Acon Digital Restoration Suite

Acon Digital Restoration Suite contains four audio plugins meant to help music producers and amateurs in fine-tuning music: DeNoise, DeHum, DeClick, and DeClip.

The full package includes VST, VST3 (both x86 and x64) and AAX (ProTools) plugins but any of them can be excluded from installation. Needless to say is that a host VST application has to be set up on the computer to be able to use the plugins. After setup, they can be accessed from the host's UI.

Firstly, with the help of DeNoise, it's possible to detect and remove stationary noise such as the one made by camera devices, buzzing, hissing or wind. It has two types of operation that you can choose between: adaptive or self-learning. Both cases rely on a noise profile. Adaptive mode means constantly checking the noise profile via advanced statistical operations. In learning mode, the plugin checks the noise from the input signal and calculation the average frequency distribution, allowing you to freeze the noise profile before reducing noise.

Secondly, DeHum's objective is to get rid of humming and buzzing that can be usually heard in recordings made by low-quality electrical equipment, along with tonal noise generated by electrical motors, for instance. Just like DeNoise, DeHum has an adaptive mode, this time focusing on fluctuations in the hum signal's fundamental frequency. This is accompanied by a set of harmonic frequencies that can also be removed by the plugin if you set a value. An option for eliminating odd harmonics only is included.

Thirdly, DeClick focuses on deleting clicks, crackle and other types of impulsive noise that's commonly found on LP and 78 RPM records. However, they can even occur on digital media to dropouts or distorted packets of data. It has two distinct algorithms for large clicks and pops, along with often and short clicks (crackle), respectively. There's also a third algorithm available for reducing thumps and plosives.

Fourthly and finally, DeClip fixes music with distortions caused by clipping, either digital or analog. Clipping happens when the recording level is so high that the highest peaks cannot be correctly captured by the audio device, resulting in distortion.

All four plugins offer histograms for visualization. Settings can be configured for reduction, soft knee, maximum attenuation, attack and release time, noise profile settings like adaptive mode, adaptation time, emphasis filter, frequency, sensitivity, plosive and thump cutoff, input gain, positive and negative threshold, and more.

Taking everything into account, Acon Digital Restoration Suite turns out to be a comprehensive package that contains four practical plugins dedicated to audio restoration, each having its own set of configuration options.