Your Vinyl Transfer Workflow (sharing best needledrop practices)*

Dropbox

 

Funny this thread should pop up. I'm just getting a new computer and I want to retain needledrop capabilities. I think I have it covered.

 

Can a special Ed guy like me in his 50's use it? Google Drive was silly. I will look into it?
Thanks. But my own music is horrific.

 

This why I don't put up the Number of The Beast 24/192 WAVE raw transfers up on here. Well, if still had them. Thanks.

 

I'm in my 50s and managed to master it. Just turn it off when you're not using it, can slow your system down.

On the subject of posting samples of music. There was another thread for people to post samples of their needle drops, could we incorporate that into this thread?

 

Thanks. I haven't posted any files on here yet but it looks like it should work. Pretty straightforward.

 

The files in question weren't actually needle drops but the raw studio transfer of the quarter inch master to Pro Tools in 24/192. Awhile back another engineer had sent me the files to get my opinion. I get these a lot but if I put them up anywhere I would be in trouble. I have Petula Clark remixes that were never released and probably won't be. But if I put the 2012 remix of MY LOVE up here they would find my lifeless body at the bottom of the Scarborough Bluffs or worse.....

We are discussing needle drops I don't see why not. Until that is some kill joy wants to ruin it. A song shouldn't be an issue. Utube has whole albums up for Pete's sake. Go for it. Stick to 1 track.

 

They are an acquired taste. LOL.

 

Speaking of that transfer you mention. I've read opinions regarding 24/192 PCM. Although not empirically proven some sound engineers believe that 24/192 PCM provides a great facsimile (their words)/reproduction of an analog source. Based on my needle drops I'm inclined to agree. I used to do them at 24/96, then found that 24/192 gave me a more precise reproduction of the record. This despite the fact that the wave files don't show much going on beyond 48K.

How do you find it when transferring tape to 24/192?

 

So, when needledropping mono sources...

I use a mono switch, so the signal comes out as 2x mojo, which is how it is recorded.

should I leave it as a 2x mono interleaved wav, or should I combine the 2x mono, or simply save one of them..?

 

Depends on other parts of your process. I record mono pressings as stereo and then use the mono processing in ClickRepair to create a mono file to finish from.

 

I wrestle with this because of potential phase issues that can ruin your mono capture. If you sum in software, you can fix it.

 

Thanks for the input. The process seems fairly straight forward in Logic, so I will go ahead and give it a try. Since I see samples are ok in this thread, I’ll post one in a bit - maybe one can give a listen to see if I have done something wrong...

 

Some quadraphonic records go up to super high frequencies depending on the encoding method. I have heard some pretty impressive decodes from needle drops.

 

ok - so here is the link to a mono needledrop I did; if you end up checking it out, I would love to know if it sounds alright for a mono track...

Dropbox - getz-Clef_Norgran mosaic d1t09.flac - Simplify your life

 

On a mono recording that's really not going to happen. Even if several stereo decks were used in mastering, tape alignment at 15 IPS doesn't affect phase much.

You can record in stereo, and then use software to analyze the absolute phase info (there will always be some "widening" shown in a phase display because of distortion that will be lessened by summing to mono). Were there indeed a phase shift, it can be tweaked by a delay on one channel.

Here's an example with some poorly mastered multi-generational mono, a '70s sound effects record. On the top, we can see the start has mono with more high frequency in one channel. After that, a middle passage, with a slightly different phase delay shown in the bottom, then for the end, stereo, but with a passage that pans far left.



Actually, the last 2/3 is all one audio segment, but you can see they composed "casino noise" by mixing both mono and stereo sources. Still, the phasing is centered around 0 degrees for the most part, nothing like any cassette you might transfer.

 

Yep, it's mono alright... there's not much to go on to evaluate your use of the mono button.

Here's a spectral view of one saxophone toot:



At first, one might go "look at all that rich spectral information, harmonics from the instrument all the way up to 48kHz, surely an argument for high-resolution audio!". But that is false - besides showing what you can't hear, what you are seeing here is mostly distortion from the playback mechanism.

Evidence? The end of the mastering has several seconds of tape noise, before mastering cuts silence and then run-out. This is what the tape noise background looks like:



Reproduction of the tape noise plummets above 16kHz, and so necessarily must the reproduction of musical information contained on that media. The needledropping is probably faithful here, if not also adding to the HF rolloff above cartridge resonance.

(also, if you were asking earlier why subsonic filtering is required, examine below 20Hz above...)

In fact I found the audio a bit dull. The first spectrogram informs us of the quick fall-off above 7kHz of the sax note's harmonics, also seen in snare and cymbals. I brought the needledrop to the reproduction of newer '60s jazz references - with some EQ beyond what the conservative might use:



ClefNorgran-eq.flac (10 sec sample, 44.1kHz/16)


Not part of the overall audio quality, but part of the forensics the NSA will use to identify your needledrops, have a look at the high frequency noise of the ADC:


(the first half is with the discussed tape noise background, including the fading of the previous generation tape's noise, which only goes to 18kHz with this amplified view)

There's some pretty complex high-frequency hash, modulated and aliased around 47kHz, that seems to have a period of 22Hz. There are also impulses at around 125Hz (also the computer mouse sampling frequency). My guess is that digital noise, USB transfer packets, etc is being picked up by the circuitry. Better to downsample than preserve this.

 

Hello,

I filtered out the noise garbage from <20 Hz and >40 KHz and I made some tweaks. How do you like this new sound?

File on MEGA

Cheers!

 

And if it's 30 i.p.s.?

Since we're talking about vinyl transfers, carts can be misaligned which could cause phase issues. If you record the record in stereo, you can fix the phase offset with software. You can also pick one channel or the other and copy it to the other channel for perfect mono, though that can be argued against. If you sum before capturing, and there is a phase issue, it's baked in.

Of course, some people don't worry about such things.

 

Fortunately, I already did the math that can disprove that, so I don't have to think hard in the morning...

4um (micrometer) delay, (as I mentioned above would give a 1 degree inner groove phase shift only at 10kHz+) would require an LP's microline stylus to be misaligned by 6.4 degrees, an error far above the +2 degrees max mistracking of any standard tonearm alignment that causes 0.7% inner groove distortion.

 

You have to half speed master a record to make those old Quad records. The rear channels were encoded as a 30 khz frequency modulated carrier. Regardless, no multitrack back in the 70's couldn't record any higher than 22 khz without problems. And the mixing boards certainly didn't go up that high either.

Well, I suppose you could run your A800-16 at 30 ips. Flat up to 24 khz.

 

Well 24/192 might be better than 24/176.4 but not when you have to knock it down to 16/44.1. I have had this argument with my colleagues who think 24/192 is the bees knees. The difference between 192 khz and 176.4 is too small for anyone to hear a difference so why not use 176.4. Most of the public won't get to hear your super duper 24/192 transfer so why bother?
But if you are doing it just for yourself and you plan only to listen to the 24/192 file than go for it. Most of us have moved on to the studio standard of 24/352.8 anyway. That was chosen because it can makes good 24/176.4 high definition files for Joe Blow audiophile and is perfect for those 16/44.1 CDs.

 

True. I just sum it to mono. But we would never play back a quarter inch full track tape on a quarter inch half track machine. Oouch!

 

I keep my needle drops at 24/192. If my target was a CD, I'd probably capture at 32(float)/44.1 then dither to 16 bits after any processing. If I was going to downsample to 44.1, agreed that it would be best to capture at 24/176.2 or indeed 24/352.8.

 

Shhhhh! No one is supposed to know.
The 90's!? They are still doing it today. It is a well known current mastering technique called "allowing for overs" but you have to get the client's permission. We refuse to do that
And have lost quite a bit a business over it.
It is easy to get away with it if it is Metal.

Actually the loudness war started 1998. I have a nice 1997 Paul Stanley Remaster and it sounds just like the record. Same for the 1995 Elton John remasters. If only those Iron Maiden remasters had been done just two years earlier they could have been saved. Oh well.

And no, members of Hoffman the Loudness War did not start in the 50's. And I don't give a damn what some person has written on Wickipedia either. The Loudness War is not about getting more volume on media. It is about USING COMPRESSION TO GET MORE LOUDNESS BY KILLING DYNAMIC RANGE. Trying to cut super loud 45's back in 1956 is NOT the same thing. So please stop making that equivocation fallacy.
And yes records were getting louder as the years went by. The louder the signal of vinyl the lower the noise floor. And you got a better sounding record. Engineers termed the phase - The Loudness War and we know what it really means. What happened in the 50's has nothing to do with it. Technology got better so they could cut hotter records so they were quieter. It had nothing to do with killing of dynamic range.
So please, no one "copy and paste" any foolishness from Wickipedia about the Loudness War existing in the 50's because it DIDN'T.

Sorry Grant. Not for you. A little rant . But still connected to our topic at hand.