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

Many phono pre-amps have insufficient gain. It is a common flaw. It is hard to produce a lot of gain, low noise and low distortion at the same time.

Also, I suspect you might have a misalignment of the input impedance of the pre-amp with your cartridge. I am assuming that your cartridge is a MM (moving magnet) type. When the input capacitance of your preamp is too high, then it would result in a treble roll-off. The input capacitance of phoho pre-amps is often too high. The reason is, that this way, the engineer can prevent some RF problems.

Making phono preamps is not rocket science, but difficult enough, so there are significant differences between them.

You may want to try out a different preamp, or modify the one you have, depending on your skill.

Hope this helps.

 

It will be garbage in, garbage out. If you process the 32-bit version, and then leave the 16-bit version untouched, you will be comparing apples to oranges.

The only drawback to processing or working in 32-bit as opposed to 16-bit is that you have to do another step for dithering/noise shaping.

BTW, as you know, Cool Edit can run scrpts so you don't have to sit there and do each file one-by-one...

 

Actually, Grant, I *think* Paul was talking about leaving both the 32-bit and 16-bit versions untouched, except for the (obvious) converstion from 32-bit to 16-bit. Would I be correct to assume that in this case only working in 16-bit would give you better results, since you're actually avoiding a layer of processing?

 

Thanks - yes lukpac, that was what I was getting at. I'm not sure what the answer would be - perhaps it depends on the quality of one's soundcard, and how well it can capture a straight 16-bit file.

Aren't there people who swear that upsampling a 16-bit signal can improve the sound quality? If so, perhaps dithering down to 16-bit, if down properly, might make the sound a bit sweeter or something, compared to the untouched 16-bit file. I don't know, I'm just guessing, but my gut feeling would be that, as you say, introducing another layer of processing will not help the sound.

This is not to say that I am disagreeing with the notion of using 32-bit float for editing and processing of files - I have yet to try it myself, but will do so.

 

Guys, the whole idea of NOT working in 16-bit is to avoid the sonic damage caused from processing in 16-bit. You can process a 32-bit float files 100 times over and you won't damage the sound. You could run a process on a 16-bit file once and the sound is degraded. So, with 32-bit float, processing is not even an issue. How to dither and noise shaping is your only concern.

Now, if you DON'T do anything to your sound at all, you are better off staying in 16-bit.

Luke, I take it Pro Tools does not accept 32-bit floating point files?

 

Is there a preferred dither?

 

Ron,

I have Sound Forge 5.0 and 6.0, and it doesn't offer much in the way of noise shaping and dither options. From what I have read, SF dither sounds so bad it isn't even taken seriously. I even tried them all in SF and I didn't much care for it. That's why I use Cool Edit for reducing 32-bit to 16-bit. SF has only recently gotten into the high-bit thing, ya know. I would love to get Ozone, though.

The amount of dither, and the use of noise shaping is something that is very personal. There is no one type that is best for all music types and recordings. It's all subjective.

 

Here's something to try, Grant: change the gain on something by -.1 dB, then change it by +.1 dB. Compare that to the original via a null test. Do they come out the same, or are there differences?

Or if you're just doing things like edits, de-clicking, etc.

Not that I'm aware of. Then again, for the most part I keep processing to a minimum, and even when I do processing I haven't found PT to "damage" the sound.

 

The enemy? Dither!

Every other sound editor on the market uses the 32-bit floating point files! Could this be another reason I keep reading from increasingly more engineers about how Pro Tools is behind the times or isn't serious?

 

What do you mean? If you can *really* process all you want and not do any "damage", this test *should* work. If it doesn't, well, you might be getting *less* damage, but you're not getting *no* damage.

What engineers have said this? What do those engineers think of Cool Edit in comparison?

For the record, ProTools (Free, anyway) can use either 16-bit or 24-bit files.

 

I just plug my ****ty turntable into my Game Theater XP card and have gotten mixed results. I ripped my copy of "Yesterday and Today" and the quality differs between tracks. "Yesterday" sounds pretty bad but "We Can Work it Out" sounds stunning. Much better then the cd version my parents have.

 

I'm curious to know if anyone anywhere has converted any LPs to Cds using an obaord sound controller such as the Realtek AC97 chip that is on my motherboard. I had no idea this chip could do a/d conversion like it can, and I am pretty happy with the results I'm getting. Details are sketchy, but I think it's an 18-bit converter. My motherbaord manual tells me nothing about the sound chip.

There are other onbaord sound chips out there, by Creative for example - I've no idea what they are capable of.

 

What happend to my thread?

Any comments on my CBL compared to Luke's? Is it duller, the same, brighter? Is it good enough on it's own to be used on a CD-R?

Tx.
________
Mike R.

 

Miike,

Only YOU can decide what you want.

 

I guess I can Grant. Just trying to have some fun, and maybe get a second or third opinion on my vinyl rip.

 

er.. Hello. I just had to jump in <g>

Hi there-- just reading the thread (haven't even finished it yet) and having had some success with LP recording yesterday, I felt like chiming in.

I'd like to upload some 30 secs. worth of MP3 to my Geocities 'junk drawer' but the .WAV files are offline right now.

Anyway, from beginning to end: (this'll be long-ish)

I have two soundcards in my PC-- two Soundblasters. An older SB16 and an SBLive!.

I use the SB16 for recording, the SBLive does weird things to the sound for some reason. The SBLive, BTW, is running on the KXProject drivers-- check them out at www.kxproject.com

First step for me was to 'zero' all input and output levels against a known reference. I have a small Mackie mixer, which has a dB peak meter-- what I do is to generate a tone in Cool Edit (btw, I've been using 1 kHz-- is there any standard for test tones?) and have it play thru the SBLive while feeding it to the mixer (not into a channel input but rather into a line level -ie. fixed gain- input).

Since I know the level CoolEdit is supposed to be putting out (and therefore the level the soundcard should be putting out), I adjust the soundcard's mixer until I get the corresponding reading on the mixer's meter (-3 dB, in my case).

On the SBLive, by the way, the 'Master' playback fader should be open all the way-- the card does not have an internal amplifier and setting this fader lower will 'pad down' the sound, so: open the Master fader all the way and adjust level using the Wave fader.

Now to the other card, the recording end. This one I feed from the mixer via the tape output (which is also supposed to be at line level), into the card's line input.

Basically what I have now is a 'pass-thru' going on the mixer, from the playback card to the recording card.

Without a mixer you'd probably have to hook up th-- no wait, I forgot I'm using two soundcards. A way to have a 'stable' 0 dB, -3 dB etc. reference would be to generate test tones with Cooledit (jot down the levels you chose) and burn a CD-- then feed this to the line input of the soundcard using a Discman or something like that and set levels to match what's supposed to be coming out of the CD.

When adjusting input levels on my soundcard I throw the 'Master Recording' fader all the way down, then using the cursor keys I bring it up hair by hair until it's just open enough to let sound thru.

(All of this done while monitoring input on Cool Edit-- set your card's mixer to Line as recording source).

The gain should come from the Line fader, otherwise you'd be raising the noise floor unnecessarily.

Once you have the levels set up correctly it's pretty much straight from there. Needless to say you should have your soundcard's FX, EQ and such off, as someone mentioned earlier in the thread.

The turntable I use is an Aiwa all-plastic cheapie I picked up at a fair for $9-- it sounds OK to me and has its own preamp, so the output is line-level.

So, the turntable feeds the recording card and that's basically it-- not much else involved at this point. Record what you want and save the undoctored files to your HD (look at the levels on Cool Edit as you record-- if it's clipping back off on the Line input fader.

Try not to be too close to 0 dB on Cool Edit's meter all the time-- cheap soundcards tend to distort when close to 0 dB, IME. Aim for -3dB or so as your peak. You can always normalize later (but don't record at too low a level either).

Anyway, now that the WAV files are on your HD (keep working copies!), ou can trim the ends and such to make them a little neater. I personally like to use a verrrry short fade-in at the start of each track (when I'm dealing with individual songs from different LPs) so as not to have the hiss/noise 'hit you' when you play the CD later.

Regarding de-noising and such, I didn't use any, most of the de-clicking, de-popping and such filters totally chew up the top end.

I did doctor individual big pops by selecting them as closely as I could and then using the Click/Pop Elimination filter on Cool Edit-- if you've homed in on the pop close enough, the 'Fill Single Click' button will be enabled (try it, you'll see what I mean). At this scale (ie. individual clicks lasting fractions of a second) it does work OK.

You can always compare the 'before' and 'after' using Undo/Redo.

When I've gone thru all of the files, I normalize to 98% (except in the case where it's already 'almost there') and apply one of those 'Sonic Maximizer' plug-ins barely on at all (0.1 on the 'hi' knob-- I don't enhance the low end at all).

At such levels the effect isn't really noticeable, but going back and forth there seems to be just a tad more 'air' to the sound .. may be placebo, OTOH. If the recording is already too bright I skip this step.

BTW, I monitor on bookshelf speakers (which I've had for years, so I know what they put out and what they don't), double check on good headphones if I'm serious.

Since I applied no EQ at all during the process, the monitors are not as critical as if I had, methinks.

As someone else pointed out, should you feel the need for EQ, EQ down, cutting rather than boosting.

That's it, basically. I haven't burned to CD yet-- I'm missing some cuts (I'm doing a blues CD for a friend).

Hope this helps at all.. sorry about the endless post.

Best,


Damián