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
    opps
     
    arisinwind likes this.

  2. No "opps" for you. My mistake. I mislabeled my tracks. My apologies. Maybe it was my misplaced glasses and too much Wild Turkey American Honey.
     
    ghost rider likes this.
  3. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    Trust me it's something I can do on a daily basis.:agree::cheers:
     
  4. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    Speaking of which, I was suppose to post this in the Needledrop thread. I just realized I posted it here.
     
    arisinwind likes this.
  5. Stan94

    Stan94 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Paris, France
    I realised that it's not easy to get equal noise reduction across one side of an LP because noise is not the same at the start and at the end of any record side.
    So in RX I mixed 4 secs of run-in groove noise with 4 secs of run-out groove noise.
    Using Stefan's settings from page 161, not only does it remove some nasty bass thumps, but also it sounds quite balanced and not "boxed-in".
     
  6. Grant

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

    What I find interesting is that I do have a better experience putting the same NR profile on the entire album. Sometimes, I have to do a profile on each side. Sometimes, i'll have a different issue with the first track, but it's easily dealt with.

    You mentioned a "boxed-in" sound. Last night I did an original stereo pressing of Jr. Walker & The All Stars "Shotgun" album. I had to clean it and do quite a bit of NR to clean it up. All of the clicks were zapped very nicely in one pass of RX's default Vinyl Record setting, which is pretty mild, to my ears. I tried running the NR twice, one forward, and one in reverse with RX. Since RX has no means to reverse files, I had to import it into Audition a couple of times. I'm not sure what it did but it worked, I guess.

    After I finished cleaning, chopping, and top and tailing the files, I had to do some level and EQ on some of the tracks. As typical with Motown, the stereo albums before 1966 were quickly (I say sloppily) mixed and assembled. I had to do a lot of EQ'ing to get "Do The Boomerang" to sound like the other tracks around it. I also used the Music balance tool to make it pop a bit, to make it sound more like the mono single. A few of the tracks were unusually low in volume so I had to bring them up. I did my balance adjustments in Ozone. After all that, all that was left was to apply flat dither and it sounds pleasurable to listen to. I'll post a sample later as I just installed Music Bee and it's scanning the drive I need to access.
     
    john morris and arisinwind like this.
  7. Tim Lookingbill

    Tim Lookingbill Alfalfa Male

    Location:
    New Braunfels, TX
    That is an extremely clean needledrop. Applied an EQ to give clarity and reduce the clangy, rinkytink sound (2k-2.5kHz) piano so the dulcimer tone of the hammer pads hitting the strings sounds like a high quality grand piano. This has got to be the most pliable waveform I've ever applied an EQ in Audacity. Better than CD files I paid for. There's teeny tiny barely audible pops peppered about after applying the EQ. Good job on noise reduction. Doesn't even sound like it came off a vinyl record.
     
    gabbleratchet7 and ghost rider like this.
  8. BrilliantBob

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

    Location:
    Romania
    RX. Select the entire file or area with CTRL+A. Then SHIFT+R. Reversed.
     
    Grant, Stefan and arisinwind like this.

  9. Clever!
     
  10. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    If you improved the sample by all means post the improved sample. I'm sure it was a low budget recording. You seemed familiar with how they achieved the piano sound and improved it. If you have screenshots on how you did it that would be awesome.
     
    arisinwind likes this.
  11. Grant

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

    Hmmm...thanks! I'll have to remember that. I'm not one for keyboard short cuts. Anyway, here's a a snipped sample:

    Jr Walker sample.flac
     
    arisinwind and BrilliantBob like this.

  12. What is the title of the first sample?

    Very nice work.
     
  13. Tim Lookingbill

    Tim Lookingbill Alfalfa Male

    Location:
    New Braunfels, TX
    I can post a screen shot of my EQ settings from Mac's Garageband install of the Audio Unit Graphic EQ once I stop fiddling with it because I have so much fun doing this that I spend too much time for my ears to adapt and end up overdoing it.

    It's just the musician playing the piano is hitting the keys pretty hard and the frequencies mentioned in my previous post are notorious for creating that "Loudness War" airy resonance. Not saying your needledrop is too loud but I've been working on a lot of other loud CD music files where those frequencies tend to have a lot of energy that blends into other nearby frequencies but are quite sensitive to the slightest tweak limiters and compressors can't keep up with. Your file has such sensitivity. And any reverb natural or processed just amplifies it. What's great about your file or the recording is I can edit for the piano without changing the timbre of the vocalist and the drums. Really good separation between individual instruments.

    Give me some time on the EQ screenshot. I'll eventually post it. I have to give it a fresh listen cuz' I know I've probably screwed it up.
     
    arisinwind and ghost rider like this.
  14. Grant

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

    The first one is called "Cleo's Mood".

    You know I had to keep the sample at about a minute so all of that is edited.
     
    arisinwind likes this.
  15. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    This might be interesting. My latest ND is a recording I have known a long time. Andreas Vollenweider Caverna Magica this intro is and or was my go to recording every time I upgraded my system. This is a comparison between the CD and the vinyl. Interesting to me is how the CD has it's own form of resonance.
    Dropbox - Andreas Vollenweider into.flac - Simplify your life
    [​IMG]
     
  16. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    I made some pretty useful discoveries doing this ND. I was able to use a higher denoise reduction level without harming any of the low frequencies. I found a setting I was comfortable with and scanned 8-10 locations outputting noise only, this seemed to work much better than listening. I denoised the entire file 2 passes. The other thing I just use the waveform stats and gain to get it to -18 RMS. It was very easy and simple math was all you need. I had to level side A and B separately side B was a bit lower than side A.
     
  17. I've always found comparisons like this interesting. On a casual listen I wouldn't notice any difference between the two. Listening more critically I'd notice a "fullness" to the LP sound while the CD sound seems to come from a quiet blackness. Both are pleasant to listen to. Just slightly different flavors. Nice job. Thanks for posting.
     
    ghost rider and BrilliantBob like this.
  18. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    I posted this intro as apposed to music because the different sounds of what sounds like a European couple walking through a castle. With every component upgrade the foot steps , echos and voices got more and more defined. I think now that my TT is all worked out the vinyl slightly out preforms the CD.

    Anyone know why the CD has the subsonics?

    The other interesting thing I learned. As I listened to the denoise outputting noise only, when I listen to the noise being removed at full volume on my audio device with my hearing I can barely hear it. So in a a/b comparison I may not be able to hear the difference but I still like to clean it up.
     
    arisinwind likes this.
  19. Stefan

    Stefan Senior Member

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    That's our old friend DC Offset. I see it a lot on older CDs from the 80's.
     
    ghost rider and arisinwind like this.
  20. Tim Lookingbill

    Tim Lookingbill Alfalfa Male

    Location:
    New Braunfels, TX
    The left and right channels aren't aligned exactly between the CD vs vinyl. I aligned both formats exactly in Audacity and A/B'ed them and the vinyl has the woman's voice slightly to the left and the CD has it centered but just a smidge to the right listening on Sony studio monitor headphones.

    If one is listening intently and very focused you'll hear how the shift will affect head space resonance but it's so subtle that it might not be heard on speakers unless positioned within the equidistant triangulation sweet spot.

    If fixing this L/R issue to me they sound identical. I edited Greenbaum's "Spirit In The Sky" for the same issue. It was difficult to hear from the lead vocal swimming in cavernous reverb on top of his voice was less clear, but once I fixed it, the lead became louder and clearer. All this time no one seemed to notice this issue but I did when I worked on it.

    And DC offset non-parity doesn't do much to sound. All it does when correcting for it is prevent amplifying audible artifacts from off phasing and other out of alignment errors when editing waveforms. This was told to me by Audacity programming engineer Steve Daulton on the Audacity forums several years ago.
     
    ghost rider likes this.
  21. The engineer forgot to turn on the HP filter.
     
    ghost rider likes this.
  22. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    I know when I listen to things through my headphone there AKG Quincy Jones version made in Austria not China using my audio device Merging Anubis. I only hear subtle improvements when I'm A/B-ing stuff. When I play though the speakers the difference seems much greater. I know if I cue up the CD and vinyl I can tell the difference.
     
  23. Stefan

    Stefan Senior Member

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    That's unusual since headphones normally reveal differences better. By the way, I can`t say enough good things about a program called Sonarworks. I have AKG 240 Studio headphones and the EQ compesantion curve that Sonarowkrs adds to my two PCS for listening through the AKGs is truly a gamechange for accuracy. The program comes with a bunch of predefined comepnsation curves for a variety of headphone models.
     
  24. Stefan

    Stefan Senior Member

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    I think it's more a matter of equipment. For instance, I doubt Barry Diament forgot to turn on his HP filter for all his Zeppelin CDs in the 80`s yet they all have DC Offset. Same goes for a Mozart compilation CD in my collection I ripped last year (I`m currently converting all my ripped CD collection to M4A files for a car USB stick. I think somewhere in the equipment chain for early CD manufacturing, DCOffset was introduced and they either didn't know about it then (not too many digital editing tools then) or didn't think it would be a problem since it's inaudible to humans.
     
    ghost rider and arisinwind like this.
  25. Grant

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

    What a severe DC offset will do is introduce nasty pops at the voltage crossover. I have an mid-80s Dionne Warwick CD comp from Rhino with a horrible DC offset.

    [​IMG]
     
    ghost rider likes this.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine