Ripping records to music server NAS

[Bob from Florida]

499,- thats a lot of money for a AAD.
I'm using my Allan & Heath Xone 4D digital/ analog workststion working with Ableton an Traktor Pro. Used they are also around 4 a 500,-.

Quality stuff an you could have so much More fun with it. Mabey there is a DJ in you. ️

Allen & Heath Xone:4D review

Allen & Heath's hybrid mixer is the total tool for the next generation DJ

www.musicradar.com

Digital out for recording purposes on the Waxwing is a side item capability. Primary duty is as a phono pre-amp, something it excels at!

 

[Bob from Florida]

Digital recording levels are not critical. You can amplify digitally after recording. It's not like analog tape where you wanted a hot signal to overcome tape noise. Just leave enough headroom to prevent clipping. Pros often record around -12 to -18dB (at 24 bits). (You don't need to go THAT low.)

For cleaning-up clicks & pops I have Wave Repair ($30 USD). It has a few repair options and it can do an audibly-perfect job on most (but not all) clicks & pops. It's manual so it only "touches" the audio where you identify a defect, but it's also VERY time consuming. It usually takes me most of a weekend to clean-up a digitized LP! (Another issue for you is that it doesn't support 24/96 audio.) I also have Wave Corrector which is FREE and automatic. Audacity has Click Removal (automatic), Repair (manual), or you can zoom-in and re-draw the waveform.

For tagging/metadata, I use Mp3Tag (it works with all popular formats, not just MP3). Audacity can add or edit metadata, but it's a "weak point" and it doesn't support embedded artwork at all. And if you just want to edit the metadata in Audacity you have to export to a whole file (or overwrite the whole old one). Mp3Tag doesn't touch the audio part of the file.


Don't do that! Your player software can play the songs like an album in track order, or sort by artist, title, album, etc. And you need separate files to to "tag" the individual song titles.


That's not necessary with analog vinyl but the only downside is larger files (and Wave Repair won't work).


Metadata is not well standardized or universally supported for WAV. All of the standard compressed formats are better for metadata. FLAC is lossless compression, and as a bonus your files will be about half the size. FLAC is not as universally playable as WAV or MP3, but it's lossless so you can copy to any other lossless or lossy format anytime in the future. A lot of people keep a FLAC archive, and them make MP3 or AAC files for portable use, etc.

Waxwing provides peak input levels real time. I have already set gains for each of the 4 cartridges I have mounted on headshells. These are saved to separate memories. Pops and clicks are present in a small minority of my albums. The magic function removes the most objectionable traits of those recordings real time - no processing needed after the capture. I don't have OCD about it and since most of my records are very clean, an occasional pop or click does not bother me. Hard drive space is cheap so file size not a big concern. I may end up limiting the output to 48KHZ by 24 bits just because the new Sonos 300 ERA won't play hi rez files. Whole album sides is the way I play records, so snipping songs not a big concern. DBpoweramp software can do any conversions needed so got that covered. Goal is to do all the capturing using the iPad. Then use dbpoweramp for coversions.

 

[linuxfan]

And making way?

Typical story - she bought some cheap A/D interface device bundled with obscure software which claims to automate/streamline the recording and track-separation processes.
Over a period of several months she got about a quarter of the way through her vinyl collection before becoming exhausted by the process, but happy that at least her favourites had been transferred to digital.
Apparently most of the tagging didn't happen, or failed, so the newly digitised collection now exists in her iTunes library with artist and album title, but tracks are just default "Track 01" "Track02" etc. And no cover art.

 

[linuxfan]

In post #4 I mentioned only the SMB network protocol to keep things simple, because most consumer NAS devices have SMB enabled by default, while NFS and AFP need to be enabled optionally.
This is certainly the case with Synology, QNAP, and WD, not sure about TerraMaster.

Synology 220+ with 2 - 4 Tb Enterprise rated hard drives set up to mirror.

Provided you have a standard SMB configuration for this NAS your iPad should connect easily. (iOS does not support NFS).

 

[Phorize]

I thought I wanted to rip my vinyl at one point....but found it so tedious I decided that if I wanted to hear one I'd just play it and enjoy it. I do automatically rip all my cds to a drive, tho and put the disc away.

In found ripping CDs bad enough!

 

[Chrispy]

In found ripping CDs bad enough!

Vinyl ripping is much more tedious.

 

[somebodyelse]

Don't do that! Your player software can play the songs like an album in track order, or sort by artist, title, album, etc. And you need separate files to to "tag" the individual song titles.

Good practical advice, but not entirely correct. CUE files can provide the necessary metadata for most (all?) audio formats, and some audio file formats can store the metadata internally. The problem is portability - these options aren't supported by all players, and sometimes there are differences in interpretation between players that do have support. There may still be some corner case where it's beneficial, but I don't know what that would be.