Your Vinyl Transfer Workflow (sharing best needledrop practices)*

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

  1. The reason the CD sounds louder is because the music has been compressed. The compression on CDs has reached a point it is called "The Loudness Wars". Record company's competing to see who can put out the most compressed music that will still be bought. Why do they do this? Their view is if it is loud it will get noticed. Unfortunately so much compression takes the life out of the recording. Vinyl is not compressed as much because the physical medium doesn't tolerate compression well. It's harder for the needle to track. This is my simple understanding of it. I maybe wrong. I've had a few drinks. At my age a few drinks can cause all kinds of memories to morph into other things.
     
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  2. I gave this a listen late last night and wanted to hear it again after my ears have rested. I am not familiar with this track. I couldn't find it on Youtube to give a comparison listen to. The needledrop sounds like there is inner groove distortion. But maybe that is the way it is suppose to sound. I see from the track title it is track 5 on the album. That puts it closer to the inner portion where IGD happens.
     
  3. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    I used to normalize to -.3 it seemed to work well enough. There was much discussion a while back sparked by John Morris instead of normalizing adjust the gain to get -18 RMS .

    Since I've been doing my drops this way all my drops are the same volume at the speakers. I almost never need to change the volume and as it works out is the same as the levels from my streaming.

    Recently I tried to get a 1996 pressing of Galactic Coolin off there are no reasonable costing copies so I bought a used CD on Amazon and when I ripped it to hhd to play the file it is way hotter than an of my needle drops. When looked at the waveform stats in RX there were 87 possible clips. I lowered it to -18 RMS like all my other files.
     
  4. warpig

    warpig Senior Member

    Location:
    Mississippi Delta
    Thanks for all the info and I do appreciate the response. Sorry for lack of info on the song. The band is the Coolies and the record is Dig.

    Good info above also. I will play around with the normalize settings.

    Earlier you posted about the loudness wars. To me and these are only my thoughts I think we can thank Apple for that. In 1997 or there about portable MP3 players came out. Most had crappy little things you plug into your ear for when you exercised. I think people were ripping their cds to listen while exercising and could not hear anything in the low passages. To target this audience the music industry just made cds one loud mess for the portable crowd. Anyway my 2 cents.

    Thanks:D
     
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  5. I found the Coolies, Dig, El Condor Pasa on Youtube. Gave a listen and your sample does sound like there is some IGD.
     
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  6. GerryO

    GerryO Senior Member

    Location:
    Bodega Bay, CA
    Have always believed increased inherent loudness was one route to extended portable playback device battery life and it sure hurts otherwise...
     
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  7. Tim Lookingbill

    Tim Lookingbill Alfalfa Male

    Location:
    New Braunfels, TX
    I just discovered the subtle detail brought out using a good limiter on 1978's Taste Of Honey's "Boogie Oogie Oogie" CD file to make the bass line louder seeing low frequencies recede.

    3 minutes in in the quiet bass line I applied a limiter to that section and noticed with just a 2db increase the head space broadened and the rhythmic guitar lick in stereo got louder, clearer with a more 3D presence.



    I tried to get the same effect just raising the volume slider without the limiter 2db increase and it was a no go. Just relaying this new found discovery to show that making it loud digitally may be a better approach due to the subtle nature and sensitivity of low voltage playback devices. It doesn't have to be louder than it needs to be but if one does the experiment with a limiter you'ld be surprised of the improvement.

    I feel that song I posted is a really good test for the use of a limiter to make a song louder without crushing the dynamics.
     
  8. Grant

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

    -18 db RMS is perfect for me too.
     
  9. Stan94

    Stan94 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Paris, France
    I still don't understand how you can set -18dB RMS in either Audacity or RX prior to recording?
     
  10. Grant

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

    You don't. You do it afterward.
     
  11. Stan94

    Stan94 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Paris, France
    Oh. I use Ozone and Maximize to 13dB LUFS or so.
     
    Grant likes this.
  12. Icewater_7

    Icewater_7 The universe expressing a consciousness

    Location:
    El Dorado Hills CA
    Agreed, limiters are very useful in the final stages of needle drop digital remastering. I always use my Ozone 9 IV Maximizer set to “Transient.” I check the dynamic display for all the highest peaks to see that the limiter is only occasionally suppressing the shortest duration peaks by only a few fractions of a dB. Going from my digitized vinyl 96k/24-bit files to 441.k/16-bit masters I want insure that I’m preserving the highest digital bit resolution.
     
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  13. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    I use the waveform stats it will show you where the file is at. I record both sides in each file. You just do the math or use a calculator and using the gain you can make it exactly -18 RMS with rare exceptions I will usually make both channels -18 they are only off by a little from each other.
     
  14. Grant

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

    Same here, but I use the default -14db LUFS.
     
  15. Grant

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

    But, on this forum, there is a historical mindset that not should never use any limiting whatsoever. But, that philosophy came about back when limiters weren't transparent as they can be today.
     
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  16. Stan94

    Stan94 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Paris, France
    I shoot for -13dB but if it's too compressed I can settle for more. Sometimes normalizing to -0.3dB is enough (I work at 24/88.2).
    I'm needledropping the Beatles 2014 Mono set and some albums are problematic, like Rubber Soul. Side 2 is louder than side 1 and Run For Your Life is louder still. Revolver is another strange animal.
     
  17. Tim Lookingbill

    Tim Lookingbill Alfalfa Male

    Location:
    New Braunfels, TX
    I've had inconsistencies relying on RMS db readouts applying an EQ to -20db to -18db CD files and find they're so quiet in some parts I either have to raise the volume on my MacMini listening on headphones or raise the EQ which of course induces an adaptive effect where wack-a-mole on balancing dynamics that ends up making it too loud that my DAC starts to distort severely. Have to scroll select with the mouse the entire 32 band EQ and lower it to normal comfortable loudness and basically start all over raising/lowering individual bands to bring out more detail.

    Also if I just raise the highs by about 3 to 4db with the EQ to balance out too warm or boomy bass it now sounds louder but the RMS numbers stay the same.
     
  18. Icewater_7

    Icewater_7 The universe expressing a consciousness

    Location:
    El Dorado Hills CA
    Yes, limiters have improved with special presets like the ones in Ozone that I use. However, the purist is strong in me too and when a track has a lot of dynamic range and incisive transients I use RX to normalize up to -0.3dBFS and then I can be sure that there is no limiter compression going on even if my threshold has not been exceeded. I respect that “historical mindset.”
     
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  19. BendBound

    BendBound Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bend, OR
    I use RX also to normalize up to -0.3dBFS.

    Actually I read the discussion on -18dB RMS adjustment with interest. I have RX9 and Ozone9. But honestly I have not figured out how to make that adjustment. Is it as straightforward as using the normalizing function?
     
  20. Icewater_7

    Icewater_7 The universe expressing a consciousness

    Location:
    El Dorado Hills CA
    No, normalization just sets the highest peak level, but RMS is a weighted average measurement over time and needs to be analyzed or measured in real time. I don’t set my levels that way, but I’m pretty sure Neutron can perform that function.
     
  21. BendBound

    BendBound Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bend, OR
    Thank you,
     
  22. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    Anyone doing their drops via Apogee Duet 3? I've been using the Duet 2, but saw an email where they'll give me $300 trade-in credit towards the Duet 3 ($649).
     
  23. BendBound

    BendBound Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bend, OR
    Speaking of software, I’ve seen that IzotopeRX10 and Ozone10 are dropping soon. Wondering what’s new.
     
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  24. Icewater_7

    Icewater_7 The universe expressing a consciousness

    Location:
    El Dorado Hills CA
    Yeah, me too. Hoping that there are improvements to the Music Rebalance plugins that allow one to rip additional stems out of a mix, or just higher quality without artifacts.
     
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  25. BRC

    BRC Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Does anyone use Izotope RX Loudness Control to even out levels for compilations assembled from multiple sources? For me it works better than other software I've tried but it can still be inconsistent. When I burn a compilation to CD and playback in a vehicle or through conventional stereo with loudspeakers, I still find that I have to adjust the volume too often. I've been using -14 LUFS, but actually had one track I had to drop to -18 LUFS to make it not sound too loud compared to the other tracks. Is there other software that produces more consistent results?
     

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