Your Vinyl Transfer Workflow (sharing best needledrop practices)*

In order for you to understand why this is not a good idea requires you to learn about compression and limiting, and why that goal is frowned on by most folks on this forum. From the very beginning of this forum, the case against making everything as loud as most commercial CDs was taught to us by the engineer whose name is on the masthead of the forum. Steve Hoffman.

We can tell you how to do it, as there are many ways. But, it isn't advisable.

 

After recording normalize the recording. However, consider this, different inputs on receivers and control amps have different input levels requiring volume adjustment when switching inputs. Your recording may be fine.

Redrosespeedway - I complete a neededrop of Red Rose Speedway last week. Great album.

 

Go into Effect->Amplify->Make sure allow clipping is not selected->Enter. This will maximize the loudness of the file without clipping or added compression.

Now if it's still quieter than your CD rips, then it's probably due to mastering. I would advise against trying to match "loudness" in that instance which is often added compression and limiting.

 

I think it's more a matter of their being more worn and#or played on cheaper rigs. The really cheap vinyl came in the 70's after the oil crisis when the percentage of recycled vinyl and other assorted crap was added into the mix.

The added noise can work sometimes, but in testing I've done, it often makes little to no difference. Much of it depends on the source LP. Does you version of RX have the Ambience Match module. If so, try using that on a gap between songs by learning and then rendering, then using spectral denoise to learn from the same selection. That can sometimes help as well. As for M/S one reason I use it so much is that it helps avoid loss of bass on fades, especially when the denoising needs to be more aggressive.

If space is an issue, you can capture at 44.1/24 and it will be fine. As long as your editor works in 32-bit float, it'll be ok. I use Reaper for recording and it's 64-bit end to end, so I tried recording in 64-bit but other than the file being huge, it was a waste as I checked the resolution of the audio in the recording and it was only 24-bit word length, so I was just filling a bunch of space on my hard drive with zeros!

 

I think the excuse of the energy crisis may be overblown. I have some pretty nice-sounding vinyl from the mid-late 70s.

No, that's only on the Advanced version.

Space is not an issue. I work on 500GB SSDs.

 

You're lucky. I've picked up some 70's LPs that sound like they're made from Corn Flakes. The main issue I've found with 60's albums I own if they weren't overly worn is a few times I've had some with noticeable 60Hz hum (or 50Hz if if was from the UK). For example, I have a couple of late 60's Sinatra LPs with really loud 60Hz hum.

 

Yeah, I find that odd. No hum when the cart is over the spinning record, but as soon as it hits the record, the hum appears.

 

Well on those two old piece of s@#$ Pro-Jects I used to own, it was the 60Hz motor sitting on an elastic band vibrating and that transferred through the belt to the platter and the eventually to the stylus. I tried all the hacks around on the internet. Some worked to an extent, some didn't. I'm just happy to be rid of those glorified chunks of chipboard! However, in my previous post, I was talking about actual 60Hz electrical hum in the pressing. I think back then careless pressing "engineers" didn't really think it was a problem. It's actually interesting to see in old recordings from the late 60's where UK bands recorded some stuff in the US and some in the UK. You can tell which tracks were done over in the UK by the presence of traces of 50Hz hum in spots and then those from the US with 60Hz hum. However, the Sinatra LPs I picked up once have really noticeable 60Hz hum from the beginning of the record.

 

I'd say there's actually a good case for clamping down on some of the peaks of vinyl recordings.

Take a nice electronic dance track. That repetitive drum beat, digitally mastered, has the same waveform over and over. However, superimpose that on the crap that comes off vinyl - warps, bumps, rumble, ticks and clicks, burbles, surface noise - and even after digital cleanup, you still have a much more random looking waveform.

After normalization (to whatever headroom), you end up having just a few random peaks that end up pushing the average VU down.

It's a lot better to tame those occasional overs in the digital domain with hard limiting plugins than it is to play that "full dynamic range" cranked up through a nightclub's 10,000 watt stereo system, and see what happens when their gate limiters kick in or amps clip. Same thing at home - you really want that one extreme preserved peak clipping your amp and sending DC transients through your tweeter?

It doesn't have to be much. Experiment with the recording, see how much extra you can get out of it when you turn it up and analyze with 100 "possibly clipped" samples (for example, of 25 million samples on a five-minute track..), and then run that same extra gain through a hard limiter to do it gracefully.

 

I'm not so sure that's what the guy was talking about.

 

I'm still needledropping my German Blue Box (the Beatles again, you see) from the mid-1980s and it appears some of those LPs are DMM cuttings from analog masters, with wide deadwax (no mention of DMM anywhere but Andrew from Parlogram says they are DMM anyway in one of his videos). Cutting onto copper brings a certain shrillness, so are there EQ moves that can bring some of the shrillness down without disturbing the overall balance of sound? I'm talking between the 800Hz-1.2kHz area mostly (vocals, electric guitars) ?

 

Some mild EQ should tame the shrillness.

 

I agree. Try cutting by just 1 or 2 dB and with a low Q value (if your EQ has a Q adjustment. It may be instead be labelled as bandwidth or something similar). When using an EQ, the temptation is always there to cut or boost more than that, but it's often unnecessary. Our ears get used to the sound and sometimes we overshoot, only to come back a couple of days later and realize we overdid it.

There's an excellent document from Steve about EQ in this forum here: Lesson 1 on EQ . I've found it really helpful. For instance, that shrill sound may seem to be at 800Hz to 1.2kHz but the real fix might be higher, say at 3400Hz or 6000Hz, two of the pressure points Steve talks about in his interview.

 

I'm using RX8 Standard with NOVA EQ plug-ins.

 

Good choice. Nova is a great EQ, as are all the TDR plugins.

 

I'm working with spectral de-noiser like you said Stefan, reducing the turntable noise without touching the tonality (the sample is the TT spinning with the arm in the air). It sounds good on the fades, no weird artifacts like noise reduction sometimes produces.

 

This advice might sound like utter heresy to some folks on this forum but I wholeheartedly agree. Some of those spurious peaks are more due to phase than real musical peaks anyway.

 

THIS! I am the same way. I have done some unconventional stuff to get the audio right. When done and it sounds right - what a smile on my face.

 

I'm getting better at manually declicking with RX, and the Frequency skew slider which I had no use for not so long ago has become my best friend. It's incredible the results one can achieve when properly used. Low thumps disappear. Light clicks vanish.
For those who use RX, this is a fantastic tool.

 

I really don't feel comfortable doing anything but manual declicking. I sometimes group several clicks together for the ease of it and even at a level of 1.0 it reduce some of the drum hits. My big thing is as often as I can buying M- grade records.

 

Here is something I want to see if the denoise is good. I'm loosely following Stefan's denoise process. I use these setting in a 2 pass denoise the 1st pass is only to the side channel and the 2nd is both.
@arisinwind you may like this group JJ Grey & mofro they are generally from north Florida. Dropbox - JJ Grey & mofro.flac - Simplify your life

2 part sample denoised and Raw. Also this is the level I recorded it at no normaizing or Loudness.

 

Interesting music. I like.

Denoising sounds good. You can really hear how you removed the background noise in the Side channel without hurting that big bottom end. Well done!

 

I really like them he has a certain kind of soul. The vocals are primarily of life in traditional Florida before Mickey Mouse and developers. I'll post up a compilation sample in a day or two in the needle drop thread.

 

Man, that is some nice sounding music. Southern, swampy. Your NR is incredible. The music is coming out of blackness, deep blackness like the black water rivers around here. Definitely checking these guys out. Thanks ghost rider!

 

Off topic - Ordered the Blackwater LP. The only one I could find. JJ Grey and Mofro also have an album called Lochloosa. I used to live just south of the town and lake. Hunted and fished there many times. Fond memories.