I read from page 9. It seems they have already built in the changes to offset for speed. Personally I feel it is better to do it before and not have to compensate for speed/pitch changes. That may be because I am used to it.
I'm absolutely the same way. I figure out a routine that seems to work at the time and it eventually becomes The Right Way To Do It in my head.
As to noise reduction, if you do it as the 45 speed, you are possibly over correcting, but I can not be sure. I prefer to hear exactly what I am taking out at the correct pitch.
I agree. There's also the matter of time involved. I've recently gotten it into my head that ClickRepair works best if done in two passes, one with DeClick and one with DeCrackle (at which point I also have it merge to mono). Well, if you're doing that with records played too slow, you have to sit through the initial capture, sit through the first NR pass, then through the second NR pass. Can you say "tedious"? I've done it the allegedly "right" way where I used ClickRepair on the slow file and I've done it after speeding it up and I can't really tell the difference. But of course, we're talking about recordings that are, in at least some cases, well over 100 years old. There's only so much to work with in the first place!
As to A/Bing the two files, if the difference is minor, I am the same way. If the result is something excessive like boomy, muddy bass plus extended rumble or a drastic harshness to treble and voices or excessive needle scratch, it can be obvious.
Total agreement. And it can be frustrating with some of the older records that require either very little rolloff or none at all. In those cases, the correct EQ winds up leaving you with a lot more surface noise, but of course adding rolloff muddies the HF. Mr. Davies also sells another bit of software to deal with that type of noise as well, but I've never tried it. Attempts with similar things in the past disappointed me, but I really should at least check out the free trial some day.
All that aside, if you're curious at all about Equalizer, just remember that it's *free* so you can test drive it for nothing.