In their August 2012 issue, UK-based magazine Sound On Sound feature a detailed 4-page review of Capstan, our professional restoration software. For them, "it is a very impressive tool and well worth exploring!"

After a comprehensive explanation of the wow-and-flutter phenomenon and its technological background, author Hugh Robjohns takes Capstan for a test drive with some real-life examples: "I was very pleased indeed with the improvement Capstan brought to my Chopin piano material."

Hugh claims that Capstan’s supposedly high price is “fully justified by its complexity, ingenuity and sheer effectiveness, especially in the context of the scale of the relatively specialist audio restoration market.” He also points to the alternative rental option which he calls "a very attractive, … affordable and practical solution for one-off projects."

In the summary, the magazine states that Capstan "works astonishingly well, is easy to use and to fine-tune, and enjoys a very well-designed user interface ... Best of all, the process is entirely artifact-free: no glitching or warbles, ever!"

The entire review can be downloaded in PDF format from the Sound On Sound page. Sound examples can be downloaded free of charge as well.

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When The Concert Sinatra was recorded in February 1963, multi-track master tape machines were not yet a reality in the recording studio. In order to facilitate the sound mixing advantage of multiple channels of audio, The Concert Sinatra was recorded on a motion picture scoring stage with the use of multiple synchronized recording machines that employed 35mm magnetic film. This master recording has not been used in any re-release of The Concert Sinatra since the original sound mix was prepared nearly 50 years ago.

The original film canisters had been stored for nearly a half-century. Despite considerable degradation over time, a team of engineering experts, led by Frank Sinatra, Jr., used contemporary digital recording technologies to deliver a completely new sound mix for the 2012 re-release.

Mastering Engineer Larry Walsh used Capstan to sync the multitracks by matching their concert pitch and clean them from wow and flutter. At that time, Capstan wasn’t yet ready for doing multi-track work (it now is), so Capstan product specialist Mathis Nitschke helped Larry Walsh out on the phone finding a custom workflow using then undocumented features. “I appreciate your input during this project. You went out of your way to call us at a late hour, your time,” says Larry Walsh, "Capstan has helped us."

www.sinatra.com
Album review at allaboutjazz.com

"The Archeophone Archives series is employing Capstan extensively in its reissues of Edison Blue Amberols. This cylinder format is plagued with off-axis, out-of-round, and surface distortion issues that we rely on Capstan to correct. These cylinders have never sounded better. Our results demonstrate that Capstan works on old formats – not only in theory but in practice."
---David Giovannoni, Producer

www.archeophone.com

Richard Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerke belong to the most immersive pieces of art in our culture. That’s why any attempt to give the opera lover access to early recordings of his works should be a musical enjoyment rather than a purely technical transfer. As The Metropolitan Opera’s Restoration Producer, Grace Row writes in her liner notes: "In reclaiming these historic Wagner broadcasts, our goal was not simply to preserve, but to present The Met’s live performances as an engaging experience for the modern listener."

Meet Charles Harbutt, head of Long Tail Audio LLC and mastering engineer of the CD box Wagner at The Met, released by Sony Classical for the Wagner bicentennial in 2013. “We try to run everything through Capstan,” he notes, "because all the material sounds so much better afterwards: smoother with a silky high end. Capstan is the missing link between the technological constraints of the past and the digital sound quality of the 21st century."

Why is that? The first and most important step in every restoration production is the acquisition of the sound sources. In the case of The Met’s Wagner collection, we’re talking about broadcasts that have only been partly archived by the radio stations. Further sources include shellac and lacquer releases from collectors' private archives, tape copies from various libraries and other material. Celemony Software’s Capstan not only irons out all the “wow” and “flutter” problems inherent in those media, but it also brings those recordings back to the originally recorded speed. Brian Losch, restoration engineer at Long Tail Audio LLC and Capstan specialist, reveals: "After Capstan slowed down the recording to the original 440 Hz, the Lohengrin was several minutes longer ..."

Most re-releases of historic recordings run either too slow or too fast due to wrongly maintained machines or deteriorated tapes. A significant side effect of those musically wrong tempos is a shift in the orchestral and vocal formants, which produces harsh or muddy results. So far this problem could only be tackled by complex equalization filterings, again introducing unwanted side effects like phase shifting.

Capstan by Celemony Software eradicates this problem by ironing out all the constant and time-varying speed drifts and tuning the recording to the original concert pitch. As a result, one not only hears the legitimate original musical performance but also all the acoustic formants in their proper place. Listen to the great voices how they really sounded and enjoy the orchestral colors in all their beauty!

www.longtailaudio.com
The 25-CD box set at the Met Opera Shop

Audio Mechanics celebrated their 20th anniversary in September 2011. The company’s reputation for aesthetic integrity and extreme technical proficiency has made it one of the most sought-after film soundtrack re-mastering studios in the United States. Specializations include sound restoration, mixing and re-mastering, audio asset evaluation/cataloging and preservation services, as well as forensic audio analysis.

Being among the very first Capstan users, Audio Mechanics has used the software extensively. “I have used Capstan a lot - I'd say on just about every restoration I've done recently,” says audio engineer Ellis Burman. "Once you know that wow can be fixed, you want to fix it whenever possible."

Audio Mechanics has been chosen to supervise the digital preservation of 20th Century Fox’s entire inventory of feature film sound assets. Recent projects include the 1988 20th Century Fox classics Big, starring Tom Hanks, and John Carpenter’s Big trouble in Little China, as well as Disney’s Seven wonders to the world, which originally was a circle vision presentation for the Epcot Center.

Before Capstan came out, Audio Mechanics had used not only the existing tape bias-tracking techniques but even had developed their own proprietary software algorithms. Fully aware that proper wow removal starts with the best possible tape transfer, it’s the easiness and speed which makes Capstan so appealing to the restoration process. “What used to take hours or even days we often can achieve now in minutes,” says studio owner and audio engineer John Polito.

www.audiomechanics.com

In the history of recorded music during the 20th century, rarely has there been a record label with the range of influence and as a developer of trend-setting techniques, in such a relatively brief tenure, as that of Everest Records.

Everest’s introduction of 3-channel microphone/recording techniques, many of which were imprinted on 35mm magnetic film stock, were revolutionary for the time. In addition to its technical advances, Everest was the home of many premiere recordings.

Over several release dates beginning April 2013, this collection of almost 75 recordings will be made available digitally in iTunes’s high-quality service, “Mastered for iTunes”, by Countdown Media GmbH (Hamburg, Germany). Each recording has been carefully transferred, restored, and remastered from the original master tapes and comes with a digital booklet, including the original cover art, liner notes, technical information, and performance and production credits. Many of these recordings have not been available since their initial issue 50 years ago.

As Lutz Rippe, Restoration and Mastering Engineer at Countdown Media, explains: "One problem during the digitization was the ‘vinegar syndrome’, which led to ripple and curl and a general shrinkage of those tapes. As a result we not only hear ‘wow’ and ‘flutter’ effects but also a faster than normal playback speed in general. Furthermore, due to the reduced distance between the sprockets, our Albrecht M51 playback machine would sometimes miss a sprocket which results in a sudden drop in pitch."

There are special heads on the market for those machines, which laser-scan the sprockets during playback and correct the speed directly. “But they're expensive,” says Rippe, "that’s why we decided for Celemony Software’s Capstan for the speed corrections and have made very good experiences."

www.evereststereo.com