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Thread: Cleaning Up Files Ripped from Vinyl

  1. #1
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Cleaning Up Files Ripped from Vinyl

    Is there enough interest to open a thread about making CD-Rs from LPs?

    This article got me thinking about it, and if it gets going I might learn something. Here's my existing procedure:
    • Dub an LP, one side at a time, to the computer using whatever hardware & software you use
    • If the LP has big differences in volume between the tracks -- one soft acoustic track wedged in between some loud electric tracks for instance -- you'll want to preserve that volume difference.
    • If all tracks are the same volume, you'll want to normalize each track separately.
    • First step is to take the big side-long audio file and start cutting it into tracks. Find the end of the first track, copy the start of the file to there, and do a copy (Cntrl-C), create new file (Cntrl-N) and paste (Cntrl-V).
    • Take your new first track file, find the beginning of the music, and take everything before that and silence the audio (zero the bits). Cut it to a comfortable half-second or so length.
    • Go to the end of the file, find where the audio fades out, and silence everything after that. Cut it to a comfortable 2-second length or so. Use the "fade-out" tool to fade the final audio in a natural-sounding length as the original recording fades -- fast for a instant stop, slow for a mixing board fade.
    • Now, look at your file for large clicks. Sharp peaks well above the normal audio should be zoomed in on, confirmed as clicks, and redrawn if confirmed. I do this by hand, because I've never found an automated process which does it cleanly. Play the audio file and stop and fix each click or pop. This can take a few minutes with a clean LP, or a few weeks for a dirty one.
    • Some websites tell you to sample rumble and hiss from the space between tracks, and invert it to remove it from the rest of the recording. I've never found this works. It always leaves digital artifacts. I usually end up using sharply-defined EQ to address them as non-impactfully as possible.
    • Once the file is cleaned up, normalize it to -1 dB.
    • Save the track file to a new folder with the album name, and move to the next track.
    • When all tracks are cleaned and normalized, burn to a CD-R and preview with headphones. Listen for any frequency response or equalization anomalies you couldn't hear on the computer (it helps to have decent audio on the computer).
    • Some noise artifacts are nearly-impossible to remove. Take the "scritch" for instance, which is a multi-millisecond burst of spiky waves caused by damaged grooves. No automated process will touch a scritch, and it can take months to redraw the waveform. In extreme cases I have resorted to cutting and pasting a section of audio from somewhere else in the file that matches the damaged audio. If a scritch is short enough however sometimes you can get away with just putting a brickwall filter on it.
    • Every LP project presents unique challenges, and creativity helps you solve those challenges. Would love to hear some other people's experiences.

  2. #2
    Member Wounded Land's Avatar
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    Interesting. I used to have a turntable with a USB out, but I never took advantage of it to digitize any vinyl.

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    Sounds like pretty much what I do except I add the exact time between tracks that I delete out.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fracktured View Post
    Sounds like pretty much what I do except I add the exact time between tracks that I delete out.
    If two tracks flow into one another without a pause, you must fade the first one down to zero, and fade the next up up from zero -- even if only for a millisecond -- to avoid a pop when the track changes.

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    Parrots Ripped My Flesh Dave (in MA)'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    Here's my existing procedure:
    • Dub an LP, one side at a time, to the computer using whatever hardware & software you use
    • If the LP has big differences in volume between the tracks -- one soft acoustic track wedged in between some loud electric tracks for instance -- you'll want to preserve that volume difference.
    • If all tracks are the same volume, you'll want to normalize each track separately.
    • First step is to take the big side-long audio file and start cutting it into tracks. Find the end of the first track, copy the start of the file to there, and do a copy (Cntrl-C), create new file (Cntrl-N) and paste (Cntrl-V).
    • Take your new first track file, find the beginning of the music, and take everything before that and silence the audio (zero the bits). Cut it to a comfortable half-second or so length.
    • Go to the end of the file, find where the audio fades out, and silence everything after that. Cut it to a comfortable 2-second length or so. Use the "fade-out" tool to fade the final audio in a natural-sounding length as the original recording fades -- fast for a instant stop, slow for a mixing board fade.
    • Now, look at your file for large clicks. Sharp peaks well above the normal audio should be zoomed in on, confirmed as clicks, and redrawn if confirmed. I do this by hand, because I've never found an automated process which does it cleanly. Play the audio file and stop and fix each click or pop. This can take a few minutes with a clean LP, or a few weeks for a dirty one.
    • Some websites tell you to sample rumble and hiss from the space between tracks, and invert it to remove it from the rest of the recording. I've never found this works. It always leaves digital artifacts. I usually end up using sharply-defined EQ to address them as non-impactfully as possible.
    • Once the file is cleaned up, normalize it to -1 dB.
    • Save the track file to a new folder with the album name, and move to the next track.
    • When all tracks are cleaned and normalized, burn to a CD-R and preview with headphones. Listen for any frequency response or equalization anomalies you couldn't hear on the computer (it helps to have decent audio on the computer).
    • Some noise artifacts are nearly-impossible to remove. Take the "scritch" for instance, which is a multi-millisecond burst of spiky waves caused by damaged grooves. No automated process will touch a scritch, and it can take months to redraw the waveform. In extreme cases I have resorted to cutting and pasting a section of audio from somewhere else in the file that matches the damaged audio. If a scritch is short enough however sometimes you can get away with just putting a brickwall filter on it.
    • Every LP project presents unique challenges, and creativity helps you solve those challenges. Would love to hear some other people's experiences.
    I either do that or buy the CD. I find that the click & pop software filter does a decent job on brief sections.

  6. #6
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dave (in MA) View Post
    I either do that or buy the CD.
    If a CD is available I prefer that. Not only is it A LOT less work but unless it's sourced from vinyl it sounds better.

    However, most all of my LP projects have been albums that never have been rereleased on CD. There are a ton of great albums in that club!!!

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    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    If two tracks flow into one another without a pause, you must fade the first one down to zero, and fade the next up up from zero -- even if only for a millisecond -- to avoid a pop when the track changes.
    Not necescelery, also if you have a small pop it can be edited out without noticing it.

  8. #8
    I don't find it necessary to create a bunch of files. I just edit each side as a big file and drop track indexes in at the beginning of each track. This avoids the track transition issue and keeps it all true to the original release. Also, WAVES has some audio restoration tools that are amazing but the trick is to only run it on the exact bit of audio that needs it. (There are others; I've heard good things about iZotope but WAVES is what I have access to; I'm not advocating anyone dropping that kind of cash on plugins just to do rips but it is out there.) At the end of the day clicks are easiest to just fix by hand though.

    The de-noise can be a great tool but it's so easy to abuse; better a little surface noise than the weird artifacts de-noise can cause.

  9. #9
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fracktured View Post
    Not necescelery, also if you have a small pop it can be edited out without noticing it.
    Qua? That's how pops are edited out, by zeroing out the bits.
    Last edited by rcarlberg; 11-09-2015 at 03:27 PM.

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    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by trurl View Post
    I don't find it necessary to create a bunch of files. I just edit each side as a big file and drop track indexes in at the beginning of each track. This avoids the track transition issue and keeps it all true to the original release.
    Including the surface noise.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    Including the surface noise.
    Well, by editing I mean do all the clean-up, to whatever extent possible. What I'm saying is I don't see the need to split up a side into separate tracks with my software. For other software your way will be easier to reassemble the side.

  12. #12
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    With track markers you can still access the tracks separately though, right?

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    With track markers you can still access the tracks separately though, right?
    Right. It's splitting the one file into virtual tracks.

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    This is not really about cleaning, but possibly relevant:

    There are companies that market a service whereby they digitise your vinyl LP to CD, along with CD-size printouts of the artwork if you wish.

    Not having a turntable, but having a number of LPs that I cannot find on CD, I did go to the extent of enquiring from one such company about the cost of the service. It was about AU$77 per LP. That sounds a lot to me; one would think that after the initial capital cost of the turntable(s) and the digitising software, they would be making a handsome profit. Still, for the small number of LPs I would want digitised it could be an economic proposition - certainly better than buying a turntable and associated accessories that I would hardly ever use.

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    Oh No! Bass Solo! klothos's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    Is there enough interest to open a thread about making CD-Rs from LPs? [*]Once the file is cleaned up, normalize it to -1 dB.
    Im not sure about you guys, but this is one of the most important things that I do: it keeps all the tracks at a uniform level at its highest output optimization point so I get the maximum amount of fidelity out of the file and - because I do this with all my files - all my albums are at one uniform gain structure. If you guys dont do this, try it

  16. #16
    Oh No! Bass Solo! klothos's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    With track markers you can still access the tracks separately though, right?
    yes

    Quote Originally Posted by trurl View Post
    Right. It's splitting the one file into virtual tracks.
    I see its been answered

  17. #17
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by klothos View Post
    Im not sure about you guys, but this is one of the most important things that I do: it keeps all the tracks at a uniform level at its highest output optimization point so I get the maximum amount of fidelity out of the file and - because I do this with all my files - all my albums are at one uniform gain structure. If you guys dont do this, try it
    "All the tracks"? As mentioned in the opening post, some albums have a delicate acoustic track wedged in between two loud electric tracks.

    Besides, the noise floor on CDs is so low that you can crank the volume without bringing up the noise.

    Now, if you'd said you crank the COMPRESSION until all tracks went right to 0dB and stayed there, I'd know you were an industry professional

  18. #18
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bob_32_116 View Post
    There are companies that market a service whereby they digitise your vinyl LP to CD, along with CD-size printouts of the artwork if you wish.

    Not having a turntable, but having a number of LPs that I cannot find on CD, I did go to the extent of enquiring from one such company about the cost of the service. It was about AU$77 per LP. That sounds a lot to me; one would think that after the initial capital cost of the turntable(s) and the digitising software, they would be making a handsome profit. Still, for the small number of LPs I would want digitised it could be an economic proposition - certainly better than buying a turntable and associated accessories that I would hardly ever use.
    To do it right is very labor intensive. Doing it fast and dirty, using automated software and no love, could be a successful commercial venture but I'm OCD enough that I'd never be satisfied with half-assed. I have done LPs for friends. If I don't like the music it's torture

  19. #19
    I'm guessing what Klothos means (it's what I would mean) is that the soft and loud bits are the same relative to each other. If you normalize a loud song and a soft song separately the soft song will be brought up to be much louder than it should be and you lose the headroom you had in that file. If you leave the two together in the same file the relative levels are preserved. As I'm sure you well know

  20. #20
    cunning linguist 3LockBox's Avatar
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    Goldwave is an excellent program because it allow you look at small portion a wave form and edit down to the microsecond. Also it has a decent pop-n-click removal function with variable parameters. It also has all kinds of filters and effects. It also has a parametric EQ function for meticulous enhancement or attenuation. It can also convert wave files to MP3 or WMA files.

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    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    I used to use (and love) CoolEdit before Adobe bought it and buried the product.

    I am learning to use Audacity, which has about 60% of the capability of CoolEdit. Audacity's click & pop edit functions do not work at all, so far as I can tell. CoolEdit's were actually pretty good.j

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    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by trurl View Post
    I'm guessing what Klothos means (it's what I would mean) is that the soft and loud bits are the same relative to each other. If you normalize a loud song and a soft song separately the soft song will be brought up to be much louder than it should be and you lose the headroom you had in that file. If you leave the two together in the same file the relative levels are preserved. As I'm sure you well know
    Thats why I mentioned normalization when I did, before click repair. Sometimes you have to normalize the whole LP side before cutting it into tracks.

    Of course you can always go back later and re-normalize a track to -6dB or whatever to preserve the original volume difference. The exact decibel difference isn't that critical.

  23. #23
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    New topic for those who make their own CDs:

    When -- if ever -- do you apply compression? Are there circumstances when you like to compress the data?

  24. #24
    Oh No! Bass Solo! klothos's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    "All the tracks"? As mentioned in the opening post, some albums have a delicate acoustic track wedged in between two loud electric tracks.

    Besides, the noise floor on CDs is so low that you can crank the volume without bringing up the noise.

    Now, if you'd said you crank the COMPRESSION until all tracks went right to 0dB and stayed there, I'd know you were an industry professional
    Quote Originally Posted by trurl View Post
    I'm guessing what Klothos means (it's what I would mean) is that the soft and loud bits are the same relative to each other. If you normalize a loud song and a soft song separately the soft song will be brought up to be much louder than it should be and you lose the headroom you had in that file. If you leave the two together in the same file the relative levels are preserved. As I'm sure you well know
    Yes, exactly --- its all relative -- its not going to isolate the soft guitar part and bring that section to -1db (although I could do that if i wanted to): it just takes the highest peak in the entire file and brings it to -1 and everything else goes up relative to it....Occasionally, Ill draw out some anomaly spikes on the recording or if there are several errant peaks, I will use compression

    About Noise Floor: The trick here is playback --- your stereo volume doesnt need to be as high as it was beforehand, so that noise you heard in the file also stays relative

    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    New topic for those who make their own CDs:

    When -- if ever -- do you apply compression? Are there circumstances when you like to compress the data?
    Like I said above, if I can visually look at a file and Im judging it has an average peak height at about -10db (we all know peaks will vary, Im just making a baseline quick assessment) but with the exception a few spikes in the file that hit close to 0db, Ill use compression----if its just one or two errant peaks, Ill draw them down manually. I should use a soft-knee compressor for all my files but I dont for whatever reason....the problem with compression is making sure not to overcompress, because it can make the file distorted sounding ("buzzy" for lack of better terms - its not actually distorted but it sounds that way on a large system).....

    However, most important: For listeners like you that are very picky/anal about how they want to hear their recordings ( not a knock against you so dont take it that way) if you use compression, just get very meticulous with it because even just the wrong amount of over-compression can certainly ruin the original nuances/dynamics you heard in the song ....Now that soft guitar part you referenced earlier will sound louder in the mix

    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    I used to use (and love) CoolEdit before Adobe bought it and buried the product.

    I am learning to use Audacity, which has about 60% of the capability of CoolEdit. Audacity's click & pop edit functions do not work at all, so far as I can tell. CoolEdit's were actually pretty good.j

    CoolEdit was originally designed back in the 90s for 2-Track Mastering, which is what made it so wonderful and perfect for this use. I loved it...For the last 10 years or so, I use Sound Forge: I recommend it and it is still a standard in many studios but Im biased toward it because I know it like the back of my hand
    Last edited by klothos; 11-09-2015 at 04:36 PM.

  25. #25
    Oh No! Bass Solo! klothos's Avatar
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    rcarlberg

    Heres an A/B Graphic for you to check out with compression

    Top Graphic is REMs "Radio Free Europe", notice the red arrow pointing at the intro
    Bottom Graphic is the same file "Overcompressed"

    Notice the difference at the red arrows and keep in mind: all peaks do not exceed 0db in either picture

    So, if you use compression, just be meticulous with it for nuance preservation

    Last edited by klothos; 11-09-2015 at 04:40 PM.

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