Your Vinyl Transfer Workflow (sharing best needledrop practices)*

If you only hear an occasional click, you can remove it with interpolation or literally cut it out. Some programs let you redraw the click.

 

Hey, only I have permission on this forum to make long-ass posts. LOL

Seriously though, there is nothing wrong with recording needle drops at 16/44.1. (Silence falls over the forum) No really. Think about it.

Back in 1992 Steve Hoffman made the famous DCC Pet Sounds CD ** on a Sony PCM 1630 at 16/44.1. And that CD is superior to any remastered version since. And the quarter inch full track tape had more detail in it then the vinyl you are transfering. Of course your interface is $250 and the PCM 1630 was $6200 USD. But ahhh....my point still stands.

The Hair restoration project was done at 16/44.1 on a Sony 3348. (Oouch!) One poor engineer transfered (minute or two at a time) the SSS plagued 1 inch 8 track tape to the DASH machine. They didn't know about baking the tape back then. The parts were edited together and then mixed from the 3348. All at 16/44.1. Do you hear anyone complaining?

24/96 is better for a cornucopia a reasons but 16/44.1 is nothing to be ashamed of. Many DASH 3324, 3348 and Prodigi X-850s are in therapy because of the 16/44.1 bashing. They feel nobody loves them. They need to know they are love and wanted.

Putting fun and joke aside. Up until 1994 all PCM transfers were done at 16/44.1 or 16/48. Hundreds of movie soundtracks were recorded on 3324, and 3348s. In fact the 3348 / 3348 HR was heavily used on movie soundtracks up until 15 years ago. We transferred the complete soundtrack for the movie Total Recall sometime between 2008 and 2012. It was massive! Two 3348s were used. 48 tracks of music on one 3348 and the other was for: sound effects, Foley effects and dialogue. Well, 28 tracks were used on the second tape. It is incredible! 76 tracks of 16/44.1 in total. I saw the original film back in 1990 on 70 mm 6 track. No problem with the sound. The music for Amadeus was also recorded at 16/44.1. And on
the stone age Flintstone 3324 to boot!

Weather you record your vinyl at 16 or 24 bit really won't make that much of a difference. All of the software handles the audio at 32 bit s,o not to worry. The idea is that a lot of processing, editing and such will cause loss of bits and other digital artifacts. So if you start at 24/192 or whatever you won't use anything.




** Back in 1992 Steve had 2 hours to transfer the quarter inch full track master of Pet Sounds. (So the story goes). He made one digital copy on PCM 1630 at 16/44.1 and an analog copy on a 1 inch half track at 30 ips.

The mono mix of this album is bass heavy. With the exception of the DCC CD/vinyl every release of Pet Sounds (1966 mono mix) has had the bass severely pulled down.

 

Well, early this morning, I was frustrated about not being able to do needledrops because my soundcard no longer works right under Windows 10, and the one on the motherboard hasn't taken a signal from my preamp. I also haven't gotten around to buying a new external card.

So, this more, I decided one last time to get a signal to my software, and lo and behold, it worked! So, to test it, I grabbed a record that I bought used for the album cover and dropped it. It came out nice and clean, great levels, full range. Now all I have to do is clean it up and archive it.

I'm back in business!

 

Windows 10 updates goofs my sound setting quite often

 

It's not the settings in my case, it's the drivers.

 

Tell us something we don't know. Oouch! I sense shades of Vista here. They should have Beta tested Windows 10 before they thrust it on the innocent public.

 

I've been reading this thread from the start lately, all 129 pages of it, and there's tons of information in there scattered across those pages. I think it would be great if the techniques invented by you guys were easily accessible in one place, for everyone to see and try at home. Is there a way to edit the thread and put Brillant Bob's, Gary's, John's and Patrick's processing one page 1?

 

Just create your own archive. Copy and paste the posts you like to a text file.

 

OK, more questions.
How do you deal with fade-ins/outs? Do you re-fade over them, do you fade quickly before or after them, do you leave them alone completely?
And then, how do you deal with spaces between tracks? Do you leave them alone or do you bring the volume down (a little or a lot)?
From what I've seen, the well-respected PBTHAL leaves everything in his drops, doesn't fade or change volume. What's your take on this?
And if we could go through all the steps again that make needledrops sound great, that would be nice:
1) capture at 24bits with peaks at -6dbfs
2) deal with rumble (several methods)
3) use HP filter
4) declick
5) denoise
6) apply volume boost or not
7) mark tracks and export to files.
Is that it?

 

I leave them as is, because they're part of the original work. But I always fade in / out the first / last .1 of a second into silence in order to avoide clicks at the beginnings and ends of tracks.

They don't get digitised because they don't contain any information. Tracks are split just before / after silence. If I want to recreate the "album experience" later, I can tell my player software to leave silence between tracks.

 

I usually leave fades alone.

Between the tracks spaces will usually get a fade-out from where I can no longer hear the music/track to the start of the next track.

I don't think I've heard his work. I know some people who leave everything in the needledrop. Clicks, surface noise, etc. The needledrops sound just like the LP. I tend to take a minimalist approach. Light clickrepair, light NR if used, no EQ. I'm happy with it.

 

Denoising is a touchy subject. As different algorithms and systems of denoising can create radically different results. So if you do want to de-noise I would recommend doing it as the last step and creating a version with and without de-noise. That way you can compare and contrast the effects of your denoise program and choose if you want to use it and when.

 

I also remove any DC offset (1a) and adjust L/R balance (1b), if needed.

 

Yeah. I don't want to recreate the vinyl sound, but something approaching the master tape. This is why I only digitise an LP if I don't have access to the CD, or if none exists.

 

There are many end points for needledrops. None are wrong.

 

What plugins do you use to create that tape sound?

 

I don't want to create "tape-sound" but undo the vinyl sound as much as possible to get close to whatever went into it. Of course that won't work perfectly, but I try to remove the usual vinyl defects.

 

Actually, PTHAL says he does what he does. No questions asked. That means he may do anything. My philosophy is 'whatever it takes'.

There really are no rules, only suggestions. As far as fades are concerned, I do all of the things you mention. Whatever it take to get my desired result.

 

I redo all fades, fading to the new digital black noise floor. I silence between tracks. When tracks trail off but don't necessarily fade, I leave a bit of the original noise floor, and do a quick fade out, so it's not such a jarring transition from music to digital black.

 

I actually wish PBTHAL would leave a raw file to work with. I don't like is noise reduction technique. Check out fades and the grove noise between tracks, there are many artifacts left behind. His set up is pretty good, and he has access to great material, but I don't like his restoration work.

 

I chop up the big wav file into the individual songs before I work on the fades. I do try to preserve every bit of the music in the fade while still fading to black except in the case that you mentioned.

If I think there may be an issue with a fade after all is done, i'll leave the dither on instead of turning it off on silent parts.

Aside from that issue, another thing i've done to smooth out a track I think sounds too clean is to use an analog tape emulator running at 15 i.p.s..

 

I use NR myself, so I have no problem with it. PTHAL does a fine job with it, and with the plugins that are available today, you can do an amazing job of it without disturbing the music content. But, it also requires lots of time, trial and error, and patience. For those that don't have the time, patience and skill to use NR, they are better off not using it at all.

 

1. Clean record properly! Invest in a wet vaccum machine. This is what separates the men from the boys. Playing back a super clean record with no crap in the grooves is most of the battle.

2. Adjust tracking angle. (If you can...)

3. Record at 24 bit. 88.2 or 176.4 khz.

3. Unless you have a professional ADC record at
- 18 dbfs RMS (not peak) and don't go beyond
- 6 dbfs PEAK. Consider - 6 dbfs peak your new zero. If you live in Europe then it is - 20 dbfs RMS. With your average run of the mill consumer $200 - $600 ADC the - 18 dbfs RMS is VERY important. With a pro converter you could record at - 22 dbfs RMS or even - 24 dbfs RMS because they have massive amounts of headroom. Your consumer ADC will not. If you want to avoid the coldness of digital then stick to - 18 dbfs RMS. Some members think it is not really important and that for consumers it doesn't matter. They told you to record as loud as you can as long as you don't go over 0 dbfs. This is from the days of consumer 16 bit equipment. And it is a hang over from the days of analog. 0 dbfs is not equal to 0 VU. Your converter sounds best at this level.


4. They are 2 current pro methods for fade outs for analog tape. If the fade out time is 12 seconds then you set your ramp time (fade out) to 12 seconds. This technique was used almost exclusively between 1985 - 1995.

Before that many CDs were not faded out at all. They would just fade into tape hiss and then go silent. Not nice at all!

The newer preferred method is to fade to digital black with the last 2 seconds or so as to not miss any of the fade out. So if the ramp time was 18 seconds you would fade to silence 16 seconds or even 17. On a few occasions I have faded out at the last half a second. That is done with automation of course.

But with vinyl drops that is a different story.
If the fade out is 15 seconds then fade it out at the last 1 or 2 seconds. If crackle and pops are a problem then fade out early so you don't hear it.

I would stick to 2 or 3 seconds. Some albums will have no pauses in between tracks. In those cases match the pauses with the album.

If you have recorded an album side with 6 songs as one long track then divide the file into 6 tracks afterwards.


5. De click and remove rumble if neccessary but do not use NR. Many pro mastering projects have been ruined by excessive NR. And that includes me. God forgive me for my use of NR!
If you wet vacuumed cleaned your records properly, noise should not be an issue. As for the hiss off the tape itself - leave it. I have a Frankie Lymon CD and it has no hiss which is odd since the tape would have likely had a signal to noise ratio of 60 db 'A' weighted at best. They used a massive amount of NR on those tapes. The Frankie Lymon CD sounds great but then I haven't heard the master so I don't know what I am missing. Most tape machines from the 1950's had no musical content above 10 khz. Assuming your digital NR touched nothing below 11khz they shouldn't be anything removed but hiss. But many NR software will remove hiss right through the audio spectrum. Unless your record is going, 'SSSSSSSSSSS!!' forget NR.
Save it for those Dolby less Cassette transfers.

6. Only use EQ if necessary and always EQ through speakers. Keep EQ moves to 3 db or less. Stick to parametric. Avoid high Qs such as 5 or 10. Stick to Qs Such as: 0.5, 1, 1.5 or 2.

7. Normalize to no more than - 0.1 dbfs. If your normalize to 0 dbfs the files will overload on consumer equipment.

 

I’m all about noise reduction. I also add dither noise as tape hiss when a digital black noise floor seems weird.
I go all out. I want to remove every bit of vinyl coloration from my transfers.
I have a 13th Floor Elevators PBTHAL transfer and I just don’t like HIS noise reduction techniques, which is why I would prefer a raw file so I can clean it up myself.

 

It would also be helpful if I edited my typos...