Your Vinyl Transfer Workflow (sharing best needledrop practices)*

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Vocalpoint, May 11, 2011.

  1. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    Here are the post where I started using this method. I also included the post about adding noise. If you want to jump back and read more about them they are on pages 154 and 161.
     
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2021
  2. Stefan

    Stefan Senior Member

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    Hi and welcome. In RX 8 there are three ways to turn on input monitoring: 1. If you're running on Windows, keyboard shortcut Alt+I. 2. In the Transport menu, click on Input Monitor. 3. Click on the headphone icon near the bottom left. The second and third options are indicated by a green arrow in the following pic. The level meters will move according to input but the spectral and waveform views will remain empty until you stop the recording, at which time they'll show your recording.
    [​IMG]
     
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  3. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    Why did I bother contacting Izotope tech support???? I had a zoom meeting with the guy and he still has no idea why the meters were not recording. He offered to give my money back.


    One thing I did find out he confirmed what Grant posted about them moving to subscription based software. It's unclear if there will be an RX9 that won't be a pay by the month.
     
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2021
  4. Stefan

    Stefan Senior Member

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    Yes, they announced the subscription move recently around the same time they announced partnering with Native Instruments. Hard to say how it will change things. It would be nice if they'd choose the Microsoft model where you can still buy the software outright if you want. On the other hand, I work with Adobe's Creative Suite on a daily basis and it's nice to constantly get updated software.
     
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  5. Stefan

    Stefan Senior Member

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    We've seen quite s bit of discussion here about levels, so while working this past weekend on a new needledrop of Steve's superlative mastering of Rickie Lee Jones self-titled album, I thought I'd grab a few screen grabs to illustrate a couple of points.

    Here's side 2 (I always work on each side onf an LP separately as it's surprising how often levels differ).
    [​IMG]
    Notice how the true beaks are at around -4.8 dB while RMS is just below -27dB.

    Now imagine recording this so that the RMS averaged -18dB. You'd need to boost the signal level by +9 dB, and the true peaks would be badly clipped since they'd be 4dB higher than the maximum level of 0dBFS.

    What about phase correction? I recently mentioned in my reply to harby that it can reduce peaks and Brilliantbob has mentioned it as well. Here's what RX suggests for a phase shift to minizmie peaks.

    [​IMG]

    And here's the result:
    [​IMG]
    The true peaks are now lower but only by about 1.5dB so that supposedly magical -18dB level is still unattainble without at least 3dB of limiting. In fact, I use Phase suggest all the time and I've rarely seen more than 1-2dB extra headroom as a result, so it;s not some magical cure all by any means. You can do a lot better with phase rotation (radio uses it a lot) but in my experience it can cause audible changes whereas the basic suggested phase shift does not.

    One possibility would be to ignore the quieter tracks since they skew the RMS level downward. So I tried checking just the loudest track on the side.

    [​IMG]

    The stats on this are as follows:
    [​IMG]

    continued next message. . . .
     
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  6. Stefan

    Stefan Senior Member

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    If we normalize to -0.5dB, the RMS lines up fine with -18dB:
    [​IMG]

    What about the notion of -18dB RMS with peaks at -6dB. To do that you'd need to run RX Loudness Control. Here's what you get:

    [​IMG]

    Yeeeuch!!

    So that doesn't seem to be a realistic goal. Might as well buy a brickwalled CD! :)
     
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  7. jmobrien68

    jmobrien68 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toms River, NJ
    Thank you!
     
  8. jmobrien68

    jmobrien68 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toms River, NJ
    Thank you! It's so helpful when presented with starting points to play with. I have an original UK pressing of Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual and just running your first pass settings over the spoken word intro to 'Stop!' gave me a result that I am super pleased with.
     
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  9. Stan94

    Stan94 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Paris, France
    I did what BrillantBob said and while I occasionally run over -6dBFS, most of the time the sound is contained between -15db and -9db. I guess German Beatles records don't have much dynamic range. Anyway I finished processing a record and the results are good.
     
  10. Grant

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

    Well, very early this morning I did a new drop. First, I tried to tackle my worsening hum problem, the one that only happens when I put the needle on the spinning record. No hum when the turntable is spinning and I do this. Anyway, I fiddled with all the connectors and cables to see if that was the problem and still nothing got better. So, I got a bright idea and decided to use the metal record clamp that came standard equipment with the turntable, one I rarely ever use except on very warped records, and the hum went down in intensity. So, I am wondering if there is something in my room, or even in my house that is suddenly producing a ground loop, or if there is something else that the spindle is picking up like an antenna. Nothing's changed, so I don't know. Anyway, the cleanup process is much better again.

    I posted yesterday about how I started using default presets? Well, when I did a needledrop on a 1976 MFSB album this morning (I'm on Pacific Daylight or Mountain Standard time here) I spent three friggin' hours trying to perfect the noise reduction using the Spectral de-noise module. I was able to remove the noise without hurting the bass on the record and without making it weaker. But, it took me three hours of time I should have been sleeping! The result came out fantastic! The only part where I had to fix stuff was on the intro to the song "Sexy". I had the NR so light there that it exposed some crackle I couldn't clean up with the de-crackler or de-clicker, so I had to run some more NR on it, which made it dead. So then I used the de-reverb to bring it back to life. What do you think?

    Sexy [sample] - MFSB.wav
     
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  11. Grant

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

    I just use software to check the balance. Most any DAW software worth its salt will have some sort of vectorscope. Audition 3.1 has some good ones. Since most of here seem to have isotope products, there is a nice set of them in Ozone. Polar sample, Polar level, and Lissajous (whatever the hell that means!). I made my own preset, BTW.

    [​IMG]

    These three, located on the bottom of the box, provide at least three ways to check the balance and their phase relationship.

    I can record with RX, but, like I said, there is no animation of the wave or flashing lights like in other editors, and the only way to tell it's actually recording is by the digital time display on the bottom. I like using Audition to record because I can actually see the wave being created as it records so I can see if there are overs.

    Unlike Brilliant Bob, I think peaking at -16db is too low, even for 24-bit. but, that's my opinion.
     
  12. BrilliantBob

    BrilliantBob Select, process, CTRL+c, CTRL+z, ALT+v

    Location:
    Romania
    Total RMS at -18 dBFS is all that matters. True Peaks up to -0.3 are OK for post-processed needledrop.

    And looks at the Integrated Loudness (BS.1770-2/3) to be as close as possible to the total RMS. This is a sign the sample is well balanced in all frequencies.
     
    Last edited: Mar 25, 2021
  13. Grant

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

    Make sure you have the proper input enabled. When you see the meters move, it's recording.
     
  14. Grant

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

    Apparently, you can still buy your software, or subscribe to use the whole suite. Maybe they think they have to do this because not enough people are buying the software. I don't know. Their stuff is getting mighty expensive for the average people like us to own. But, if you are already one of their customers, they often offer deep discounts.
     
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  15. BrilliantBob

    BrilliantBob Select, process, CTRL+c, CTRL+z, ALT+v

    Location:
    Romania
    Can't remember I said that. "peaking at -16db" ?! :sigh:

    I said the rule "-18 dBFS and peaks up to -6 dBFS" is for mixing stage. To ensure enough headroom for mastering stage.
     
    Grant likes this.
  16. Grant

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

    OK, that I remember. But, who was it that said -16db was the best to record at?

    That may be great for tracking and mixing, but not for what we do.
     
  17. BrilliantBob

    BrilliantBob Select, process, CTRL+c, CTRL+z, ALT+v

    Location:
    Romania
    I usually record the vinyl at -25 dBFS up to -22 dBFS total RMS, not peaks, to avoid distortion.
     
  18. Grant

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

    Sorry. You did say RMS. My mind is on peaks.:D

    I also keep my RMS around -16db RMS. That gives some wiggle-room for later work.

    Sorry about that. I gotta start going to bed at a decent time!:laugh:
     

  19. Man the sound just pops from nowhere. Right out of the black.
     
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  20. Grant

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

    I just checked the track against those on various CDs and on the vinyl it came from and there is a bit less reverb on it, but I think it still works.

    One thing I did notice is that the tonality of the album shifted because of the NR I used, but it isn't out of line with how various CD transfers are. The midrange isn't as bold around 500Hz as it is on the CDs. The frequency response is almost ruler flat down to about 800Hz or so. But, if you also judge everything by CDs, you'd go crazy.
     
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  21. If we wanted the needledrops to sound like a CD...we'd buy the Cd
     
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  22. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    Sounds very good to me. I don't hear any defects. In addition to the bass I noticed if I use to strong of a setting it will diminish some of the high hats. Some of those super clean sounding percussion that's in a lot of jazz. Like I said above creating the archived file before denoise and spending a s much time as need looking for defects. I'm feeling pretty good with Stefan's 2pass method. I don't know what version of RX you are running, you may not have all the options.
     
  23. Grant

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

    Sometimes they just do.
     
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  24. Grant

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

    I'm using the standard RX 7.

    Trying to preserve the bass and hi-hat is what took me three hours.
     
  25. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    For years I used this one CD Andreas Vollenweider Caverna Magica as my go to disc for hearing audio improvements from upgrades. At that time I was using a SS processor as a preamp. Long story short is the intro sounds like a European couple walking though a sandy entrance to a castle they open a door and step into a big room and seem to look around in amazement of the room. With each improvement the footsteps sounded clearer and more defined.

    FF to a few years ago after getting into vinyl I bought a used copy on LP and through all my upgrade in vinyl, today I dug out the CD and and ripped the 1st track and cued it up with the vinyl and low and behold they sound the same. Maybe if I play it through the big system I will hear minor fidelity difference but arguably nobody would be unhappy with either.
    [​IMG]
     

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