LWN: Comments on "Digitizing Vinyl Records with Audacity"

Digitizing Vinyl Records with Audacity

cook — 2008-12-23T22:00:02+00:00

>Another thing to note is that if you're connecting your turntable directly >to the computer (rather than through a preamp), you should apply the RIAA >preamp filter in Audacity.
Be careful here, the phono preamp not only does the RIAA equalization,
it also has a ton of gain to bring the tiny magnetic pickup levels
up to "line level". Connecting the phono pickup directly to a sound
card would probably result in a very low level recording with a lot of
hiss. I would not use the higher gain "mic" inputs on most sound cards
either, they tend to be noisy and most of them are mono-only.
An outboard preamp produces the best results.

Digitizing Vinyl Records with Audacity

nyarvin — 2008-11-07T00:31:53+00:00

Another thing to note is that if you're connecting your turntable directly to the computer (rather than through a preamp), you should apply the RIAA preamp filter in Audacity. Audio preamps have circuitry which does this -- it's part of why the "phono" input is special -- but doing it digitally is probably more accurate, and doesn't involve connecting up an extra box. The RIAA filter lowers the amplitude of the higher-frequency components; the idea is that before records are made, the reverse of this filter is applied to the signal; so to play a record accurately, you need to apply this filter. Audacity has it under the "Effect" menu, in "Equalization".

avoiding pops

pjm — 2008-11-02T04:51:31+00:00

Cleaning the record surface is a very important step. I'm told that it's necessary even if the LP has never been played, just because of some chemical reaction that occurs over time.

How can one find other digitizations of the same recording, to filter pops that way (on the assumption that the pops occur in different places) ? How can we make it easier to do in future?

Digitizing Vinyl Records with Audacity

grmd — 2008-10-31T08:59:19+00:00

After recording using Audacity, I've used Gnome Wave Cleaner to do similar post processing, although I don't know how they compare in these functions.

Digitizing Vinyl Records with Audacity

ncm — 2008-10-31T00:25:33+00:00

The CD album of the Supersuckers' album "Must've Been High" (recommended) includes record-needle noises for authenticity.

By the way, this article doesn't really seem to be about development, but I appreciate it no less for that.

Digitizing Vinyl Records with Audacity

tcabot — 2008-10-30T20:46:28+00:00

> Select the audio from the beginning of the recording, past the initial pop from the needle landing in the groove

Call me old fashioned, but when I digitized a few of my LP's a few years ago I kept the sound of the needle hitting the groove, and the rumble of the turntable's shutoff mechanism picking up the tonearm at the end of the side. After playing the records so many times I had grown to expect those sounds to be there.

Digitizing Vinyl Records with Audacity

nix — 2008-10-30T16:50:25+00:00

Ah, right, so it is a background noise thing. I suppose it makes sense: my
thirty-years-dimmed memories of vinyl records says that they generally had
long pauses before the music started, unlike CDs and cassettes (but this
could well be inaccurate).

Digitizing Vinyl Records with Audacity

cook — 2008-10-30T16:29:13+00:00

>The only thing I find odd is the fade at the start. Is
>this done so as to fade up any audible background sound you weren't able
>to get rid of?

The beginning fade-in is just an effort to make a smooth transition
between total silence and the track noise that starts before the first
recorded sound begins.

Digitizing Vinyl Records with Audacity

nix — 2008-10-30T16:25:05+00:00

Nice description. The only thing I find odd is the fade at the start. Is
this done so as to fade up any audible background sound you weren't able
to get rid of? I can't see any reason to fade in actual music, but perhaps
I'm too clasically oriented to see the point. (With classical stuff,
either you can't hear a fade in because the music itself is fading in,
starting pp, or you don't want to hear it because the music is supposed to
sound louder than that. An example anyone can get: can you imagine
Beethoven's 5th with an initial fade-in? Yuck...)