Recommendations for digitizing vinyl

[krabapple]

I really do not understand the point of using time money and effort to digitise hundreds or thousands or records.
Get Tidal and stream the music if you want it digital,you can even burn a USB/CD from steaming and use it in the car. Play the vinyl records when you want to listen to vinyl.

Vinyl is a delicate flower of a medium (despite the claim that it will 'last 100 years' -- well, yeah, but a century without accumulating any clicks or pops, that's a challenge. Plus every playback is an opportunity for a more catastrophic f*ck-up).

Digitizing your nice clean copy is a smart move, if you want to preserve that 'vinyl sound' (that particular vinyl mastering + euphonic distortions of vinyl) forever and preserve that nice clean vinyl.

 

[Ben Jenssen]

How can I listen to your google drive?

See post #65 of this thread. If you manage to sort by last modified date, you can focus on the results of the last two weeks, with a new RIAA/MC stage, better settings, and adjusted RX11 Declicker settings.

 

[mike70]

I really like this YouTube channel

for the cartridge comparations and shows what can you get from the format

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

It seems you were simply hearing a different mastering. Which isn't surprising. There's no reason to expect an album mastered for CD will sound the same as one mastered for vinyl. If not that, the streamer , for whatever reason, was applying their own EQ to the stream.

I don't think it was simply different mastering, unless the mastering engineer was clinically deaf. And I don't think it was just a matter of low bitrate. It sounded like just bad processing/EQ. BTW, I replaced the LP in question with a CD version, and the differences were not that striking as the DMX, where everything sounded bad. Of course, there's no way to settle this now.

Agree about 256k, I've tried, but can't hear the difference between that and redbook standard CD.

 

[Thomas_A]

I really like this YouTube channel

for the cartridge comparations and shows what can you get from the format

It is fun to see how the AT cartridge dance with the beats when you look closely.

 

[gwing]

Vinyl is a delicate flower of a medium (despite the claim that it will 'last 100 years' -- well, yeah, but a century without accumulating any clicks or pops, that's a challenge. Plus every playback is an opportunity for a more catastrophic f*ck-up).

Digitizing your nice clean copy is a smart move, if you want to preserve that 'vinyl sound' (that particular vinyl mastering + euphonic distortions of vinyl) forever and preserve that nice clean vinyl.

For me this isn't what vinyl is about, although I do mainly listen to Tidal rather than vinyl now, but:

If you are used to handling vinyl, and sober, and have decent equipment catastrophic failures in reality do not seem to happen and the fear in the mind sort of disappears after time.

Not all vinyl is pristine anyway. Not even new and especially as the vast bulk of my vinyl was bought secondhand when huge collections were being sold and the quality is quite variable, but it contains many recordings simply not available in digital form. Consider that when you go to a live concert and listen there are noises in the audience and on stage when players move around or drop things etc. etc. yet none of these inherently spoil the musical enjoyment and neither should a bit of noise or pop remove the music you are listening to if the music itself has merit. (Assuming you have your record reasonably clean and are playing with equipment that tends to play through rather than emphasize imperfections)

Think of them as antiques that perhaps aren't as efficient to use as a soulless bit of tacky MDF of modern design but which have lasted longer and which you *might* enjoy more and each little mark that gets inflicted on them only enhances their character.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

The AT 120 TT has arrived, I'll set it up and report back.

Any opinions on upgrading the stylus to the ML version? The range of opinions on line seem to range from "not much difference" to "amazingly better sound".

 

[mike70]

The AT 120 TT has arrived, I'll set it up and report back.

Any opinions on upgrading the stylus to the ML version? The range of opinions on line seem to range from "not much difference" to "amazingly better sound".

try it yourself, as i do

the difference is audible, in a sighted or blinded audition with ABX software.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

Preliminary Results: The short version is that I took the AT-LP120XUSB out of the box, followed the setup instructions and was able to digitize a vinyl album with "acceptable" results in only a few minutes. "Acceptable" in scare quotes because it sounds perfectly fine and will be good enough for my purposes; I probably should just leave it there and not "look for trouble", but I'm curious about a few things, which I'll delve into in coming days. Or months, as time permits.

Monitoring is a minor issue since my preferred method is to monitor the line out of the turntable preamp, instead of listening to the USB after it's gone through a round trip of A-D-A. AT engineers did a poor job of isolating signals since connecting both the line out and the USB results in a high pitched whine. This is probably a non-issue for most people since you can do the monitoring via Windows settings, and it's probably fixable with a pair of isolation transformers.

 

[mike70]

for those who are using Audacity ... i finded ocenaudio more simple and easy to use

https://www.ocenaudio.com/en/startpage

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

for those who are using Audacity ... i finded ocenaudio more simple and easy to use

https://www.ocenaudio.com/en/startpage

A feature that I'm looking for that is not supported by my current software is the ability to set edit points and then break the .wav file into smaller files (tracks) with the edits point delimiting the beginning and end of each track. Useful for live concert recordings.

Allegedly, Audacity does this but the documentation is all wrong and I haven't been able to get it to work. Wavepad seems to do it. Does OceanAudio have this ability?

 

[mike70]

A feature that I'm looking for that is not supported by my current software is the ability to set edit points and then break the .wav file into smaller files (tracks) with the edits point delimiting the beginning and end of each track. Useful for live concert recordings.

Allegedly, Audacity does this but the documentation is all wrong and I haven't been able to get it to work. Wavepad seems to do it. Does OceanAudio have this ability?

Place the cursor at the point of split and press Ctrl+k, that adds a marker.

Repeat to add all the markers you want.

Select sections between markers and then save the selection, or you can create a new empty track and cut / paste the section in the track. In the end save all the tracks.

 

[JP]

Splitting a recording into separate tracks | Audacity Support

Audacity helps you to split a long recording into separate songs for export as one audio file per song. You can for example record an audio CD or LP and then export each song into a separate file.

support.audacityteam.org

Aside from some small UI differences, the above has worked for years and continues to do so.

 

[krabapple]

For me this isn't what vinyl is about, although I do mainly listen to Tidal rather than vinyl now, but:

If you are used to handling vinyl, and sober, and have decent equipment catastrophic failures in reality do not seem to happen and the fear in the mind sort of disappears after time.

Not all vinyl is pristine anyway. Not even new and especially as the vast bulk of my vinyl was bought secondhand when huge collections were being sold and the quality is quite variable, but it contains many recordings simply not available in digital form. Consider that when you go to a live concert and listen there are noises in the audience and on stage when players move around or drop things etc. etc. yet none of these inherently spoil the musical enjoyment and neither should a bit of noise or pop remove the music you are listening to if the music itself has merit. (Assuming you have your record reasonably clean and are playing with equipment that tends to play through rather than emphasize imperfections)

'Not spoiling it' is not the same as 'it couldn't sound better'.

Anyway, someone making noise in the audience (which for sure can lessen or interfere with the experience even it doesn't spoil it utterly), or players 'moving around' or dropping something onstage (lol, I've never heard anyone comparing those to vinyl scratches, tics, pops) -- these happened to you once. Whereas an LP is a sound experience you listen to over and over. (If your concert where a mic or guitar got dropped actually managed to get recorded and released, you can bet that noise will be edited out...because most people don't want to hear it every time)

There's always been a whole lotta caveats involved in vinyl playback, and you've just named some. Sure, as long as you never screw up, and accidents never happen, and you are diligent about cleaning your discs and/or preventing any dirt or dust from being ground into them, pristine vinyl doesn't accumulate noise. And sure, even if it *does*, you can still 'hear through it' ...to a point.

This all tells me that the LP 'experience ' -- the visual, tactile, procedural,quasi-ritualistic,nostaligic aspects of vinyl playback -- is at least as important to some as the quality of the sound. Which I knew already.

For the rest of vinylphiles, the case for digitizing the cleanest copy they can find -- and then declicking it if they want to go that distance -- is pretty straightforward.

Think of them as antiques that perhaps aren't as efficient to use as a soulless bit of tacky MDF of modern design but which have lasted longer and which you *might* enjoy more and each little mark that gets inflicted on them only enhances their character.

If you like 'character' so much, why do you go to lengths to protect your vinyl from gaining more of it?

I think of LPs as obsolete technology that is fascinating to some, like steampunk. And it's funny how every design style eventually becomes an 'antique' that someone craves.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

Splitting a recording into separate tracks | Audacity Support

Audacity helps you to split a long recording into separate songs for export as one audio file per song. You can for example record an audio CD or LP and then export each song into a separate file.

support.audacityteam.org

Aside from some small UI differences, the above has worked for years and continues to do so.

Thanks. I've tried following that documentation, and I get about 75% through and then the documentation references UI options that are not present in the app itself. I forget exactly where the docs diverge from the actual UI.

Maybe they have updated the docs, or perhaps re-installing Audacity will fix it, but I gave up in frustration after a few hours fighting with it. I'll take a look at again sometime. Audacity is free, so I can't complain too loudly.

 

[krabapple]

Audacity has been through a bunch of updates in the past year. v3.7.5 is current. Which version do you use?

If this is where you are hitting a snag (i.e., after you've added your labels where the file will be split, makins sure there's one at the very beginning) :


Click on File > Export > Export Multiple....


It's because the new version is a few layers deeper:

Click on File > Export Audio>Export to computer > select 'Multiple Files' >Export

(on that last screen you also have options for file format , file naming, destination folder etc. The important thing is to select 'Multiple Files')

 

[JP]

 

[Subob]

Reading all this about track splitting and tagging in Ocenaudio and Audacity still makes me laugh when comparing it to my cd recorder for ripping vinyl.

I gave up on trying to split tracks on an album in Ocenaudio as the 'marker' process just wasn't working well for me. I turned to Audacity in the end, and I've finally just about got the hang of things there, but it's still a faff and much longer process for albums compared to just using my cd recorder.

 

[Ben Jenssen]

Lots of 'pro' audio editing software makes processing like this a breeze. Having used Pro Tools for multitrack studio work for decades, it's my preference.

I don't make files of individual songs when I capture vinyl, I keep them as "Artistname - Albumname (Year) Side one". We usually listened to whole sides back in the day, didn't we? Only occationally lowering the pickup on a select song.

If I wanted to have a file for each song, I would use the 'Strip silence' function in PT. With correct settings this will remove the silence between song, leaving each song as a separate 'clip', select all of the clips and apply a few tens of milliseconds fade-ins/-outs, and export them - all in one swoop.

There is actually a free version of Pro Tools called "Intro", which is limited to 8 simultaneous tracks, you only need an iLok account. It's of course primarily meant for music creation/mixing, but is one of the best audio editors out there. Comes with a lot of good plugins. I'm sure there are options, but Audacity, I find pretty limited. I'm now trying out Rogue Amoeba Fission (mac only) as an alternative for when I sometimes want a lighter app than PT. Looking very promising.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

Lots of 'pro' audio editing software makes processing like this a breeze. Having used Pro Tools for multitrack studio work for decades, it's my preference.

I don't make files of individual songs when I capture vinyl, I keep them as "Artistname - Albumname (Year) Side one". We usually listened to whole sides back in the day, didn't we? Only occationally lowering the pickup on a select song.

For any serious editing, EDL based software is the only way to go. I used Sadie back in the day, and it appears to still be around, with even a free version. But I'm not doing anything too involved now - top and tail the recording. fade-in or out, remove the in-between song chit chat, and the bass and drum solos if they go on for too long. I'm basically just taking some live tapes and quickly editing them for my own listening.

As for vinyl transfers, even less to do since the work above has already been done.

As for breaking into tracks, yeah we used to listen to entire sides at a time, but there's no need to do that any more. Breaking the file into tracks allows for the option to add them to playlists, which is how I listen a lot of the time. YMMV.

BTW, I was never able to get Pro Tools to work on Windows.