Enhanced Audio's DC Five

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DC Six now available - see end of review for details

There's nothing more annoying than hiss, hum, clicks and crackles in an audio recording. We uses DC Five to clean up our tracks...

Noise is the bane of the musician's life. It can creep into even the most careful recording, and if you've ever tried to transfer tape or vinyl to CD you'll know how insidious noise can be. It comes in many guises - clicks, pops, crackles, low-pitched hum and background noise - and removing each type requires a different process. DC Five is the latest evolution of a program designed specifically to do this, previously called DC Art or Diamond Cut Audio Restoration Tools. It contains more ways of eliminating noise than the mute button on your TV remote.

You can use it in two modes. In Classic mode the screen is divided in two with the source file in the upper half. You run filters on this in real time and when you're happy with the result, you process the file. This creates a new file in the lower part of the screen which you can save and make the new source file for further processing. It's easier than it sounds.

Fast mode has only one display. When you apply a filter to the file, the process appears in a Fast Edit History box and you can jump to any previous edit simply by clicking on it. This is very, er, fast. If you like working with Undo and Redo functions, this is the mode for you.

Clean sweep

To remove clicks and pops there are Impulse Noise Filters which filter out scratches and crackles. There are dozens of presets to get you started suitable for a range of situations from transferring 78s and 45s to removing radio static. You can hear the effect of changing the parameters in real time as you adjust them, so you can balance the removal of the noise with any side-effects on the audio. Rumble can be removed with the high pass filter and background noise with the Continuous Noise Filter.

Rather than apply one filter at a time to the audio, you can use the MultiFilter. This clever feature lets you create a customised set of functions by linking any of the filters or processes together in a chain. You can even add several identical functions with different settings.

DC Five has many other specialist filters including a Harmonic Reject Filter (otherwise known as a comb or multiple notch filter) for attenuating periodic noises that contain harmonics such as hum and buzz. There are also Median and Averaging filters that read a certain number of samples, find the median or average value and pass that to the destination file. They offer alternative useful ways to remove hiss and crackle. There's a Brick Wall filter with a hellish steep slope, and Graphic and Parametric EQs.

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