Curious about analyzing vinyl via spectral analysis and wave forms, AKA being a dork...

So I have noticed many of you posting waveforms and spectral analysis of various vinyl, CD, and MP3, Flac samples and it has always sparked my curiousity as to what goes into that workflow.

While I try to trust my ears and love comparing music originating from various sources and the sound that I am hearing, there are situations or certain selections that I would like a visual representation of what I am hearing.

At any rate, can somebody give me an idea of how or what software is best for this and also what is the proper connection from Turntable to computer? What is the chain?

I am not sure I can do this with my current equipment. My turntable is currently hooked up to:


MoFi Stufio Preamp
Yamaha A-S501 Amp

My computer :

iMac

I have Audacity and of course garage band for software, not sure if these will do the trick.

So if anybody would be so kind as to give me an overview of this workflow and any other hardware/software needed so I can effectively dork out. Thank you.

 

You should be able to do it right away. Just get a cable to connect the amp to your pc. Ive done it myself this way and although its not the best Audacity recorded audio well enough to pick out differences. It also allows me to play music from any device I plug it into.
Just plug in RCA left and right for the amp and connect it with whatever your laptop can connect to.

Preferably you would want an external ADC to rely on instead of your IMacs built in one just to improve quality and reduce noise interference.

Im not sure about spectral analysis progrqms though.

 

An easy and free program for Mac to view the audio spectrum when you play an audio file on your computer:

Official Download of VLC media player for Mac OS X - VideoLAN

Start the program, start it playing any MP3 or other audio file you have, then go to
Audio > Visualizations > Spectral

It could be all you're looking for at this time.

 

Okay, great tips guys thanks. I actually have Amadeus Pro and it has the ability to view audio spectrum.

I did hook up an audio interface between the Mac and amp/Turntable. It is an older Presonus GT that I used to run my guitar through.

Wondering if there are any limitations being an old (10 years) product?

Also, been playing with my sample rate settings and gain and such in Amadeus and not really sure how much they directly effect readings in the sonogram. I guess I just don’t want to tweak anything past normal and get bad readings because of my settings.

At any rate, if there are any tips you may have please kee them coming!

 

you are probably aware of this, anyway on the mac bit depth and sample rate are set system wise by the Audio MIDI Setup app which you can find in the utilities folder inside the applications folder.

 

I actually wasn’t aware, thank you!

 

This is just my opinion but the most informative software you can get is the software that enables you to compare the EQ of one track with the EQ of another track. If you have that, then you can compare two different recordings of the same track and you will know if they are the same mastering or not - and if they are different, in what way one differs from the other.(Of course, your ears can do that but the software does it with a mouseclick or two and more precisely, and gives you a visual representation which you can keep or share.) The software I am talking about is Voxengo CurveEQ which can be downloaded free for the trial version. It takes a while to figure out how to use but the important thing is that you must use WAV files to do instant EQ read-outs - you can't do an instant EQ measurement with a FLAC file, for example.

 

Thank you, I can currently view one track against another with Amadeus Pro in a few different ways. I will take a look at voxengo though. Thanks

 

What I forgot to mention is that with Voxengo CurveEQ, you can do more than just compare the EQ of one track with another - you can choose which EQ you prefer, and impose that EQ on the other track. So, for example, if you had a beat up old LP with a beautiful mastering and CD of the same album with an indifferent mastering, you could needledrop the LP and transfer the EQ of every track to the matching tracks on the CD files - then your CD tracks would sound the same as your LP tracks, but without the clicks, pops, hiss, rumble etc. But you would need the paid version to do this.