Your Vinyl Transfer Workflow (sharing best needledrop practices)*

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

  1. FrankieP

    FrankieP Forum Resident

    Pace started out with iLok using a USB dongle to store your license. Then they came up with 2 more ways either using your computer ID via their License Manager software or “virtually” using the cloud. Sounds like you had authorized your license using your computer ID. Myself I have it all on my iLok2 USB dongle.
     
  2. Icewater_7

    Icewater_7 The universe expressing a consciousness

    Location:
    El Dorado Hills CA
    Yes, I am familiar with "cloud" Pace license authentication and have thought of going to it but our Xfinity internet access occasionally goes down and back up because of all the new construction of homes around here (just my guess). I'm comfortable with the way I use iLok licensing as I have used it with ProTools from the very start way back there. I have one of the newer slim silver ones that holds a ton of licenses. Because my new Mac Pro has only 4 USB ports it was time to get all my audio apps and plugin licenses into a single iLok key instead of the 8 different keys of all generation types. Did that yesterday and should have done it long ago.:sigh:
     
  3. Icewater_7

    Icewater_7 The universe expressing a consciousness

    Location:
    El Dorado Hills CA
    Well, I forgot a sentence I read on the pro-tools-expert.com website when they described features of the about to be released Ozone 10. Something like "Ozone 10 can no longer be used as a standalone application." That's why I couldn't find Ozone 10 in my new isotope folder under "documents." Ugh, that means I am forced to load up my needle drop files into Protools in order to do additional custom remastering steps by applying Ozone plugins to tracks. I loved being able to load a full LP's worth of high sample rate tracks already cleaned by RX, render them in non-real time to 44.1k/16-bit all in one batch, send them to the folder I want, and append to the file name if I wish. I reinstalled Ozone 9 on my new Mac Pro so I can still do that. Now for my question to the new Ozone 10 users here: Where do the user presets get stored? Need to copy my Ozone 9 presets to 10 as I have spent a lot of hours developing them. Anybody know (I'm on MacOS Catalina)?
     
  4. Grant

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

    Through their recent market research, iZotope found that they have a high percentage of users who didn't know that RX is a standalone program! They recently made at least two videos stressing that it is, and that you can use RX as a standalone DAW. My guess it the reason people don't understand that is because all of their instructional videos feature RX being used inside of another DAW. I should tell them that. (I just did.)
     
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  5. Icewater_7

    Icewater_7 The universe expressing a consciousness

    Location:
    El Dorado Hills CA
    I’m now 100% up on my new Mac Pro with ProTools Ultimate 2021, RX10 Std, and Ozone 10 Adv all installed and authorized. Just restarted my needle drops with a recording of Neil Young’s “After The Goldrush.” The vinyl is overall pretty quiet for an early 70’s mass pressing, but on one side I hear some low volume “thumps” on my headphones that repeat each revolution. They are only within certain groove positions. I do have some de-click presets that sometimes work on random thumps but didn’t on these. I have had alternate success using “Replace Unwanted Event Slow” by magnifying the deep low end with the “Extended Log” spectral view. That allows me to exactly locate a thump and try to select it with different grabber tools, widths, and before-after settings. Usually takes multiple tries until I get a thump gone without adding audible artifacts. The reasons I’ve gone through this in detail with you is that there is a new spectral “feathering” option in RX10. Has anyone tried using it yet? Would like to get some impressions and evaluations before I try it out to maybe make thump removal easier for me. May also work better for other difficult to remove unusual vinyl noise (like “scraping” sounds) lying in higher frequencies.
     
  6. Huang

    Huang Well-Known Member

    Location:
    San Diego CA
    Thanks so much for this
     
  7. Grant

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

    I tried it once but am still trying to get an idea of exactly how to use it. Maybe you can help me out on that.
     
  8. Icewater_7

    Icewater_7 The universe expressing a consciousness

    Location:
    El Dorado Hills CA
    Would be glad to. Next time I find some spurious vinyl noise that I just can’t remove or attenuate without audible artifacts I’ll take feathering for a test drive. If you get there first, please report back.
     
    Grant likes this.
  9. Icewater_7

    Icewater_7 The universe expressing a consciousness

    Location:
    El Dorado Hills CA
    That CD track example sure has a bright band down there between 1 and 4 Hz! What was wrong with the tape machines or A2D converters they were using back in the early 80s? I rarely will rip a CD track unless I don’t already have a vinyl version I can digitize so I have never really looked closely at old CD tracks in RX with extended log. Quite a revelation. Next time I’ll check out a few.
     
  10. DrZhivago

    DrZhivago Hedonist

    Location:
    Brisbane Australia
    Could anyone offer any insights into RX's De-Crackle option? I only use de-click. Tried de-crackle last night, but I found that it removes musical information, even on very low setting.

    Regards
     
  11. Icewater_7

    Icewater_7 The universe expressing a consciousness

    Location:
    El Dorado Hills CA
    Every time I have tried to use de-crackle I have been disappointed in that it not only wasn’t very effective, but did remove some music. I found better settings of my own that I developed to remove crackle within restricted lower frequency ranges. Try developing your own by playing with different frequency skews and strengths. I make different passes with custom settings to remove fast-edge narrow pulse-width higher frequency ticks first at “gentle” strengths, then use other settings to remove lower frequency random crackle with a bit higher strengths. Always test your experimental settings with “only noise” listening tests to see if anything that being removed is correlated to musical transients. Adjust your settings until only noise is being removed. Try to avoid applying “blanket” settings to the whole track unless you are certain that it won’t be “fooled” by musical content. Safest is application to shorter selected regions where you are sure that what you want to remove is only vinyl noise. When the music is loud, most vinyl noise is masked and often can’t be heard anyway.
     
  12. DrZhivago

    DrZhivago Hedonist

    Location:
    Brisbane Australia
    Thank you for sharing. You are quite right. I need to stop applying blanket settings and only intervene in sections with an audible noise.

    Kind Regards
     
  13. Grant

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

    I rarely ever use the decrackle module for the very reason that it usually degrades the sound, and that even goes for the beloved Click Repair app. And, yes, experimentation is vital.
     
  14. Grant

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

    Avid just released a brand new Pro Tools First. It's totally free, and has improved functions, and is written on the same core as the full Pro Tools. I guess they have been watching how Reaper and other DAWs have been eating into their market share.

    I'm installing it now. I will report back later with my impressions of it.
     
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  15. Icewater_7

    Icewater_7 The universe expressing a consciousness

    Location:
    El Dorado Hills CA
    There are lots of free plugins available that run on it. Also all the iZotope RX and Ozone tools. Best of luck to you.
     
    ghost rider likes this.
  16. Grant

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

    Well, I made an error. It's no longer called Pro Tools First. It's called Pro Tools Intro.

    Creating a project and opening a file on your computer is not intuitive at all. Strike two is it not working with my audio hardware.

    I'm very close to uninstalling it.
     
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  17. Thanks! Saves us the time and effort and disappointment.
     
    ghost rider likes this.
  18. Grant

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

    And, Avid is so worried about people stealing their software, so they implement iLok in the worst way. Why can't they use iLok like iZotope does? Installing iZotope products is much faster and smoother.
     
    ghost rider likes this.
  19. Icewater_7

    Icewater_7 The universe expressing a consciousness

    Location:
    El Dorado Hills CA
    My iZotope V10 authorizations did not go as smoothly as the V9s. I opened a support request when stuck, but finally got through it on my own. All the SW had to do was find the licenses in my key via the iLok license manager and ask me to confirm, but it made me go through an an additional poorly documented alert window. I explained that to the support tech and he agreed to pass my comments on to the developers.
     
    ghost rider likes this.
  20. Grant

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

    Are you using a dongle or online activation? I use online activation and all works well for iZotope. Not so with Avid.
     
  21. Icewater_7

    Icewater_7 The universe expressing a consciousness

    Location:
    El Dorado Hills CA
    Yes, I have been on an iLok dongle since the very first version of ProTools that required it. I just like the idea of having a physical asset and also don’t have to worry about internet going down which does happen where we live. For home audio work my software licenses are my most valuable possessions. We used to live in CA “fire country” and evacuated about 5 times. All I had to do was grab my iLok dongle and put it into our “to-go” bag.
     
    Grant likes this.
  22. jmobrien68

    jmobrien68 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toms River, NJ
    I feel like most participants in this thread will be able to appreciate a post like this so before I share my story, the moral of it is if you have personal settings, tweaks, presets... be sure you back them up or have them noted somewhere.

    On Monday, I updated a driver on my computer (Realtek HD) and it put my laptop into an endless Blue Screen Of Death cycle. In a panic, I reset windows, and in that process lost all of the presets that I use in Audition and Izotope that were integral to my personal needledrops.
    I wish I would have calmed down before acting and I could have just done a system restore and not lost everything, but that's not what I did. I was able to reinstall my copies of Audition and Izotope but had to start all over from ground zero.
    This thread was clutch in finding the settings I used for noise reduction (Stefan & Ghost Rider) and am so grateful, but it took a lot of digging through this 206-page thread to find them... LOL.
    I had high and low pass filters set up on Izotope and some mastering presets in Audition that I would use for brickwalled files, but my main loss was an EQ preset that I used in Audition. I remember tediously working on this a long time ago when I was trying to add some life to a dead sounding Beatles album I had in my collection and then found that 99% of the time if I added it to one of my needledrops, it would open up the music and give it this presence and clarity that I really enjoyed. I spent most of the week tinkering and toiling over presets and tweaks but was unhappy and frustrated with all of my attempts to find that sound.
    Last night in an act of sheer desperation, I went into the crawlspace under my house and retrieved the old laptop I had to replace because I was having issues with the power jack and an old dying battery. I plugged it in with my fingers crossed an lo and behold, it started up. I gingerly opened up Izotope and Audition being careful not to jostle the power jack and I was able to bring up all my presets and snap pictures of them so I could enter them all on the software on my current laptop. I finished processing some files this morning, transferred them and jumped in the car and there was the sound that I thought I lost forever.
    I was so happy to get back to where I wanted to be that it inspired me to share this tale of caution with my friends here. I'm gonna back those pictures up to the cloud, g drive, one drive, xyz drive... hell, I'm even thinking about printing them out as 4x6 prints at Target and throwing them in my dresser for safe keeping.
    Keep your presets and processes and procedures safe everyone! Have a great day and thanks to everyone who has contributed and will contribute to this amazing thread/resource.
     
  23. Grant

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

    Thanks for your story. Yeah, I learned that lesson many, many years ago. I used to be able to back up all of my Audition presets, but that became a problem with the last few versions where you could still buy the program. What i've been doing since then is taking screen shots of my most vital settings for needledrops.

    What I hate about Windows updates is that they usually wipe out programs, settings, and browsers that aren't from Microsoft. Why can't they figure out a way to leave programs alone when you do major updates?

    On another note, a good idea here would be to create a database of all of our favorite custom settings for any programs that we use right here, or in a new thread. It could be a great resource.
     
  24. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    I'm glad you got it all back. I don't know how many times I panicked and fumbled around trying to save something and I messed it all up.

    I'm still using the noise reduction settings @Stefan posted a couple years back. Like you I can hunt through the thread if I ever loose everything.

    These days I haven't done any work on needle drops. The house is getting closer to being finished. So I have been very busy with all that.
     
  25. ghost rider

    ghost rider Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bentonville AR
    I have long hated windows updates. I can't remember when I updated my music computer. I have iso image backups for all my machines. That are never more than a couple years old. It would be a good time to make a new backup before I do a windows update.
     
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