[penvzila]

I've tried to rip a couple of records and i have been discourage by the crappy results. I don't have an amazing record player or amp, if fact most here would probably consider them to be garbage, but they shouldn't be THIS bad. I have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, and using the line-in and monitoring the levels, i get distorted, noisy garbage. Does anyone here have expertise doing this and can tell me how they do it successfully?

 

[Hirsch]

What phono amp are you using? The line-in of a sound card can't accept a turntable directly.

I use the phono amp of an Adcom preamp, run it into an ART DI/O to convert to digital, and then onto disk using the digital input of a Hoontech XG sound card (Yamaha XG chipset). I usually use cdwave software to record, and get a very clean recording to disk.

 

[blessingx]

Thought this thread's title was Vinyl Lips. Alcohol and Head-Fi don't mix. No, I'd rather not list any more poetry.

BTW, what software are you using to record?

 

[Orpheus]

much of doing a succesful recording is simply setting levels correctly. i'm not sure what you mean by distortion... but i assume you mean clipping, cause your sound card's pretty nice and shouldn't make much other types of distortion.

...so... what you need to do is make sure you have some headroom while recording. do one pass through the whole song after zeroing out the clip meters on your software. most high-end software have clip meters that can be zero'd, then used to see the peak level of the entire program. ...give yourself maybe 3-5db of headroom just to be safe.

even better, though i know you don't have one, but i will mention anyway.... you might want to put a limiter/compressor in-line to keep the signal from clipping.

but anyway.... that's probably your main problem... you're just pumping too much juice into the sound card and overloading.

anyway... after recording a succesful pass, without the clip lights igniting... you can now normalize everything to bring it up to CD level. Sound Forge has a very nice normalize function for beginners... it has automatic compression... you just tell it the average RMS that you want. use their preset, which is about -16db. it will automatically bring your entire program to decent level without clipping anything. pretty cool huh?

and there you go.... ready for you to burn to CD.

i personally use Sonar for composition, Nuendo for multitrack-recording, and Sound Forge for 2-track editing. but you don't need such fancy software of course.......... just watch those clip lights. (though i strongly recommend Sound Forge for beginners, if simply for that awesome Normalize function.)

..............a fellow head-fi'er here sent me a bunch of CDs he ripped from his vinyl.... and like you, HEAVY HEAVY HEAVY clipping. strangely he didn't notice 'till i told him. but anyway.... numero uno #1 recording technique--get your levels right!

 

[chillysalsa]

Also be careful not to set the levels too low - this will take away your dynamic range, also making it sounding crappy. Of course, ideally you just want to find the loudest part of the record, and then set to record a level that just a few % below that peak, but it could take a long time to find that sound on an LP.

 

[fredpb]

If you are using the line in of the Turtle Beach, make sure, during recording, all other inputs are muted, like CD, microphone, etc.

 

[Hirsch]

I like to use cdwave for recording, just because of its simplicity. I then use DiamondCut 5 for editing/cleaning up. Back to cdwave for splitting into tracks. Finally, a burn using Oak SimplyCD, Roxio EZCD Creator (although this program is simply not as good as it used to be), or EAC's burn function (Exact Audio Copy).

I've found that using an external A to D processor seems to give me a very clean copy. If you can find older sound cards, I know at least one professional who swears by the Ensoniq PCI (before Creative bought out Ensoniq). Those cards were about $25, and supposedly were among the best at A to D conversion around.

 

[Orpheus]

yeah... forgot, freedb brought up a good point i forgot (cause i don't use consumer cards for recording.)--mute everything but the input.

and like chillysalsa said, try to maximize dynamic range, but without clipping. this is important in digital recordings, cause even small clipping can be heard. when recording to analog, this matters less, cause it's much harder to hear.

and i still strongly suggest the normalize function in Sound Forge. without compression, it is IMPOSSIBLE to get modern CD-level volumes.

....good luck.

 

[scrypt]

Get a phono stage (no need to get something expensive or large) and a sound card with a balanced line in like the Audiophile 24[9]6. If you have DJ aspirations, you can get a mixer in lieu of a phono stage, since real DJ mixers (a Rane, for example) have the phono stage built in.

I demand a dedicated ADC for transfers, but that's just me. When James Chance gave a guitarist I sometimes work with a cassette tape of songs to learn, he passed it onto me after transfe[r]ring it with his Lucid 2496 as a 96k sound file on a DVD-R, which he did so that I could differentiate between parts with greater precision while being forced to learn them. It's amazing how good the ADC made that tape sound -- it seemed to have detail I'd never have heard in the first place.

The recording will sound tinny and weak without a phono stage.

Are you setting your recording to the proper frequency range and bit resolution for a CD/Mp3 transfer, if that's what you're doing? Record the high-res version when the media is there. For now, 16-bit, 44.1k.

Bypass the amp entirely and be conservative about digital levels. Analog tape likes a bit of distortion for warmth. Digital never does.

(If you want to hear a great example of an IDM CD mastered entirely from vinyl, listen to Icol Diston, by Arovane. It's on the Din label, which means it was mastered by Pole. It even has a few minutes at the end of the stylus cycling and clicking.)

Here are a few sites for you:

http://www.dandello.net/articles/vinyl.shtml
http://www.tdk.com/support/howto/arc..._computer.html
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...,853854,00.asp

Try these as well:

http://homerecording.about.com/c/ht/...=vinyl+records
http://homerecording.about.com/libra...y/aa010200.htm
(the second article is egregiously obvious, but notice the restoration software mentioned by the author)

I'd love to hear kwkwarth pontificate on this subject, since I'm merely a musician/composer and he's a crackshot old skool engineer. If ever I break down and go back to working with a certain successful engineer/producer I've spent the last five years avoiding in a desperate bid for sanity, I'll ask him for special tips as well.

 

[TimSchirmer]

That's odd...

I usually record mine in analog onto a sharp md recorder, then transter it to the computer with analog input. I still get good results though. For some reason, i think it bypasses the soundcard's DAC. Beats me.

Anyway... it usually comes out just as good as the record did (but without that depth and warmth that so many love analog for)

 

[Orpheus]

....when i say recording to analog, i mean to analog tape. one of analog tape's advantages over digital is that clipping doesn't result in huge distortions of the waveform. people call it soft clipping. in digital, if you clip, it sounds like static and is very noticeable. but the same amount of clipping on tape would be hardly noticeable if it was small....

 

[scrypt]

Working with producer Godfrey Diamond, the first studio trick I learned with analog tape was to record drums and guitars with the VU meter slightly in the red. That's the legacy of Phil Spector, you know -- that's one of the ways in which he achieved his patented wall of sound.

It's also the sound that every 60s-80s rock aficionado grew up with (Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, et al.), which is why early first-gen CDs of rock albums sounded so abysmal. If ever you want to toss the remains of your brunch, listen to an early CD of Appetite for Destruction. The tracks are not only embarrassing artistically and conceptually but also sound gutted and anatomically incorrect. Things are as flat and disproportionate as a rat maze trampled by a giant.

Analog distortion is also what gives certain transitional IDM recordings their characteristic warmth as well (Morr Music, cco, wobblyhead, etc. -- the dividing line between melodic IDM and mindless electro). Listen to Manual, Dub Tractor (whose newest, More or Less Mono, I recommend), Christian Kleine, Isan and especially Casino vs. Japan (who I love) if you're interested in hearing what I mean.

These days, the warmth is often added prior to the end medium stage. There's an amazing Cranesong DAC/ADC that I recommend to every musician on this board -- not only for its clarity and depth but also for its gorgeous tape saturation effects.

 

[Orpheus]

yup yup........... recording with high levels on the tape results in something akin to compression. ....hard to duplicate that complex sound though. can try to use actual compressors and eqs and all sorts of tube preamps to get something similar, but might as well just use the real thing. many artists still like to record and mix to analog... saving the analog until the very end when it has to be mastered for CD.

...........or be like me... and say, forget it!!!.... just record and be done with it. heh he.

but yes... scrypt is absolutely right. ..........but that cranesong... i dunno about that. that s**t's expensive ain't it!? too rich for my blood. heh he.... what other goodies you got over there, eh scrypt?

 

[zowie]

Quote:

Originally posted by TimSchirmer That's odd... I usually record mine in analog onto a sharp md recorder, then transter it to the computer with analog input. I still get good results though. For some reason, i think it bypasses the soundcard's DAC. Beats me. Anyway... it usually comes out just as good as the record did (but without that depth and warmth that so many love analog for)

I don't think you're bypassing the soundcard's DAC. I think you're just going A-D, D-A, A-D, with extra interconnects in the chain too (and time). I'm not sure how that can be better than just having the last A-D stage, but if you like it, that's what matters.

I go analogue to digital these days with a component CD recorder. Excellent DACs available in these (mine happens to have a soft clipping feature as well), and it avoids the problem of dealing with the distance between my computer and stereo. If I'm planning to do PC editing or noise removal (I also use Diamondcut and have been a fan for years), then I record to a CDRW and rip it with EAC.