Your Vinyl Transfer Workflow (sharing best needledrop practices)*

A afternoon of messing around. I tried using your settings as I understood them. The screen grabs above are pretty much it. I used the brickwall setting in Ozone eq being the only real difference.
This Dropbox link has 5 audio files and 5 screen grabs. One processed thru normalizing no noise reduction. One using MS side only as screen grab above, one with eq as above with brickwall done after the MS side only noise reduction. One noise reduction at 15 and one MS both channels at 15.

Dropbox - ms - Simplify your life

My impression I like using MS on both channels at level 15. You can pretty much see it in the screen grabs. One thing I found very interesting is how the bass got better when processed in MS.
The one file I didn't save is a MD side channel only, noise reduction at 15 it seemed when I converted it back most of the noise come back too.

 

I won't have time to really check out the dropbox files until the weekend probably but your screen grab here looks good except for in the spectral denoise, add a couple of nodes to the blue reduction curve, one at the extreme low end and move it down until the yellow line reaches about -100dB, then add a second node to the blue line around 1k and move it up so that the dip in the middle is gone and the yellow line is roughly level around the -100dB. If you don't do this second node, you risk overdoing the denoise in the midrange on quiet parts, which would remove musical information, ambience, etc. You can also try different levels on the Threshold control. Moving it up reduces its sensitivity to musical information resulting in more noise removal on quieter parts and sometimes the transition during fades is not gradual enough; moving it down increases its sensitivity to musical information which produces less noise removal but sometimes on fades, you end up with too much noise. Play around with the Threshold until you reach the most natural setting. I usually end up somewhere close to the middle or slightly down at about -2.

I might add that after doing the denoise on the Side channel, I sometimes denoise the quiet areas and areas in between songs in the Mid channel by learning a noise sample from a space between songs. Often all that's required in the Mid channel is 1.5 to 2dB of reduction.

After that's done, I convert back to L/R mode and adjust levels, declick, etc. Declicking tends to work better after noise reductionas the clickss are sometimes less masked.

 

For Ozone, go into the EQ settings and set the resolution to 3dB. It will give you steeper curves. Also, change the EQ mode to Digital.

 

I posted a sample in the needle drop thread. I declicked in MS channel listening to the whole LP was not as enjoyable and I'm not sure it revealed anything I don't normally get. This is a screen shot of the file I posted showing the profile after adding the nodes. Although the actual file including the needle drop where done prior to that.

 

That looks about right but move the Smoothing slider over to the middle as it will smooth out the profile a bit. I'll check the sample out.

By the way, you won't always find M/S reveals something. However, when it does, you'll be quite surprised. It's especially good for isolating and removing repetitive "thump... thump... thump... " because these are usually from a little bump in the vinyl and since the Side channel contains information from the vertical movement of the stylus, it's all in the Side channel so you an remove them with the Spectral Repair Attenuate without messing up anything in the Mid channel where the bass lives.

 

Here's my Ozone setup for removing Subsonics:

 

Wow. You guys really know the ins and outs. Makes me feel humble with my click removal and some simple de-noising.

 

Actually 14.9 is a lot of denoising. Try backing off until the yellow line is just above the 100 line and is only really visible on the left. Here s a quick crop of your image with a yellow line drawn in where I would set the denoise amount:



Your sample sounds really good but the bass seems a little fuller in the second half so that means your denoise is too strong. If you dial in just enough denoise to get the line where I drew in here, it should be better.

 

We used to do very simple stuff too. Through time this hobby can be addictive and produce some nice results!

 

Thanks for looking at this, it is very helpful. I didn't have any time to mess with it today. Luckily I saved the rx file so will easy to set it up again. I have been doing a lot of reduction. Even more than that 0-350Hz at 25 and 350-48k at 15. Most of the time I can't hear the harm on typical rock records. Also a significant amount of floor noise reduction my be a tad bit of bass loss.

 

The only problem with this hobby is when I take a long break from it, once I do a new project, I feel like i'm starting over. A few years ago, I was really getting good with my NR techniques. But, after time passed, I forgot what I did before, and I am terrible about taking notes.

 

My best RX 6 results to wipe rumble and TT resonance from needledrop:

1. phase cancellation in range 0-12 Hz by copy selection in both channels and paste inversed.
2. gain -9 dB in range 0-9 Hz
3. gain -9 dB in range 0-6 Hz
4. gain -18 dB in range 0-3 Hz.

Then, for the complete rumble removal, I select the sound area from the begining of the needledrop (the lead-in grooves where the stylus touches the vinyl until the first musical note), I strong remove here clicks&pops with max sens 10, I strong remove here crackles with max sens 10, and I output here the ambience match only. Now this is the pattern for spectral de-noise, where I play around only with the reduction curve (threshold 0 reduction 0) until the middle blue thin line in the spectrogram is unaltered by rumble spikes (usually the spectral de-noise yellow line stays under -100 dB).

As my speakers positions in the room are set with the Sumiko Master Set method (full sound, max soundstage and image), I can easily verify if the cleaned sound is ok and the low bass is still there.

In all this process I listen to the needledrop sound with the ASIO driver of my PC Sound BlasterX AE-5 (Sabre32 high quality DAC, TOSLINK), set at 20 ms latency. The PCM resolution of the audio file is high (192/24). Higher resolution, better needledrop processing.

 

I can relate. Last winter I got away from needledropping and did nothing from January right through until July. Then when I took a chance on a good deal on ebay for a Shure V15V it really retriggered my interest in the hobby.

 

My thing is this hobby is constantly evolving as I learn new techniques between that and new equipment I redo many records over and over.

I'm pretty happy with my declicking denoising there is much to learn.

 

I only do LPs that are “like new” (or look like it) condition so that I’m not dealing with a lot of things besides pops ticks and clicks. I use a nice AT cartridge that sounds good with the rest of the audio system. Newish stylus, and clean records. I do an under water cleaning with diluted dish soap and I can sometimes feel the specs of embedded dirt (if any) with my hand on those very old records found at thrift stores. This is dirt any brush system will never find or get out, and I must scrape it with a fingernail to fully remove.

A nice capture on a Tascam recorder at 24/96kHz, and a light touch of clickRepair is preferred by me. I don’t do rumble removal or any post EQ work preferring it to remain sounding like vinyl, but without the ticks and clicks obviously.

I must keep it good and simple because I have hundreds of LPs yet that I want to transfer to digital. I’d never get to most of them if I don’t set it up right and knock them out quickly.

Some recent drops that came out nice:

Earl Klugh - Late Night Guitar (early MFSL LP, minty no ticks to speak of)

Judy London - Julie London (Liberty 1962, lovely tracking w/ no wear or inner-groove distortion but enough ticks to drive me away until ClickRepair software was very well advanced)

 

Any automatic de-clicker must be used with care, only in safe pasages (with no transients), because it removes too a lot of transients even at minimum settings. Manual de-clicking is time consuming but is the best IMHO.

 

I would say yes it’s important to use it minimally and with care when possible. But I don’t think it’s an automatic transient killer. And I used to do only by hand until I found out how well ClickRepair can do its thing. Running with reverse mode checked will also catch ticks at a lower setting. Horns and certain synth parts are the only areas I’ve had where I simply choose not to use it at all due to massive false positives being corrected.

Have you used ClickRepair brand sw yet?

 

No. As I process high resolution PCMs (384/24 and 192/24), I use only the RX6 de-clicking and the Adobe Audition v3.0 de-clicking functions. I read the ClickRepair works with mono or stereo sound files up to 32 bits at 192 kHz. The last track of the Tangerine Dream's Force Majeure is my test for automatic de-click attempts and usually after processing with minimum settings, the sound is choppy and music is broken.

 

I have that album and I did a transfer from the U.K. Virgin label clear vinyl issue. I used CR on it and will listen for any breakup on last track.

But I will say that CR is a different animal and I avoided it for a very long period of time. Until one day I got a copy of the Mothers of Invention - WOIIFTM that was the nicer better cut of the album compared to hundreds of other lesser ones, but this copy had thousands of micro and not so micro ticks basically throughout. Such a good cut from the best takes but..... so after having in my hard drive captured beautifully with a micro-line tip, and working by hand fir three years on and off, I decided to run the entire thing through a low setting of CR.

I was floored at what a spiffy stunningly clean job I got out of it. Ambience and transients and everything appeared there as before.

This classic album has never been given a good CD issue ever as far as I’m concerned. The best mixed master tapes have faded in their clarity and punch. My drop is about as great as it gets. And I got rid of the ticks. It’s an old Verve label pressed by MGM.

So I was won over by CR and have learned how low settings one can go and get good results - and that running the files through in reverse as I stated has some advantages.

I’m so happy with my drops, CR and then my eventual step up to 24/96kHz is all I needed really. The good record collection is there waiting. Audiophile stuff like Nautilus and Direct Disc Labs, radio shows like the KBFH and BBC Rick Hour, and the ton of thrift store finds are all in cue. I might not ever finish in this lifetime but it’s been really fun going.

 

I'm also a fan of Clickrepair and have been using it now for about a dozen years. I like reverse mode as well. In fact, IIRC, the creator of CR once told me that both pbthal and I suggested reverse mode to him around the same time.

By the way, for those who use RX, it's possible to do declicking in reverse as well. Simply make a selection (usually at last a whole song is better in case there are artifacts at the border of the selection or you have some feathering turned on), then press Shift+R to reverse your selection, run your declick, then Shift+R again to unreverse the selection.

I typically do any big clicks or thumps, etc. , in RX (because declicking turns them into low-frequency thumps that are harder to remove)and then run a final pass through Clickrepair since it's not only good but fast. I know some here would shudder at my usual setting of 16, reverse, x2, but it works for me, which is all that really matters to me. I do avid running sawtooth synth lines (like the intro to Van Halen's jump), etc. as these will get mangled, but 99.9% of the stuff I run through clickrepair

The way I always looks at declicking is a lesser of two evils, soften the occasional transient (and depending on the material it's VERY occasional) or put up with a bunch of clicks and pops. I choose the former.

 

This is the reason I use the RX 6 de-clicker. I run the "output clicks only" to see what is removed. I copy the clicks only selection to another instance to delete some transients or inaudible clicks and I remove clicks by phase cancellation (most accurate). I copy the clicks from this instance (CTRL+C) and then I paste inversed (ALT+V) in the original untouched selection. I will try to use too the reversed selection. Never tried before. I'll put the ClickRepair in my list to give a try.

 

The second pass should imo be a forward pass which finds the remaining ones not found in that initial reverse pass. A second pass in same direction of first pass (with same setting) should not find any additional repairs to be done. So once in reverse, a second one if desired in forward is ideal in my experience.

 

I only do one pass in CR. the initial declicking is in RX on the big stuff that might get converted to thumps, etc., in CR.

 

You can listen to clicks only in CR as well.

 

I too have used Clickrepair for years mostly only on used records with a lot of noise. I use it at a much lower setting 2 and never above 5 and manually declick the rest in RX.

I view denoising the same way. I admit I have been overdoing it but for the most part I can't hear the harm. Finding that sweat spot with adequate noise reduction with virtually no loss in music is my goal. So here is another whack at the ELP track I posted in the needledrop thread. This I lowered the level to 8.4. With this scanned noise profile there is virtually no way get the red line below 100 but you can see and hear the loss of noise in the sample. Yesterday I listened to the entire ELP needle drop and I am pleased. When I compare the 8.4 sample to the one with no noise reduction at all I find it very hard to tell any difference in how the music sounds but I do hear the blackness of the quiet parts.
Dropbox - ELP denoised and not denoised.flac - Simplify your life