Tranferring vinyl to digital - the utter beginner's thread

I've probably done more rips than you with all kinds of software and different gear, and I say you can get great results with careful use of NR where needed. It's all subjective, of course.

When I do my rips, I don't want any hint of it being from vinyl. That;s my goal. Your goal may be different.

 

Don't think I said anything about NR but the statement holds true for that as well if run across an entire file with no supervision. If you want quick and easy results just load up click repair and run it automatic at 20 with reverse and pitch protection, you will lose some transients but if you just want to get it done that will do fine. NR is another beast and I would never recommend using that "unsupervised" across an entire song or longer.

These are just my personal experiences, but I have pretty much made a "name" for myself doing rips and people are always asking me how I do them, I am just sharing what I have learned over the years. What anyone does with that info is up to them and happy ripping to all!

 

Yes it can be and I'm disputing it. I'm suggesting a light declick, nothing mercinary. Neither of us is totally wrong. Our methods have worked for us (I'm assuming) for many years. The OP can decide what he likes. Why you need to continue to gently tout superiority is somewhat beyond me, really. Ripping vinyl just isn't that hard to do if you've got a decent setup. It's the very least of any mastering project I undertake by a pretty wide margin.

Ed

 

I never said it was hard, but I did say that running a declick program in automatic mode is going to produce inferior results than doing it manually. For some reason you are hell bent to dispute that, even tho common sense would dictate that being able to audition what the program was about to remove is far superior than just letting it do its own thing. Feel free to enlighten me on how automatic declicking is "just as good" as manual mode.

 

Personally I use CR DeClick 20 automatically when transferring records. It´s gentle enough not to harm anything, but it does remove the clicks I want it to. If the records are very good, I use the files as they are.
No big deal as I see it.

 

Totally agreed. Light declicking works well for me. Used harshly is when it's a problem. I do them in Audition and there's no difference between manually getting the clicks out and letting the light process get them.

Ed

 

It's not common sense. Lightly declicking doesn't work less well than manually getting rid of them. No idea how when that became such.

Ed

 

Gah, phones. The last sentence should have been, "No idea how when that became such an accepted fact". There, now I feel better.

Ed

 

When people discovered it was true it became an accepted fact. Grab a copy of Blackbird off the white album run it thru automatic, a lot of horn passages, synth lines all can be problematic in an unattended mode. Softening of attacks is another culprit, if you personally cannot hear it or it does not bother you then roll on. What decking program do you use and at what settings?

 

Yup, horns and synths are very problematic with clickrepair even at a low settings such as 4. I use it in automatic mode, but it's not without problems, but I simply don't have time to manually declick most of my needledrops.

 

And that is fine, if you can cruise thru 10 rips in auto mode and be happy with it then who cares, I have LOTS of rips I did auto on a setting of 15 years ago that sound great and that people still keep as a go to, my original statement was that doing it on auto is not going to give you the BEST results. As this is a "beginners thread" perhaps I should have not mentioned it

 

When I use ClickRepair, I never go much above 12, and I use the reverse with x2 Wavelet. I don't ever use presets, but I carefully create and tweak my noise profiles before I run any NR.

I do rips for people too, and they are always impressed by what can be done.

 

I haven't had that experience. I fairly recently did a rip of a Center Stage 45 that was full of horns and had no problem doing it in an "auto" setting. Your experience may differ but we can't just say that's the way things are.

Ed

 

There is not a choice in auto or manual ok. If the LP has very little wear but has millions of tiny ticks, there is only one way to deal with this, and it is set up the CR properly to handle the task, and select the tracks which you wish to deal with, and click the start button. Is this auto or manual? Because there is no other way to do it. The tiny ticks are so small and numerous that doing it by hand manually would take 20 years of the user's time. So that is out of the question.

Back on to batch setups or auto if you wish to call it that.

No run along now if you have nothing to add for the beginner user in search of practical use.

 

Of course there is another way to do it, just because you do not do so does not mean that it does not exist. One way would be to use Click Repair in semi automatic mode, Set your declick wherever you feel comfortable and use the automatic to Slider to set that threshold, I personally would start at 28 or so.

If you want to get really fast and efficient with this method, make 3 macros (I use Macro Express) One that clicks the Fix button, one that clicks the Resume button and one that moves your mouse to the upper right corner of the play window and selects the last few seconds like the screenshot and then clicks the play button. You set theses to play back 10-20 times faster. It sounds complicated but it isnt and you can whip thru an album quickly.






Who gave you the authority to dismiss me? I don't see Gort in your title

 

Also if you have millions of tiny ticks, you either need to do a better job cleaning your record, do a better job aligning/setting up your turntable or get another copy of said record.

 

No, there are records that are very rare and not replaceable. Sometimes records is near mint condition and clean but came off the line with these ticks. It does not mean that the record was abused or that it is worn.

You must have seen these old blues or R&B records that were pressed on ground up vinyl, used vinyl.

Anyway, there are some very rare records out there. You might not own any but some of us do.

 

Found this at a thrift a few years ago, cleaned up nicely thank God, most of my transfers are usually derived from 7 or 12 inch singles, finding quiet ones can be tough to locate and can be expensive for certain titles
People looking into doing this have to remember it should always be about fun, not work. There are many ways to come to the same conclusion, some more expensive than others
I've heard some great ones done on inexpensive set-ups

 

One does not need an expensive rig at all. A good 70s turntable with a modern AT cart, like the 440MLa. And good 80s receiver should work fine if the phono stage in it is quiet with no buzzes or hums. Yamaha, Denon, those types of recievers were built well and had nice phono pre-amps in them.

I've been doing all of my quadraphonic LPs most recently in 24/96kHz. The CD-4 quads are magnificent sounding but prone to ticks, clicks, and pops because of their finer groove style cutting. ClickRepair has been a life-saver for these LPs. They have everything going for them, rare mixes, dynamics to die for, rich fidelity, and more than their share or ticks.

Just finished the Eagles - "On The Border" album in quad from a NM copy loaned to me from a member here. I always felt that the stereo mix was a bit starchy in places, so it's nice to have this alt mix on the music server player.

 

All the more reason then to do it manually or semi-automatic, if something is that rare then it deserves that treatment. You sure are quick with the assumptions

Is this rare enough for you? Both of these were in horrendous shape

Paul McCartney - Too Many People (US Promo Mono Ram)

Bob Dylan - Talkin' John Birch Society Blues (Original Mono Recalled Pressing)

 

Technically inferior in theory, but irrelevant in practice about 99% of the time.

 

Like others in this thread, I don't think it's a matter of auto or manual. It comes down to keeping an eye on what is being corrected in the given file. If all you see are red lines and you know they are not percussion, and you see no red solid blocks, they it's full steam ahead. You just have to watch the entire process as you sip your latte, or ice cold brew. As one gets good at it they can batch process and have confidence if they are will to pay attention and watch for potential problems.

 

Heh, some of you folks crack me up, its almost like you feel this thread is "your turf", I expect for the bottles to come out any second and hear "Warriors come out to playyay!!!!"

Perhaps I should have rephrased "Automatic declicking will result in less than optimal results" to

If you are going to use automatic declicking, noise reduction, EQ it is best to keep a raw copy of the file around because years down the road you might wish you had

That is some advice I wish I would have heeded way back when because I no longer have a lot of the raw 192khz files of some rare titles I would like to do in manual mode now because I did do automatic declicking for years.

 

Completely agreed. The stuff that passes for gospel when it comes to ripping LP's or 45's is often just elitist nonsense. That you have to spend time picking through every tick, that only the highest mucky-muckiest of resolutions will produce sufficient results, or that only certain recording programs work well is total nonsense. As long as your sound card can handle it, it's incredibly easy to make digital copies of your vinyl formats. Most programs will record in 24/96 and that's perfectly fine for an already-mastered LP or 45.

Ed

 

You did that very same thing when you spoke of "years of experience" in mastering vinyl to digital. LOL!!

Ed