New Wave Outpost Forum

This is going out to the restoration experts out there. Attached is my first attempt with a new turntable and cartridge. I know I'm no Eight6, Jimbo, Spaz, etc, nor do I ever intend to be - WAY too much effort. I just want a good copy of my vinyl with a moderate amount of work. Attached is Gleaming Spires' 1981 "Songs of the Spires" album. It's not bad noise-wise but the higher frequencies sound harsh. I only did a minimal noise reduction, minimal compression/norm, and just the barest of equalization. My requests...

A) Advice on how to do this better!

B) If you're not too nitpicky and can tolerate this rip, I hope you'll enjoy this classic album. I know the Mael brothers did judging by their comments in the liner notes:

"Though I have not personally had the time to listen to this, two of my bridge partners tell me that this record goes beyond...WAY beyond." - Russel Mael, Sparks

"This is the best Gleaming Spires album...ever." - Ron Mael, Sparks (it was their only one at the time)

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?a ... 557F6F26E9

Hey Blir, I really did enjoy the rip, I'm sure there will be some who are much more picky than I but it would suit my needs. Since you did it on your new USB turntable, was it easy? How long did it take? Was it with the cartridge that shipped with the unit? Was the software user friendly for us idiots?

Thanks!

By the way, I'm not sure I ever heard this album in full back in the day but it was pretty good! While listening to it I just thought of Sparks the whole time. After checking allmusic, I see they went on to record with Sparks and Devo, you learn something new everyday!

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Hi Coop. Glad you got a listen. Thanks. I do think it needs work on that high-end distortion and some skips. Maybe I need to isolate the table more...perhaps having 4 hard drives humming along on the same platform isn't such a good idea. [B)] I've gotten a bit of advice over email and will likely re-do this album a few times as a test case before moving on to others.

It's pretty easy though - get the record really clean, record it, do some filtering, then chop it up into tracks and export. Maybe an hour and a half a record once you know what you want to do - which I dont' yet. I did this first run-through in Audacity, which is GNU public license for Mac/PC/Linus. I'll also try a couple of other options too like DC or Sound Soap.

Where did you get the turntable from? Just got another e-mail saying to be shipped 7/22 so I canceled order!

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[quote][i]Originally posted by coop41[/i]
<br>Where did you get the turntable from? Just got another e-mail saying to be shipped 7/22 so I canceled order!
[/quote]
Sweetwater...one of the biggest names in mail-order music tools. Get on their catalog list too...DROOOOL!

Alright already Blir. Where's the second try?

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I use Audacity too, but it seems to me that it's noise reduction is useless or I'm doing it wrong, so I don't really ever do it. Clicks and pops don't really bother me, unless they're REALLY bad. I do feel you on the high-frequency sound thing though, I'm not sure what can be done about that.

I cannot stress enough the cleaning of the record(and needle) beforehand.

But in all honesty, the rip was pretty dang good. Nowhere near as many distortions heard(from being too loud) compared to other vinyl rips. I barely heard any pops, and only heard a grand total of one skip.

Muck about with the volume to get it loud enough to NOT clip, and all will be well.

Welcome to the world of vinyl ripping. Bringign out old music to the world.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I guess some of that higher freq fizz may just be a limitation of my turntable and built-in crappy A/D conversion. I'm might do some wet-washing of the vinyl and try again.

Could the tone arm weight affect that "fizz"? I've got about 4 grams on it in a recommended 3-5 gram range. It seems heavy to me though. Or should it be heavier? What's the rules on that kinda stuff?

Thanks in advance.

[quote][i]Originally posted by Blir[/i]
<br>Thanks for the feedback guys. I guess some of that higher freq fizz may just be a limitation of my turntable and built-in crappy A/D conversion. I'm might do some wet-washing of the vinyl and try again.

Could the tone arm weight affect that "fizz"? I've got about 4 grams on it in a recommended 3-5 gram range. It seems heavy to me though. Or should it be heavier? What's the rules on that kinda stuff?

Thanks in advance.
[/quote]

That really depends on the turntable/arm/cartidge combination you have. When I had SL-1200's I think the weight was about 2.5g...though that was a long time ago.

On the other side of the scale, the Bang & Olufsen turntables I have track at about 1g, because of the linear tracking design, the smaller, lighter arm and the cartridge/stylus design. Not audiophile, but an excellent TT none the less, and the 1g means a lot less wear on the vinyl.

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I use Adobe Audition, which used to be called Cool Edit Pro, it has a built in filter for vinyl that eliminates all the pops and hisses, and you can save any recording as a WAV or an MP3. I use it for everything, including mixed cds and remixes.

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