Your Vinyl Transfer Workflow (sharing best needledrop practices)*

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

  1. Daicehawk

    Daicehawk Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Russia
    D
    These are your problems, both clicks, crackles, pops, and noise overshadowing the music (means records in poor condition) and not being able to hear the difference between PCM and DSD.
     
  2. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    Hey guys, need some help! Using iZotope RX7 (but should be the same solution for any recent version)

    I edited my raw drop, but realized much later that I 'split' two tracks at the wrong point!

    So, how can I combine two FLACs into one track, in order to "re-split" them?
     
  3. Daicehawk

    Daicehawk Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Russia
    Do not know about the Izotope workflow, but the concept is:
    1. Convert both FLACs to WAVs.
    2. Merge them to one file.
    3. Split the file where you need.
    4. Convert both files back to FLAC.
     
    SamS likes this.
  4. Grant

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

    Open the second half of the song/file. Do not close it.

    Open the first file. Copy it.

    Go back to the other file and paste the first file to it. Select all and save, maybe as a new file and give it a new name.

    Now, try splitting it again.
     
    SamS likes this.
  5. harby

    harby Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR, USA
    The problem with "paste" in audio editing software is that it will generally have an overlap and fade to avoid a click on edit points - it won't be bit-perfect.

    Instead, with the command-line SoX tool:

    sox --combine concatenate infile1.flac infile2.flac outfile.flac
     
  6. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    Perfect, that did it! Thank you. I guess I never learned about copy/paste within iZotope before :)

    Maybe you'll enjoy a sample of the track I fixed? The Roots "Ain't Sayin' Nothing New" from Things Fall Apart Deluxe Edition 3LP set:
    Dropbox - Ain't Sayin' Nothing New SAMPLE.mp3 - Simplify your life

    Also, I've changed my workflow for "new" vinyl. I really no longer like running the auto de-click on the entire side. Before I even normalize, I visually look at the waveform for pops that stick out above the music. Then I go in real deep and zap them each with interpolate. There's usually no more than 2-5 per side.

    Then I normalize and see if any more pop out audibly or visually. Then I run a light de-click on intros/outros/segues, then split. This helps to keep dynamics intact. Even running a de-click of 2 on many songs will take a lot of snap out of percussion, and it annoys me. Of course, if the record is trashed and/or a really bad press, it's a trade-off I live with. But I prefer to leave the faintest of ticks in place, as opposed to whacking the entire song with de-click. If I listen later and find 1 or 2 that really bugs me, I'll just go back later and fix.
     
  7. marcob1963

    marcob1963 Forum Resident

    He doesn't apply a high pass filter, I imagine that's why they may sound "muffled".
     
  8. Anton888

    Anton888 Forum Resident


    Yes, that would be interesting!
     
  9. Grant

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

    For Sam's purposes, it won't matter. It won't be audible.

    If you use Adobe Audition, you can change the settings for zero crossfade. You can also zoom in down to the sample, or close to it if you want, and edit it down to the point where there is no overlap. But, a bit of overlap is what you want for being seamless. At that extreme, you won't hear any difference.

    The obsession with bit-perfect in this case is silly, IMO.
     
  10. Grant

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

    I "grew up" using Audition, and that program makes these types of editing easy. That's why they used to call it "Cool Edit". I'm glad that iZotope adopted many of its features in that regard. I found that this type of scalpel-type editing doesn't work easily in programs like Sound Forge. The original Sonic Foundry and Sony Sound Forge allowed you to do this type of editing with numbers, but it was cumbersome. But, the nice thing is that SF lets you tweak the type of crossfade in great detail, which comes in handy for very tricky moves.

    Maybe you'll enjoy a sample of the track I fixed? The Roots "Ain't Sayin' Nothing New" from Things Fall Apart Deluxe Edition 3LP set:
    Dropbox - Ain't Sayin' Nothing New SAMPLE.mp3 - Simplify your life

    That works if you have very clean vinyl, or don't mind the occasional light click. I usually work with old, used, and clicky vinyl where even a good washing doesn't help much.

    You may be using heavy settings. Either way, I cannot tolerate even faint ticks. They have to go.
     
  11. Grant

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

    A high-pass filter would not dull the sound. It would slightly weaken the lows. Any muffled sound you may hear is more likely due to other parts of his chain, or even the pressings, but not because of any filtering. And, it has not been established that he uses any filtering. He will use NR.
     
  12. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    Seems bit-perfect to me, can you spot the overlap and/or gap? This "empty" spot is a quiet part in the song, where I accidentally split, then recombined.
    [​IMG]
     
    Grant likes this.
  13. harby

    harby Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR, USA
    If it's a quiet part, then no worries, and one wouldn't see it at that view scale anyway. One must just be mindful of what the software is doing behind the scenes but not explicitly warning you about, especially if you are reassembling your "oops" from a digital deliverable for a paying customer.

    Can you spot the overlap of these two prime-number-frequency tones, one file simply pasted to the end of another?
    [​IMG]

    This is at 5ms for "smooth delete and cut boundaries" and "Smooth all edit boundaries by crossfading" in Audition. It seems that there is no overlap, just a fast fade in on the pasted audio, as the number of samples is preserved. The sharp cutoff to another waveform that fades in causes ringing at the termination of the first.
     
  14. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    If I can't see an artifact at the scale I posted (above), I'm personally not going to be able to hear it :)

    Striving for perfection when doing a needle drop is a fool's errand, as vinyl is a mess of noise to begin with.
     
  15. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Have mouse scroll wheels been discussed yet? :laugh:
    I had been using the Logitech M510 wireless for few years, had a couple as I loved it, but noticed after awhile the wheel would start to 'gum up' after about a year or so. Even after opening it up and cleaning.
    Past month I went with another model-corded Logitech M500s with a 'hyper-fast' wheel. Seems to be built better.
    I'm constantly zooming in and out and this model made it faster and more precise. If it lasts over a year I'll be happy.
    You guys have any other rec's for a good solid mouse wheel?
    One that'll outlast this little guy :D
    [​IMG]
     
  16. Grant

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

    I disagree. All you have to do is pit in the time and effort. I have done it many times.
     
  17. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    But your definition of "perfection" is different than someone else's. Needle-dropping is more like cooking, IMO. You've got some people that are more purists, ones that leave in flaws inherent in the mastering or stamping. Others that try to erase every artifact that indicates it was sourced from a piece of spinning plastic. I'm not picking sides on which is "correct" but there is no such thing as "perfection".
     
  18. jamesc

    jamesc Senior Member

    Location:
    Dallas, TX
    I haven't compared very many mice, Cory, but I've always been happy with the cheap OEM Dell ones. I'm currently using this model (MS116) and love the feel: DELL MS116 USB Wired Optical Mouse Business Office Mice Black For Laptop Desktop | eBay

    Plus, they're cheap and seem to last forever.
     
    c-eling likes this.
  19. FrankieP

    FrankieP Forum Resident

    i’ve been using Kensington trackballs since the 90’s. I have both wired and wireless Expert Mouse with scroll rings. I can never give it up for something else. I have unused spare ones just in case Kensington decides to discontinue them.
     
  20. Grant

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

    There is in subjective terms. My concept of perfection is removing every inth of evidence of vinyl playback, and I have achieved it many times. Those projects took a long time with painstaking concentration of every inth of detail. That meant going through every second of audio in the spectrogram view, through loudspeakers, and headphones, even switching left and right. For a typical 1970s album of about 36 minutes, that's hours and hours of my time. Let's not even mention making 16-bit versions and repeating the process because some defects don't show up until you downconvert and dither. Then you have to wait a while after you clear your head of the project and listen again for anything you missed before.

    Sometimes, if I feel the digital version sounds better than my vinyl copy, i'll use frequency modeling. Or, i'll just make my own adjustments. Then, i'll check my work on other systems, like the car stereo and even the smartphone to ensure that nothing's out of whack. These days I can use Ozone for that.
     
    anorak2, arisinwind and ghost rider like this.
  21. Grant

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

  22. B-Mike

    B-Mike Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    I’m having a problem that I thought someone here might be able to help with. I’m running a new Pro-Ject Phono Box DS2 USB into a MacBook Pro and using Vinyl Studio. On the other side of the pre is a Rega P6 with the yellow Exact MM cart. I’m getting good results at 24/96. At 24/192, however, there is a lot of digital noise, but only on the Vinyl Studio recording. It’s not audible through my speakers, and it’s not present through headphones when I use the Vinyl Studio monitor function.

    Is there a filter, switch, or other setting that is supposed to be on to deal with this? Any ideas?
     
  23. I don't have Vinyl Studio or a Mac so I have a peanuts worth of experience with this. However, when I have experienced noise or other abnormalities in my needledrops that I can't figure out I just reset the program to it's original configuration and it clears up the issues. Maybe Vinyl Studio has a reset?
     
  24. Daicehawk

    Daicehawk Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Russia
    what the heck is digital noise? post a sample.
     
  25. B-Mike

    B-Mike Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    That’s a good thought, and it almost always works. Unfortunately not this time. I’ll post a sample of the results I’m getting at the two different sampling rates when I have a chance.
     
    arisinwind likes this.

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