The intent of showing the brick walled digital version was to say why? The technical specs of digital are objectively better but still the music is delivered like shown. The vinyl version sounds much much better.
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Recommendations for digitizing vinyl
- Thread starter Mr. Swordfish
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i'm confused ... vinyl graph can see it as more dynamic, the metering is higher (without pop / clicks), he doesn't know why ... but you can't trust the metering? Apparently, he says that the digital version have a bit more "high frequency" content (maybe the "declicker" tool do that?) and must have better DR?
Also he says that vinyl mastering comes from the "same" digital mastering, and i'm sure that's not the case. I mean, surely is the same digital source for both, but cutting vinyl with that gain surely is a "no no" ... generally the digital source is mastered differently to cut vinyl.
Also he says that vinyl mastering comes from the "same" digital mastering, and i'm sure that's not the case. I mean, surely is the same digital source for both, but cutting vinyl with that gain surely is a "no no" ... generally the digital source is mastered differently to cut vinyl.
Well, the video kind of changes my perception of buying vinyl versions of certain types of music. Interestingly CoPilot AI is very useful to ask and answer questions for this. I don't know enough about the art of cutting vinyl but I do understand that the gain can't be the same as digital. I think the biggest thing I took away is certain types of music I buy I will try to find on vinyl. For heavy metal I will just get the digital versions, I wondered why on most recent metal albums the vinyl doesn't really sound any better than the digital version. I learned that I will look for a confirmed vinyl specific master for metal going forward. I have Lorna Shore Pain Remains on vinyl and digital. Not really a difference even though DR meter says much better range. For electronic music I prefer the vinyl versions much more usually, whatever the vinyl format and my chain adds I like it. The waveforms I posted earlier comparing digital vs vinyl NMG are likely from the same master. That said I much prefer the vinyl sound. Thanks for posting @digitalfrost I learned a bit more.
OP
Mr. Swordfish
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Digital promises to allow the end user (i.e. us) to "hear exactly what the studio engineers heard" which is not quite true since their speakers and room acoustics are not the same as ours. But it does give us access to the same signal that was sent to the monitor speakers in the studio, which isn't exactly the same thing, but close enough. With analog/digital the signal has been put through the wringer before it gets to us.
Digital also allows the engineers to make things sound bad in a way that was not possible with analog tape or vinyl e.g. in the analog days, anything over 10khz needed to be ~20db down, with digital it's possible to hit full scale at 10khz, which is not exactly pleasant. Usually, they don't. But sometimes....
Digital also allows the engineers to make things sound bad in a way that was not possible with analog tape or vinyl e.g. in the analog days, anything over 10khz needed to be ~20db down, with digital it's possible to hit full scale at 10khz, which is not exactly pleasant. Usually, they don't. But sometimes....
'Digital' doesn't promise that, product marketing does.
Digital does make S/N promises that are possible to keep, that no analog medium can, even with the best analog playback. It is possible to have digital playback with inaudible added noise and distortion, at normal listening levels, up until the point of loudspeaker/headphone output, where it falls victim to electromechanical technology and then room acoustics.
Oli Vinylflow
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Built this tool to speed up vinyl digitization... Have a try and let me know how you go!
VinylFlow — Digitize vinyl 10x faster. Open source.
Turn your vinyl recordings into perfectly tagged, organized digital files in minutes. Free, open source, self-hosted.
vinylflow.app
Oh wow this looks great.
OP
Mr. Swordfish
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Looks good, but it seems to do basically the same thing as Vinyl Studio. It still takes ~45 minutes to record a vinyl album, so I don't get the 10x faster.
It does have the advantage of being free and open source. and if I wasn't already about 75% of the way through digitizing my vinyl I'd give it a try. But unless it does something clearly better/faster than Vinyl Studio I'm not inclined to switch at this point.
Welcome @Oli Vinylflow
I will certainly try VinylFlow but I doubt that it will allow me to digitize 10x faster than my present workflow with VinylStudio
If we disregard the abt 30-45 minutes time it takes to record/capture vinyl - I am doing this with Songcorder capturing from my Linn DSM - which due to nature of this medium cannot be reduced, with Vinylstudio it takes me less significantly than 10 minutes to convert the two (I am always capturing each side of the record separately) raw, unedited flac files "recorded" with Songcorder into fully tagged (incl songtitles, album details, separate 24/96 HiRes files for each track, album cover art, etc.) on my NAS ready to be played.
Let's see!
OP
Mr. Swordfish
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Is there a reason to use Songcorder instead of Vinyl Studio to do the recording? Is it the 24/96 format?
When I first started this project, I used Wave Shop to record since it's bit-perfect and was already installed, but once I started using Vinyl Studio it seemed unnecessary to involve another software layer. I could have stuck with Waveshop, but it would mean manually naming the tracks and finding the track breaks. Also, there's the click filter in Vinyl Studio that works quite well.
If you look at his website you can see clearly the (manual) process he is comparing with for the 10x faster claim.
If you are already using a system that basically does the same thing then of course the 10x faster is not going to apply.
The main benefit here (for anyone like me who has not already bought VS) is that it is free/open source.
Will it automatically adjust levels, to account for different recording levels?
Ofcourse, this is indeed a very interesting open source project. Many years ago I tried Audacity for vinyl ripping but never really managed to get things done within reasonable time. Audacity is a great tool but it simply had too many options for this comparatively simple task
So I ended up with Vinylstudio which - despite its vintage looking UI - is extremely powerful and pretty easy to use.
I agree that Vinylflow is probably rather competing with Audacity as a free vinyl ripping tool.
@Mr. Swordfish
After using digital mobile recording devices with line in input (Tascam DR 05, later a Sony PCM) for capturing vinyl I switched to Songcorder software for convenience:
Songcorder software is based on the OpenHome standard and Linn Songcast and allows to record any source from a Linn DSM.
It's extremely convenient - pls see this short video - and I could even capture hires higher than 24/96, but to me even 24/96 is already over the top for vinyl recording
. At 30 Euro it's a nobrainer but pls note as far as I understand Songcorder sofar requires a Linn DSM but could work with other devices as well:Songcorder Announcement on ASR
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@Oli Vinylflow A normalization feature would be very helpful indeed
Oli Vinylflow
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thanks everyone for the feedback. Yeah this is basically something I needed for myself (let's face it, VinylStudio sucks) so I vibe-coded my way building a simple tool in Claude Code. I am not a developer but understand product development quite well. And am a DJ/music enthusiast. Fast forward a couple weeks, I added features, made it more user-friendly, and ended up making it a MacOS app (I am still struggling with Windows but users can install using Docker).
Of course with vinyl digitisation, the non-negotoable/non-compressable part is actually recording the sound in your computer... But I'm working on allowing VinylFlow to record directly in the app, as well as normalise automatically which will also save time. I'll update this thread as I work on it.
Bear in mind I do this in my own time and for free, so if you do like it, pls support
Of course with vinyl digitisation, the non-negotoable/non-compressable part is actually recording the sound in your computer... But I'm working on allowing VinylFlow to record directly in the app, as well as normalise automatically which will also save time. I'll update this thread as I work on it.
Bear in mind I do this in my own time and for free, so if you do like it, pls support
Ben Jenssen
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I was thinking "10x faster?! Must be a turntable spinning crazy fast, while being digitized with insane sample rates, and slowed down later. But the needle must be jumping off the track." Good thing I was wrong there.thanks everyone for the feedback. Yeah this is basically something I needed for myself (let's face it, VinylStudio sucks) so I vibe-coded my way building a simple tool in Claude Code. I am not a developer but understand product development quite well. And am a DJ/music enthusiast. Fast forward a couple weeks, I added features, made it more user-friendly, and ended up making it a MacOS app (I am still struggling with Windows but users can install using Docker).
Of course with vinyl digitisation, the non-negotoable/non-compressable part is actually recording the sound in your computer... But I'm working on allowing VinylFlow to record directly in the app, as well as normalise automatically which will also save time. I'll update this thread as I work on it.
Bear in mind I do this in my own time and for free, so if you do like it, pls support
I'm now @ around 100 albums finished of the 200-250 I plan on digitizing, and I've only been at it for a few months. The recording is what takes time. I keep them as one 24/48kHz file per side. I mean, that's often how we used to listen to records; put it on, and listen to a side unless it got boring, then we'd turn it over.
I think I'm getting great results, firstly because of the Ortofon X-10 cartridge, and secondly because of the de-clicking software I use; Izotope RX11. It does a fantastic job without affecting the other audio at all. (Makes my M4 mac fans scream, though. I think it's AI stuff.)
I batch process them with RX11 in Amadeus Pro. In Pro Tools, I trim start/end, apply fades to start/end, and get the peaks up to -0.2dbfs with the limiter only shaving off max a db occasionally. Set the name to "Artist, album name, year".
Tom Jobim & Stan Getz - Getz:Gilberto (1964) Side 1.wav
drive.google.com
Keith_W
Master Contributor
In the last Melbourne Audio Club meeting, we were given a talk by the Australian Jazz Museum. One of their projects is digitizing their entire vinyl collection. They played for us a very rare 1930's recording (so rare that it's the only known recording in existence!). As the presenter said, "it sizzles like a barbecue". And sure enough, it did. Then he played us the version that his team had cleaned up. He said that it takes a lot of steps - first it is digitized, then it is run through declickers, denoisers, and finally expanders (for dynamic range), exciters (to extrapolate the top end) and another plugin to extrapolate the bottom end. The result was remarkable, it sounded almost like a mono modern recording!
Unfortunately the whole evening was more of a donation / volunteer recruitment drive and they didn't focus much on the process of digitizing vinyl. The rest of the talk was about history of various bands along with recordings of those bands. I have zero interest in jazz so I paid no attention. But it did open my eyes to what is possible.
Unfortunately the whole evening was more of a donation / volunteer recruitment drive and they didn't focus much on the process of digitizing vinyl. The rest of the talk was about history of various bands along with recordings of those bands. I have zero interest in jazz so I paid no attention. But it did open my eyes to what is possible.
Ben Jenssen
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For anyone interested, there are free trials of the software that I use:
izotope rx11 elements.
You need a 'host' to run them as these are plugins - AU, VST3, AAX etc.
RX11 Declicker starting point:
Broadband mode, random. Sensitivity, 2.7. This works for almost all of my recordings.
After declicking, I don't feel I need any more processing at all, and these are all pretty worn LPs from the 60, 70, and 80ies.
It's so nice to rediscover my album collection after all these years and listen to them without the clicks.
(Btw, I did a test with one 'before' file, and one 'after' declicking process, flipped the phase on one, and the result was total isolation of what had changed; the clicks without the music - it's like magic.)
izotope rx11 elements.
You need a 'host' to run them as these are plugins - AU, VST3, AAX etc.
RX11 Declicker starting point:
Broadband mode, random. Sensitivity, 2.7. This works for almost all of my recordings.
After declicking, I don't feel I need any more processing at all, and these are all pretty worn LPs from the 60, 70, and 80ies.
It's so nice to rediscover my album collection after all these years and listen to them without the clicks.
(Btw, I did a test with one 'before' file, and one 'after' declicking process, flipped the phase on one, and the result was total isolation of what had changed; the clicks without the music - it's like magic.)
I'm pretty happy with what my waxwing phone pre does with it's "magic" function. I might try the trial just for comparison purposes - but won't be paying a hundred notes for it.
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