Converting Vinyl to Digital

Posted by: endlessnessism on 19 December 2011

I have a large vinyl collection which I play on a Linn LP12 and a Nait XS + Stageline.

 

I have started converting vinly to digital through a Cakewalk + laptop with Audacity.  I am doing this not because I expect it to sound better, or even as good, but for sheer convenience - I have already ripped all my CDs through an HDX.

 

I am finding that the vinyl conversion is generally pretty good but not always accurate - I get occasional little dropouts where the music skips a beat.  This seems to happen in the conversion stage rather than the export stage - if I re-export the same file I get the same dropout.  It's very iritating and I'm not sure I can be bothered doing the conversion if it's unreliable.

 

I was wondering if anyone had any tips for this?  Perhaps hardware a little more sophisticated than Cakewalk or software a little more sophisticated than Audacity - but if it gets too complicated I can't be bothered. 

Posted on: 19 December 2011 by NickSeattle
Sounds like you are running out of resources, RAM or unfragmented disk space maybe, during the conversion.  Keeping 30% free space on the boot drive is a good rule of thumb, generally, to keep performance up.   Have you tried using an empty, freshly formatted external drive?  If it is a USB, eliminate other USB devices if you can.  If you are using an external sound card, Channel-D recommends keeping it on a different bus, which means either it or the HDD should use Firewire.  Create a "quiet" user profile exclusively for recording, then shut down any background applications running under this new profile, especially networking, automatic updates, and antivirus, etc.  1 GB RAM used to be a lot; now some apps (e.g. PureVinyl) suggest 2 GB or more. 

Transfer is a pain, but worth it to preserve rarities.  Some report excellent results using hires upsampling.  I have improved my results with the changes I list.

Let us know how it goes.

Good luck.

Nick
Posted on: 19 December 2011 by endlessnessism

Many thanks.  I suspect you're right and will give the laptop a good clean-out.  It's an old one that I only use for this purpose and I should think there are adequate resouces if I just clear-away the clutter.

Posted on: 19 December 2011 by NickSeattle
Using an external drive for music capture is recommended, too; let the boot drive focus on system operations.
Posted on: 19 December 2011 by Guido Fawkes

 

A nice little Rega phono stage with a USB out is an interesting option for digitalising your record collection. I've only read about it, not tried it. 

Posted on: 19 December 2011 by JBGWild

Ive got one but it's still boxed, for the future 'in case', hopefully Ill never use it but note MM only.

Posted on: 20 December 2011 by RaceTripper

I plan to start down this road. I've done a bit of research and have settled on using an Apogeee Duet 2 with Garageband on my Mac. That seems to be a favorite with the Needledrop crowd on the Steve Hoffman forum.

 

FYI: The Apogee Duet 2 works with OSX only.

Posted on: 20 December 2011 by endlessnessism

NickSeattle was right in my case.  I used a different laptop and had a good result, and also had a good result with the previous laptop once I had cleaned-up and defragged the disk, switched-off wireless and everything else I could find that was humming away.

 

A couple of things to watch-out for:

 

Audacity files are pretty big and they seem to hang around in the temp folder on your computer even after you have exported them to your NAS and closed the Audacity program.  I gained a huge amount of disk space once I had got rid of the old ones.

 

Using the "disk clean-up" function in Windows won't necessarily do this for you.  I discovered that it only cleans stuff that's more than a month old so you can still stay clogged-up.  To get rid of the more recent stuff you have to go to the Start Menu, then Run %temp% which brings-up the temp folder.  Then delete everything.

Posted on: 20 December 2011 by Geoff P
Originally Posted by RaceTripper:

I plan to start down this road. I've done a bit of research and have settled on using an Apogeee Duet 2 with Garageband on my Mac. That seems to be a favorite with the Needledrop crowd on the Steve Hoffman forum.

 

FYI: The Apogee Duet 2 works with OSX only.

I have an Apogee Duet 2. I run it on a Mac AIR running on battery power. Like it a lot.

 

I am not sure where you will get the signal from. In my Naim system after trial and error I found using the 552 Tape out is the best point to take the audio signal, perhaps because it is buffered against potential earth hum. I have tried direct out of my phono stage but it isn't as good. I made up a DIN to twin XLR cable myself to plug into the Apogee.

 

You can certainly make a start with Garageband but I would recommend considering more advanced capture software for the future.

 

I tried Pure Vinyl but found the fact that is is not setup to easily separate individual tracks during recording and it's visual record interface for later track splitting, frustrating.

 

I use Ableton Live (mainly because I got it in a free software bundle) as my sound capture software. It turned out to be user friendly for easy sequential multiple track recording and it allows up to 192/24 resolution capture, which the Apogee is also capable of. I settled on 96/24 since I could hear no further improvement going to 192/24 just much bigger files. In fact IMO the most benefit comes from going to 24bit compared to CD's 16bit. I don't do any 'clean up' or 'volume levelling' just do A/D on the raw analog signal out of the 552.

 

Your best off recording the raw audio capture to the computer's built in disc then exporting the audio to wherever ( in may case a NAS) before deleting the temp files off the computer.

 

regards

Geoff

Posted on: 20 December 2011 by RaceTripper

Geoff...

 

Thanks for the tips. I have a UnitiQute, so there is no tape loop for me to use. I plan on using line-out from my phono preamp (Simaudio Moon 110LP) -- that worked fine with an NAD PP3i. I guess my other option might be to use the pre-out from the Qute, but that is less ideal.

 

I'll probably start with Garageband, since I already have it, and go from there. Ableton Live is really a lot more than I want to spend.

Posted on: 20 December 2011 by endlessnessism

I have been happy with Audacity 1.3 which has the advantage of being free and pretty easy (or there's a lot of complicated stuff that I can safely ignore).

 

One downside of Audacity is that it doesn't allow you to do the meta-data in a way that Naim Desktop Client will readily accept.  The work-around for this is to use Media Monkey (also free and pretty easy) to add the extra details and then Naim Destop Client can integrate everything seamlessly.

 

I'm intrigued by the comment on 24 bit resolution capture.  I think Audacity will only allow 16 bit so this may be a reason for looking at something else, if indeed 24 bit capture will produce a better result?