Ripping Yarns 3

In the process of ripping my Karajan 1977 set, fingers crossed.

I listened to Khachaturian Conducts Khachaturian that I bought in my teens. Always looked after but had some pops and clicks. I processed some quiet moments with Declick, as I had the 1964 Karajan, the violins were fine. I think that the previous owner of the 1964 Beethoven set had used a blunt instrument to play them and physically deformed the vinyl in some way.

Khachaturian Conducts Khachaturian = brilliant recording.

M

So, I ripped the 1977 Karajan set ....and ended up deleting it.

The issue for me is the underlying state of the vinyl. In the case of the Khachaturian this was a record that I had bought and owned, it had always been played on a reasonable turntable and cared for, the pops and clicks it had garnered had not effected the underlying integrity of the groove; for both the Karajan sets this was not, I believe, the case. Both of these I had bought through 2nd hand record stores and the only test I could do was visual. Declick certainly removed the clicks and pops, but the groove had been effected and this deteriorated the sound so that I found the defects intrusive - damned shame though, the 1964 especially was very good.

If the 1964 Karajan was so good why not simply buy the digital edition? Here I have been doing to Digital vs Vinyl rip comparisons.

M

Declick

I have been playing with this ... a lot.

It is a very impressive piece of software. Over the years I have spent some time trying to manually recover some albums, and generally get to a point where I run out of steam. Running Declick manually you can track its progress, and suggested defect resolutions ...impressive.

I will be buying this.

I have played with applying Declick with different percentages of correction from 0 through to 50% in steps, followed by listening.

As none of my vinyl is dire I have picked 15% as the best setting. This clears the clicks and pops, although it will not resolve issues in the state of the groove, as noted as above.

I popped up into the loft and recovered some of the albums that I had decided were too click and pop strewn to digitise, including:

Beecham - Rimsky Korsakov - Sheherazade;

Lionel Richie - Can't Slow Down;

Stokowski - Beethoven No9 (4 Phase);

Stokowski - Beethoven No5 (4 Phase);

Miss Saigon - London Cast (1989);

Evita - Covington (Original double album);

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon.

Applied Declick at 15% .....excellent; currently listening to Ms Covington.

I have been applying to my previously ripped files which were marginal ...excellent results.

I am now looking at the Noise reduction app for removing LF noise. If there is anything interesting I'll report back.

M

Thanks for taking the time to post all this, I hope the lack of responses won't put you off! I've got some LPs I'd like to digitise at some stage when I've got the time, so I'm on the lookout for some suitable hardware and software to do it. When the time comes, I'll certainly be re-reading your threads for inspiration.

Hi Chris,

Thx for the feedback.

Just want to expand on a comment I made in the first post:

I have done a range of cleaning on a range of albums and have never found this to be any form of panacea.

I went back to one of my early rips - Wish You Were Here.

I captured this and then a friend kindly cleaned it on his rig. I re-ripped the LP. Yesterday I processed it through Declick.

Listening:

Rip 1 - full of distracting clicks and pops, and some vinyl roar.

Rip 2 - No vinyl roar. A lot fewer clicks and pops.

Rips 2 + Declick - very good!

So, although vinyl cleaning is no panacea it certainly does improve the final result.

M

Another thanks for the interesting posts.

I'm about 100 LP's into digitising my collection, about a third of the way through. I've not heard of Clickrepair so I'll investigate. I've been using Audacity on a purely manual basis for removing the clicks and pops and it works very well. It can be very time consuming if the LP is a poor pressing but worth the effort. If it is too far gone, then like yourself, I give it a miss. Most of my vinyl is/was new with about 10% second hand. There are really no hard and fast rules regards the quality of the pressings. Some which were new (and full price) and maybe played only a couple of times can be full of clicks/pops. Other LP's that I bought at a store that imported new stock from America (Yanks in Manchester) are excellent, despite being 50p - £1 a go at the time (in the 80's).

What format do you rip them into ?  I save mine as FLAC files and also convert these into MP3 files so that I can listen to them on the go. I'm looking forward to playing them on long car journeys and getting to know them again. With FLAC format, I can use MP3tag to add album art and tag info.

One good thing about starting a project like this is that it forces you to listen to stuff that you may not have heard for years (and have forgotten how good it sounds).

Hi Redmires,

I am really enjoying listening to albums from decades ago that I have not bought in a digital format, but have sat in racks in my loft - limited space in the living room.

I rip to 9624 wav, which I find sounds better through the NS01, although since changing from the Naim DAC/XPS to a Bel Canto I could re-visit.

Like you my primary tool has been Audacity. Do try Clickrepair, and turn it to manual - you will recognise many of the faults you and I have been repairing identified and corrected. I am moving through my albums at a FAR faster rate.

I agree that the flac meta-data is a real bonus.

What are you using to record your LPs?

M

I started converting the albums which I did not have in CD format first but then started to convert those which I have as CDs, just to compare.  I convert to 24/96 or with my favourites, 24/192 wav and have to say that I very often find myself preferring to listen the lp rips rather than the Cd version.  

I use the Korg MR-2 recorder.  Korg comes with its own software for diving the file into songs and tagging them.  It is very time consuming.  

Hi TN,

Like you I am ripping ALL my LPs, but having worked through my favourites I am now being far more methodical; which means re-discovering, and discovering, all sorts of music.

I think you are ripping to DSD? What DAC are you using?

My old recorder had an inbuilt battery that gave up the ghost last year so I bought a Roland R-05, very good little machine, and I prefer that it just takes batteries!

Yesterday I was playing Stevie Wonder to my brother-in-law. I started with my recent vinyl rip of Musicquarium I and then a CD rip. Listening to them I prefered the LP but would not have been surprised if he had preferred the CD, it was in many HiFi-ish ways 'better', he picked the LP rip. Being a similar vintage we then took a trip down memory lane with: Lionel Richie; Mink de Ville; Dr Feelgood; Paul SImon; ......etc.

I spent last night processing a number of albums that although fine still had clicks and pops, just listening to Wings Across America; I didn't say I was subtle or sophisticated!

M

Nothing fancy.

LP12 --->  Stageline ---->  Unti ------>  PC Soundcard -----> FLAC 44khz

I never intended the project to replace listening to vinyl in the house. The main reason was listening on the go, in the car and pottering round the garage/garden etc.

Reading your previous threads, one thing I would agree on is that vinyl treats clicks and pops a whole lot different. It doesn't bother me too much but there's a harshness about clicks/pops when listening to a digital copy.

Wings Over America - I've yet to do my copy. Triple LP, if I remember. And one of the best live tracks ever in Maybe I'm Amazed

I rip to .wav files.  The 24/192 files can be very large - at least 2G for an album but I have lots of storage on my Synology NAS.

I use the Unitiserve to stream to the NDS.  

I havent bothered with removing the clicks and pops.  There are pops on only a few albums but to me it is like listening to vinyl, albeit in a different way than using a turntable and so clicks and pops are part of the experience.