Your Vinyl Transfer Workflow (sharing best needledrop practices)*

If you try RX5 you can process all the cassettes during the trial period. Get advice how to setup the noise reduction and you will never need to play the cassettes again.

 

I'm using the Best tractor Best Tractor / Arc Protractor / Mint Tractor / tonearm alignment / Yip Mint Protractor / Mintlp Protractor this is custom made for my tonearm and you align the cantilever not the cartridge body. My avatar shows this. What make this so genius is it is etched on a mirror and if your site line is not perfectly in front the black alignment bar's reflection becomes skewed. Look at my avatar close you will see the fainter black bars in front of the more bold back bars if I moved even a little the reflection changes. Perfect for old eyes like ours.

 

Have had many different set-ups in the past, but for the moment -

Akai AP307 QL tt with ATS10 cartridge (red conical stylus tracking at 2g)
Internal phono stage of my Yamaha RXV620 AV amplifier
Pioneer PDR-509 using Maxell XLII CD-R

I rip and edit the disc in WavePad, saving them to WAV and MP3 files. I don't attempt to denoise or declick - none of my records are in less than VG+ condition anyway.

The results sound fine to me - natural and clear sounding. Does the job for rock and pop perfectly fine. Also the same for cassette using a Technics RSB555.

 

I upgraded to 5.0 advanced. Looks good I got it because I think I can use some of the new features, Leveler, EQ match, Ambience match and Loudness. Now I have to figure out how to use them. Stefan did you ever post a guide to how to use these?

I have the old RX2 guide you posted saved, I still find uses for it. I need a advanced version.

 

Sorry gh, I saw your post and intended to reply but got sidetracked. No, I never did get around to doing any sort of guide for the RX5 features as they apply to needledropping. RX6 is out in a couple of days so I'm sure there'll be some new features to look at as well. Out of the ones you mentioned, I've used EQ match and Loudness occasionally when processing needledrops but the others not so much.

 

Thanks I was not sure. I know the needledrop thread slowed way down so there are far fewer members looking for advice. Glad I got interested in this when I did God I might have still been thinking my over processed Sound forge drops were great if it weren't for you and other members. Seems it's just the core group and I post in it so little I'm not sure if I would included myself in that group anymore.

I'm going to have to play around to see what I can figure out So far I can't make sense out the loudness but I will figure it out. I thought the eq match would work perfect to help when I need to use my AT-OC9ML/ii setup for records in poor shape. I would think I can use most any good record record a sample song or 2 using both cartridges and adjust the OC9ML to sound like the XX2.

The leveler I thought might help me with my house music mixes, I'll figure that one on my own.

 

Hey guys so I updated to RX5 advanced and now 6. So I noticed Both RX5 and 6 have slightly more hum than when I record with RX4. These were all recorded yesterday. They should all sound the same with more hum in 5 and 6. Or do 5 and 6 actually record better and the hum in my TT becomes more apparent?
rx4.flac (30.81MB) - SendSpace.com
rx5.flac (30.79MB) - SendSpace.com
rx6.flac (31.52MB) - SendSpace.com

 

Any improvements or features on RX6 as pertains to needledropping? Looks like a whole bunch of improvements on dialog and postproduction which I don't really use and need.

 

Compared to RX4 basic yes most were mentioned above. If you have 5 advanced I would think not so much but I could be wrong.

 

I thought I'd share my Audition 3 scientific filter that has been tweaked to cut below 20hz, and especially remove 12hz tonearm resonance, while barely affecting the music (including phase).



To better illustrate, a little Photoshop was applied to a filter at 10x the frequency (otherwise subsonics are unviewable on the graph). We have three significant nulls below the -12dB cut: at 17hz, 12hz, and 4.5hz, the output is cut by 48dB. The phase is only off 40 degrees at 40hz.

This is a vast improvement from the filter's "Remove subsonic rumble" preset which is 360 degrees out of phase by 55Hz.

 

I'll have to try this when I get my phase issues resolved.

 

Interesting so let me ask this, why is my way of highlighting 18hz and below and simply cutting it not the best way?

 

Because the software is likely using Fast Discrete Fourier Transform-based filtering, with an unknown window function type and sample size/resolution. I'll let you follow the links if you are interested (and have the prerequisites), but sufficient to say that FFT as filter has poor resolution and exclusion/isolation at low frequencies. In this case, a specific digital filter is better.

 

eeek no one say there would be math involved. I do realize what I was doing before was clearly cutting of the lowest of the lows, setting the cut/mute to high. Before I figured out how to cut these frequencies I was using the brick wall EQ filter and muting seemed to work better. I have been thinking that if I set the mute at 18Hz and below nothing above 18Hz gets touched.

 

My rather crude method is:

Linn LP12 with Bluenote unipivot arm and a Denon DL160
I use either a Bellari tube phono preamp, Adcom GFP or Musical Fidelity dual mono phono stage.
I sometimes Use my sacd player as a source for sacd discs that I do not have on cd or use sum on the Sony to see if it sounds good that way
Either my Sony CD-R (I use the SBM setting on this )or Philips CD-R
I mark the tracks as I actually record.
That's it. No noise shaping tick/click removal etc

I have been considering getting the Korg unit so I can do this as DSD or 24/96

 

I just grabbed a PS Audio NuWave Phono Converter and am pleased with the results so far.

 

Man, I can't wait to get back into the game.

 

I was hoping a couple of people could help me figure out if 5&6 sound better than 4 and is it worth the extra hum?

 

I just found this thread, sorry I'm late to the game... I'm going to change my process based on the information I've uncovered here.

Currently I am using the following setup/process.

Music Hall mm2.1
Ortofon OM 30
Little Bear tube RIAA, modified with Russian PIO caps, rolled tubes, AC hum removal techniques
6N3 tube pre-amp buffer, also modified with upgraded resistors and caps
M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 PCI card
Desktop computer dedicated to needledrop (older computer with lots of ram running XP)
Vinyl Studio software

I like the one stop shop with Vinyl Studio.
Manually add you album, withing the program get track listings, import album art, I then record side1, side2, split tracks, click removal, save to new file complete tagged album.
I have been saving in flac format, but after trying out click removal will now have to save as wav. I have recorded 125 vinyls so far with about 650 to go.
I will have to experiment using Audacity to convert my flac's to wav so that I can run them through CR.

 

I didn't see anything about RX6 "above"? Would love to know the differences between RX5 standard and RX6, specifically for needle drops.

 

Anyone here use audition CC? what is your workflow, and I am curious what settings you use for filtering out stuff like subsonic rumble and tonearm resonance.

Thanks

 

Did you look through the thread?
Your Vinyl Transfer Workflow (sharing best needledrop practices)*

 

Looked through the last few pages, all except the last one, figures. Thanks for the link, helpful info.

 

also, it looks different than my program. That is CS3 while I have CC, I tried inputting the values but I have no clue if its set properly. Maybe ill just use the subsonic rumble filter preset?

 

The graphic shown is indeed from an older version of the program, but if you enter the numbers, it should be the same, unless they dumbed-down CC.