Whats the best way to digitise your vinyl?

[tots]

Im going through the proccess of recording my vinyl to my p.c,but when i play them back their not a patch on how the vinyl sounds physicaly.

Whats the best way to do this and get the original sound back once digitised?

[DannyBlack]

record them through Cool Edit or Adobi audition. You can reduce hisses and pops through that.

[tots]

I record in to soundforge and mess with the wav best i can,i dont have a problem getting rid of hiss n crackles,its just that the sound quality is nowhere near as sharp as my downloaded digital stuff??

[djshiva]

I record in to soundforge and mess with the wav best i can,i dont have a problem getting rid of hiss n crackles,its just that the sound quality is nowhere near as sharp as my downloaded digital stuff??

and it prolly never will be. digital stuff is usually taken direct from the digital masters, whereas the tunes on the wax have to be mastered specially for vinyl. you do lose some of the "sharper" frequency stuff in vinyl mastering, whereas you also gain some warmth from some subtle distortion.

plus, dj cartridges are not made for audiophile sound quality. they are made to stay in the groove. it WILL help if you find yourself an audiophile quality cartridge, but technics were also never made to be for hi fi.

i would suggest buying the digital files of anything you can find that you already own (unless you can't afford it, then you have to live with what you have). a little subtle eqing may sharpen up your vinyl recordings, but don't expect it to ever sound the same as your digital files.

[theledge]

There will be a difference compared to downloaded digital stuff (that hasnt been pressed to a record, played through a needle, sent thru a soundcard etc etc) but some would say that's got its plus points

What soundcard/hardware are you using? You don't need a super-duper soundcard, but it helps to have something better than your internal pc sound.

I know these are really simple things but make sure you have clean, new needles, and get the levels right: your input level in Soundforge or whatever, should be as high as possible without clipping, about -6-12db is fine

Hope that helps anyway

[tots]

really appreciate your advice guys!im recording through my mixer straight in to my p.c and doing all the things you mention,needles are good and i use a yamaha ds1 soundcard,which is pretty good!

I think like you say,the way to go forward is to keep downloading and maybe mix my existing vinyl with the digital files,im using serato so i can do that,was just hoping to drop the burden of taking my plastic everywhere i play and get my collection saved to the hard drive but i suppose the more i download the less ill use my wax! Just a bit of a barstuard that ive spent over £300 on vinyl a couple a months before i got the scratch software!

[rhythmtech]

you shouldnt have any problems getting a good recording from vinyl. i digitised my entire collection years ago and its perfectly playable.

the way i did it

all eq's on mixer at neutral
record it so that the loudest part of the track just slightly clips on the mixer and hits about -1/-2 on the editor record meter.
add the slightest touches of eq in the audio editor afterwards (only very very slight touches) - use the best software eq you can find, has to be totally transparent. flux epure for example
render the file to the highest quality mp3 that you can.

good luck.. tkes bloody ages!!!!

[tots]

you shouldnt have any problems getting a good recording from vinyl. i digitised my entire collection years ago and its perfectly playable.

the way i did it

all eq's on mixer at neutral
record it so that the loudest part of the track just slightly clips on the mixer and hits about -1/-2 on the editor record meter.
add the slightest touches of eq in the audio editor afterwards (only very very slight touches) - use the best software eq you can find, has to be totally transparent. flux epure for example
render the file to the highest quality mp3 that you can.

good luck.. tkes bloody ages!!!!

When you say neutral do you mean eq's down to zero then pump it up with eq's on my software?

[theledge]

Don't pump it at all, anywhere

[rhythmtech]

When you say neutral do you mean eq's down to zero then pump it up with eq's on my software?

eq's bang in the middle and like theledge said dont pump it at all.

use a transparent eq for little touches but ONLY if you need to (ie: old vinyl thats lost some thump) - but you really need to know exactly what you're doing with the eq.

the aim is to get a degraded vinyl back to as close to the original recording as possible.. not to add anything to it.

hence a good quality transparent eq (one that doesnt impart its own sound/tone on the recording)

[RDR]

but technics were also never made to be for hi fi.

They were, the first 1200's were sold without tone arms in the hi-fi specialist magazines as users often prefered to add their own tone arms.

The most important issue with recording vinyl is the LEVEL. Recording through a DJ mixer is also a bad thing IMO, mixers are meant to colour the sound and when you play back your recorded mixes back through the same DJ mixer you used to record them then its being given double colour.

The problem with the needles as i see it is that the depth of the cut on modern dance music records is pretty deep and as such the audiophile needles in the hi-fi scene were not designed in mind with that level of vibration. On the other hand DJ needles are not really designed to bring back high levels of quality (they're pretty close though). Of course all this is much of a muchness Decent Q DJ needles should be fine to record your music, but its the signal path thats the killer.

Of course ya stuck between a rock and a hard place in terms of RCA pre-amps. DJ mixers are the best place to find em but some are of course better than others. I find the pioneer mixers quite transparent but prefer the sound of my vestax.. warmer fuller.

Anyway....[/RAMBLE]

[djshiva]

They were, the first 1200's were sold without tone arms in the hi-fi specialist magazines as users often prefered to add their own tone arms.

huh. i had read that the technics 1200 wasn't the best for audiophile quality because of the noise from the (required for djing) very powerful platter/torque?

i won't proclaim myself a great expert on it, but was repeating what i had read before.

and yeah, dj mixers bad. i run my table through a soundboard with built in RIAA eq for vinyl ripping. lil soundcraft compact 4. does the trick.

[RDR]

huh. i had read that the technics 1200 wasn't the best for audiophile quality because of the noise from the (required for djing) very powerful platter/torque?

You are right, although the deck WAS sold as a hi-Fi seperate it didnt last very long in that market for the reasons you outlined above, hence why the very best Hi-Fi decks are belt drive.

[Barely Human]

Gota love wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technics_SL-1200

[Athar]

Agreed with barry and most comments here,
Maybe save your tunes as WAV format,
propably you spend more your hard disk space but **** mp3 m8

[MorePunkThanFunk]

i would also say give your records a damn good clean. it's like getting a bag of new records.

i spent a whole day cleaning a bag of 45 records while i was abroad with some time to kill and i was amazed at the difference. the records sounded so much better, less crackle crisper highs etc.

if you can be bothered i'd seriously recommend it.


i had a go at digitising some vinyl and i found that they just don't have as much punch as the digital tracks and tbh i really couldn't be bothered.

it's far quicker and easier just to buy the tune again in a digital format.

Also even with solid technics there's still going to be a certain amount of looseness in the speed which isn't too much of a problem for myself with Traktor but i reckon with Ableton it could be a bit of a ballache getting it to sync

[davethedrummer]

bit of washing up liquid and some warm water
always does the trick

[tocsin]

Im going through the proccess of recording my vinyl to my p.c,but when i play them back their not a patch on how the vinyl sounds physicaly.

Whats the best way to do this and get the original sound back once digitised?

How are you saving the files once recorded? Because, using soundforge as a recorder, I've recorded full sets of vinyl off boards on a crappy sigmatel soundcard and it sounds fine. If there are noticable differences, check you're whole set up from the physical to the software. It shouldn't really sound any different at all.

[TheRev]

I record into SoundForge as well and do what I can to manually get rid of clicks/pops and use it to boost the signal that comes in on my soundcard.

Before recording, I give the record a wipedown with some Gruv Glide. I was using a Shure M97X-E to record with - since I understand Eliptical styluses get a better frequency response (but aren't as good for tracking) and it has one of those little brushes in front of the needle to remove dust.

I have it going into a BBE FJB-200x phono pre-amp, which you can pick up for $50, and then into my RME card.

I find this works pretty well and tracks sound good and bumpin' unless the vinyl is in shit condition.

[RDR]

I record into SoundForge as well and do what I can to manually get rid of clicks/pops and use it to boost the signal that comes in on my soundcard.

Before recording, I give the record a wipedown with some Gruv Glide. I was using a Shure M97X-E to record with - since I understand Eliptical styluses get a better frequency response (but aren't as good for tracking) and it has one of those little brushes in front of the needle to remove dust.

I have it going into a BBE FJB-200x phono pre-amp, which you can pick up for $50, and then into my RME card.

I find this works pretty well and tracks sound good and bumpin' unless the vinyl is in shit condition.

Sounds expensive but sounds just right!

Also+1 for the TEPID (not warm henry... you could overdo that with disasterous consequences) + A small amount of washing up liquid... makes them vinyls sound good as new!!! Plus it looks mad as **** when your doing it.