How much time do you spend on a needle drop?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by CardinalFang, May 27, 2004.

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  1. Gardo

    Gardo Audio Epistemologist

    Location:
    Virginia
    My method is pretty straightforward. I clean the record the best I can. I'm using LAST cleaners right now, but I'd like to try a VPI or Disc Doctor solution sometime. After a good cleaning, I record the vinyl to my hard drive at redbook specs with Sound Forge 7.0. My sound card, the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, is quite good at resampling on the fly from its native 48khz to 44.1. I then manually declick the big ones. Then I mark the tracks, denoising with SF Noise Reduction only the grooves in-between the tracks, where noisy records can really get distracting, and then only as needed. Most of the time I just let the surface noise be. Then I make each song into a .wav file, taking care to preserve inter-track timing, fade up at side start and down at side finish, and add a couple of extra transition seconds from side one to side two.

    That's about it. I burn my CD-R, and I label it by hand--some studies have suggested a higher block error rate with labels, probably because of balance issues. And I listen! I've had very good results this way, and I get my gratification nice and fast. ;)
     
  2. JoelDF

    JoelDF Senior Member

    Location:
    Prairieville, LA
    It takes me from several hours to several days worth of work. But then I don't do it all in one sitting either.

    Either way, I'll record each side at a time. On a few occasions I recorded both sides in one recording session - flipping the record when Side 1 finished with me still in the room without stopping the recording on the computer. I'd edit the break tighter later.

    I record at 16 bit since my SoundBlaster Live can't do better but convert to 32 bit.

    When I clean it up, I do it on the whole LP side wave file. I first increase the volume since I rarely get better than -3 db for even just the loudest peak. I'll do a light NR of mainly the turntable rumble frequency range and even lighter NR of the rest of the range. This still leaves some hiss and a hint of rumble when listening through headphones, but is nearly imperceptible with speakers. De-clicking is done manually in spectral view between the beats when I see them. Lately I've been reducing the volume between tracks just a little bit - not enough to black it out (I just don't want to do that), but enough to hide the leftover rumble just a little bit more.

    Then I'll do whatever eq'ing I think it needs, then a very light limiting if there are just a few overly wild transients causing the overall volume to stay too low to see if I can get a little more level, then convert back to 16 bit.

    I then use a shareware program called Feurio, a CD burning program where I can load up the 2 wave files and then insert the track index marks wherever I want. I usually leave a 2 second gap between the LP sides - a default setting that I leave as is only when doing LP transfers. I don't use the 2 second gap on compilations. I burn a CD-R and have a new disc to play at work the next day. :)
     
  3. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Here is my general method using Adobe Audition:
    1. I do sample runs to get the levels correct, or as close as I can.

    2. Decide on the recording properties (bit-depth, sample rate).

    3. Record both side of an LP at once. I do not adjust the DC on recording. My soundcard is good.

    4. When done, I check to see if I clipped anywhere. If so, I run the de-clipper. Then I adjust the channels to make sure they are bbalanced. In 32-bit, this does not damage the sound quality.

    5. I then split the big wave into tracks with inserting cue markers, than using the cue list to split them up. The whole procedure never takes more than two minutes. I save the files to a folder.

    6. I open each file one by one and work on them. I evaluate each one to decide on how to declick it if needed. once the file is declicked, I use a very gentle amount of NR, if needed, or I gate the ends. I may simply cut out the rumble with the scientific filter down to about 18Hz, depending on the source. On older albums from the 50s or early 60s, I may be able to slash the lows by as much as 40Hz!

    I then trim up the ends. At this point, I decide if the tracks need an overall boost, or if I will finish them at that level. If I do boost the overall levels, I run the tracks through the Hard Limiter, never going up more than a couple of decibels. I take great pains to adjust the attack and release. Or, I use a soft-knee limiter.

    7. When i'm done, I convert the files to 16-bit, 44.1 and save them to another folder, while preserving the high rez versions.

    8. I play the tracks though the soundcard into my home stereo and check once again for clicks. If all is good, I burn the CD.


    For compilations, I run all the tracks through the RMS (Group Wave Normalizer). If some of the tracks are 32-bit or of a higher sample rate, I reduce them to 16-bit, 44.1 first.

    On LPs, I preserve the gaps between the songs unless I *really* don't like how it was originally. On comps, I usually pay close attention to the gaps.

    Through my process, I defrag the drive containing the files often. It's not that important with NFTS, but it's an old habit from my Windows 98 days in FAT32.

    I never delete any high-bit files until I am comfortable with what I have on disc.
     
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