What is the best way to upload vinyl to the computer for mastering to CD?

I have made several attempts at recording some of my vinyl onto the computer to burn to CD. Every time I do, I don't seem to get very good results. My albums sound dull and lifeless compared to a CD rip of the same song, or a song from the same period of whatever artist I'm uploading.

The other day I recorded the stereo Thank You Girl from a fairly decent, clean, tickless, copy of "The Beatles Beat", blue label, EMI-Odeon pressing, onto my computer. It sounded somwhat muffled, compared to some other early Beatles songs from the same period I have on the stereo 24 bit HDCD "grey market" remasters.

I have a copy of Cool Edit Pro (1999 edition). I know there are graphic and parametric equalizers that you can use in this program, but I'm unsure as to what settings to apply to a song such as Thank You Girl, to brighten it up. I'd like to try recording some other things, such as the Sprinsteen - Born To Run - half-speed master LP and some of the Capitol Beatles mono LPs.

I am using a Thorens TD 166 Mk II turntable with a Grado cartridge along with a small Radioshack "Techsessories" stereo phono pre-amp, which BTW isn't giving me a lot of juice. (Or is that the sound card, or possibly the software?) I generally have to boost the levels 3 to 6db in Cool Edit pro, after the song is recorded. My recording software is Creative Recorder.

Any tips or suggestions on uploading vinyl would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
_____________

Mike Richards

 

I use a standalone burner to get the vinyl onto CD, then I manipulate it in the computer and burn it. This doesn't fit your setup, but when Grant and others start to chime in, they'll want to know what kind of soundcard you're using. That is a very critical element.

 

Just for the heck of it, see how these compare (both from The Beatles Beat):

http://lukpac.org/mp3/cbml-beatles_beat.mp3

http://lukpac.org/mp3/iwthyh_1965-mix.mp3

Before you did any "brightening", I'd look at your system setup and see what might be causing the problem in the first place.

 

And, I would not rule out your soundcard and/or it's configuratio(s). But, as not-so-great as your Soundblaster "Live" card may be, I don't think it would produce such dull recordings, as you say. I suspect that Radio Shack pre-amp! It may be dulling the sound. I have heard a few Grados by now, and I think they tend to be a bit on the bright side. But, those other Beatles songs you have may be brighter and the RS preamp closer to correct. With so many variables in the chain, there's no way to know for sure. The best one can do is choose the componants carefully and record flat as possible into the soundcard.

You may want to check:

1- The cable going into the soundcard

2- Your soundcard's mixer and speaker configurations. You should leave any EQ's or DSP stuff off.

3- How are you monitoring your PC's output? PC speakers are never a good way to determine your sound quality, especially if you are using EQ and/or DSP in the card.

4- Have you checked the settings in Cool Edit? Make sure you have the proper soundcard and have your playback for 16-bit.

BTW, why use the Creative recorder when you can just record with Cool Edit off the bat? The added bonus is that Cool Edit can convert your 16-bit file into 32-bit float on the fly.

 

Thanks Craig. What is a standalone burner? Are you talking about an external CD recorder that is attached to you stereo, such as the Sony RCD-W1?

Thanks Luke. This is very interesting. CBML and IWTHYH sound almost identical to my versions. I played my LP through my soundcard along side of your mp3s and went back and forth with the faders.

But when I take my recording of Thank You Girl, and slot it in, to a Beatles "hits" CD-R next to the 24 bit HDCD remasters, it doesn't sound as bright, particularly with Ringo's drums. Maybe I shouldn't mix LP recordings with recordings sourced from a remastered or even a regular CD. I thought there might be some way of brightening the track in Cool Edit Pro to try and match the sound of the other Beatles songs sourced from CD.

Now I have another issue. My turntable is playing a fraction faster than your mp3s. At the end of IWTHYH my turntable finished about "one hand" faster than your mp3. I though belt drives were locked in at the correct 33.3 speed. My old Technics direct drive turntable is in storage. Maybe I'll get it out and start using it.

Thanks Grant. I actually know about 5% of the Cool Edit Pro application. I do not know how to record directly into it. I have tried in the past, on my old computer, and I suspect that possibly Creative's sound recorder was overriding my system, not allowing Cool Edit Pro to record, if such an occurance can take place. During that time, I also couldn't get my Adaptec recorder to work either. Adaptec is what I used before I installed the newer sound card and the Creative software. I'll run a couple of tests with Cool Edit Pro and see if I can get it to record now.

My PC speakers are Cambridge Soundworks, about 2.5, by 2.5, by 2.5 inches. I only use 2 of the 4 that came with the package. I really noticed the difference on Thank You Girl vs the rest of the tracks I put on that CD-R, in my Explorer, with my recently purchased Sony CD-mp3 player.

 

Chances are whoever made the bootleg felt the need to brighten it up. Either that, or the transfer came from a different album that was mastered differently.

I wouldn't worry about it - I have a feeling that my turntable is running a bit slow, so yours is probably right on.

 

I record using a Soundblaster Live Value, and I actually get decent recording from it. I've used the Creative Recorder, CoolEdit Pro 2's recording, and even Feurio's recording function. Feurio is a cheap (shareware) CD manager program that works quite well for me at the moment - the only thing it doesn't do is cross-fading.

All those recording facilities basically gave me the same quality. Although, as Grant says, CoolEdit does record (and convert to since SB Live can't do it natively) 32 bit. I use CoolEdit for all recording now. There's nothing special to do it, just hit that "record" button.

That Live card is actually the only SB card, out of all other SB cards before or since, that can record the full range of frequencies. Most other SB cards cut out at about 15k. It's probably still not the most accurate card, but not bad for a Soundblaster.

I don't have problems with hum on this card unless I turn on the auxilliary input - because I have separate DVD-Rom and CD-RW drives. The CD-RW is on the internal Aux connector and when it's on I get a pretty bad background buzz. It's fine when it's off, but that means that I can only play CD's (using regular analog playback) on the DVD-Rom drive.

As I said, I'm pleased with the recordings I get. I'm finding that I prefer the LP's sound in some cases to the CD versions (as long as the LP is not so worn out that distortion in the "S" sounds and cymbal crashes make it unbearable).

My next project will be Chuck Mangione's Feels So Good. The CD, done in the late 80's, is unusual in that it's hard limited to death at every bass beat. It's not really maximized like CD's are done today because the RMS level is still relatively low. But it's like they just increased the overall volume until every beat clipped at 0dbfs.

The LP sounds much smoother, and the louder punches sound that much louder - and more like a real punch. So I'm going for that.

Joel

 

What JoelDF said.

I too have a SB Live! Value card and depending on what you DO with it, it makes a very big difference. With the latest drivers, the performance of the card, even at a basic driver level, lets the card perform very well.

There also seems to be a difference to the operating system you're using, but I've never A/B'd the thing to this fact.

I prefer Cool Edit 1.2 because the shortcuts I'm used to are at a moment's touch, while 2.0 has its differences, seemingly to be that many shortcuts are in different places.

I can't stand to use anything but Cool Edit. Been using it since 1995.

 

All the recordings I have heard from the "Live" card have a certain "hard" sound to them. I load up every CD-R I have that were made from a "Live" card into Cool Edit's spectral view, and every one of them plainly show a steep cutoff at about 17,000kHz! That is the "Live" card's limited frequency response at work.

 

I usually record directly from my preamp into a Panasonic SV-3800 DAT recorder and then digitally transfer the DAT through a Digidesign 888/24 interface to my computer for editing and such. This is basically the same idea as the "stand alone burner." I don't tend to denoise or EQ any of my vinyl unless it really needs it, but I will get rid of stray clicks because it can make a huge difference in the end result without affecting the music at all.

 

In spectral view, all my needle drops register plenty up to the 22,000Hz limit.

Could be a card revision level or driver version difference.

Now, my Sharp tape deck cuts out at about 16,5000Hz - but that's another story

Joel

 

That IS possible. You did state that you update drivers. Perhaps most people don't bother with such things?

 

Then again, sometime new drivers may be worse than old ones.

So far, I've been okay.

Here's a needle drop on the Missing Persons LP Color In Your Life that I did just yesterday...



Joel

 

This is, annoyingly, true, and your shortcut file won't translate directly (I don't know why they couldn't have given us a "translate" utility for upgrading); but if you can take the time to redo them manually, you can customize all the keyboard shortcuts just the way you like them.

 

Grrrrrrrr.
I'm trying to record the 10th Anniversary remastered Big Sandy & The Fly Rite Boys - "On The Go" LP (only) to the computer to make a CD-R backup copy. When I "hit" the record button in Cool Edit Pro 1.2, I get nothing but dead air.

Is there something I have to set first; some sort of option or something? The help menu doesn't give me any help. Also, how do I pre-set the record levels? Steve metioned something in another thread just the other day about finding the peak or loudest point on your record, setting that level to zero and then record away. How do I find the peak level on this album?

There is a similar problem to here to what Joel has with background hum, clicks, and buzzes. I isolated it to the "Aux. In". When I disconnect the audio cable running (in this case) from my Samsung DVD-ROM, the buzz goes away. I've tried the connections both ways:
DVD - ROM to "Aux. In" and CD-ROM to "Aux. In". The hum/buzz is there for both. When the ROM drives are connected to the "CD In" they are quiet.

This is all supposed to be easy. Just open Cool Edit Pro, point, click, and record.

Thanks.

 

Well, you have to select your soundcard of preference inside Cool Edit first by going to "Settings". You also have to go to your soundcard's mixer and make sure all the right things are selected.

Make sure you DON'T have your stereo plugged into the the microphone input.

 

The Sound Blaster record device was on "Auxillary". When I changed it to "Line In" I was able to begin recording in Cool Edit Pro.

Thanks Grant.

 

Just out of curiousity, do you have a web cam?

A friend gave me his old Logitech one, and when I installed it, it changed the windows "preferred device" to use its mono, 22kHz, total crap microphone as the input.... and it didn't give me any indication that it would. I guess it falls under "hijackware" apps like Windows Media Player which will take over any related file associations whenever so much as an update is installed. Grrr...

 

Indeed!

 

Interesting Graham. I have a Logitech web cam. Since the big crash last month, I have been slowly reinstalling everything. The web cam is the last piece of hardware to be installed. Since I haven't done it yet, any suggestions, so it doens't hijack anything?

That hijacking is a royal pain. Real Audio does it all the time. Soon as I'm forced to use it for something, the next time I attempt to open anything media related, mp3s, mpgs, etc., it's all defaulted to Real Audio. Then I have to do something such as reinstall Winamp to get it back to the default.

 

Hmm... I know RealPlaya used to do this sort of shenanigans, but the last time I updated it -- which ironically, was earlier today, it actually let me choose what files to be associated with RealPlaya when I chose the "advanced" install. It even told me what apps were currently associated with various files. If only all installers were so nice. I guess the folks at RealNetworks got tired of getting nasty e-mails from people who don't like having to change all their file associations every time a new version is available (which seems to be about every 9 days).

It's been a while since I added the webcam on, but I'm pretty sure there was no way to stop it from changing the preferred audio device when installing it. But it's not difficult to change it back... much easier than cleaning up the mess that Windows Media Playa makes each time you update it, or all the crappy bookmarks that get thrown on you whenever you download an Internet Explorer Critical-Urgent-Oh-****-They-Found-Yet-Another-Way-To-Execute-Trojan-Code-Security Patch Bugfix.

 

I have no way of knowing how that HDCD remaster was made, but it's possible that a very expensive A/D converter was used. And, as Luke suggested, it's possible that some EQ was applied. But why you're getting "muffled" sound is a bit of a mystery. The choice of soundcard is important, but it seems unlikely that the SB you're using is responsible. Of course you can't compare sonics using your computer speakers vs. your home stereo.

 

Ron, muffled might not have been the right word to describe the sound I got from recording Thank You Girl from the Beatles Beat to my computer. The song doesn't seem as bright as others from say, the HDCD stereo remasters or the U.S. Capitol Masters grey market CDs.

When I compare Thank You Girl to Luke's recordings of CBML and IWTHYH, it is pretty much the same. When I listen to the songs by themselves they sound OK. They just don't sound as bright next to these "remastered" tracks. Maybe the remastered songs are too bright. Too much EQ may have been applied to them.

 

...unless you like the brightness...

 

As mentioned earlier, I think it's a combo of the German LPs not being cut very bright, and some of the boots being brightened a bit. For example, CBML from my UK LPs is a bit brighter...

Grant, do you like the brightness?