust noise and frequency response of old recordings. You can adjust intensity, color and amount of dust noise in a wide range. Also you can simple select the age of vinyl discs. Main features: Adjustable dust emulation Frequency responses emulation Gentle distortion In addition, VST. Free Noise Reduction Plugins I'm looking for some free or open source noise reduction plugins. I've been using Waves X-Noise and it's great, but sometimes some of my friends ask me for an alternative and I can't really indicate one. GoldWave: Though nominally not free it is a good, free-trial click remover as well as an alternative audio editor. Its click removal is an effect, just like in Audacity, and there is a 'Smoother' effect for broad unwanted noises and an excellent 'Noise Reduction' effect for steady noise.

Is there a possibility to clean / smooth the sound ?

how to “unsaturate” ?

can i have declipping ?

-> no <-

it’s too late, we can’t go back to the clean sound!
But we can do our best to limit the damages.
here’s some informations : http://www.wavosaur.com/forum/can-distortion-be-removed-or-minimized-t1262.html

Free Click Removal Vst Plugins

/free-vst-instrument-software-similar-to-kontakt.html. And now a selection of plugins to help fixing the clipping disasters :

Free Click Removal Vst Plugins

I won the loudness war

Declipper plugins :

Some editors provide plugins that can add some improvements, Izotope has developed a suite, intended for repairing audio : this include music restoration, “declipping”, noise removal etc. It’s a bit expensive but if you really need it, you have it all !

Izotope RX3

more info and download demo @ http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/

We have hunted down freeware declipper plugins on the interweb, we only found two, three if we include the “transient designer” (it can heal some overcompressed files) :

Relife 1.42

More info and free download @ http://www.terrywest.nl/utils.html

This free VST declipper can bring the oversqueezed samples to life, or smoothes a bad vocal recording. It was used on the clipped sample you can see on the first picture.
Don’t expect miracles, but don’t hesitate to test the three algo, to find which is working best for you.

Declipper DX plugin 2.5

Declipper plugin 2.5

Free download @ http://www.silksound.com/geniesys/

This is a directX plugin, you have to use a DX-VST wrapper (like vb ffx4) in order to make it work in Wavosaur.
This free declipping plugin try to resynthetize the peak lost by the overclipping, It has advanced controls, you can have a look at the help to understand how it works. It aslo has a compress feature.

Bittersweet 3

Informations & Freeware download @ http://www.fluxhome.com/products/freewares/bittersweet-v3

Free Click Removal Vst Plugin

This one is not intented for “declipping” but is a transient designer, and it can help to get a smoother sound. It’s subtle, and more important : it has a big knob !

Free Click Removal Vst File

Don’t expect wonders, once a signal is clipped / saturated / overclipped / distorded, you can’t go back to a clean signal.