Ripping from Vinyl, Simplified

An anonymous reader writes "In a short article at linmagau.org John Murray brings Gramofile to our attention, just the thing to help you bring all those LPs in the cupboard into your MP3 collection. One more example of the analog hole in action, I guess ;)" It may not be CEDAR, but it sounds like a lot of utility for a 76kB program.

Comments

Why do this?

[Michael's a Jerk!]

Just remember - a new record will sound far, far better then a CD.

Records only get crappy after much use. If they could make them out of a more robust material, I'd be first in line to buy.

Re:Why do this?

[3.5 stripes]

Not really.

Only to audiophiles who use worthless and unquantifiable terms like "warmth" and "roundness".

A good quality cd in a good quality system is more than adequate for any normal human being who doesn't base their life's worth on the amount of vacuum (sp) tubes in their living room.

Re:Why do this?

[alienw]

Remember, "scientific" measurements only go so far. "Warmth" may not be quantifiable (yet), but only because not enough research has been done in the area of psychoacoustics. I am sure that 10 years down the road, we may very well find out what exactly is responsible for it.

For example, when transistor amps came out in the 60s, everyone thought they would sound far better than tubes because they did not produce as much distortion (on the analyzer, at least). That turned out to be extremely wrong. The early transistor amps may not have produced as much distortion, but they sounded far worse than tube amps. It was later found out that this occurred due to intermodulation distortion, a particularly nasty-sounding type of distortion.

I will not agree that a CD is "more than adequate". That's like saying that 640K of RAM, 256 colors, or 56Kbps is more than anyone will ever need. A CD is mastered to an extremely shitty set of parameters. 44KHz is not enough to go up to even 22KHz (and humans can hear that rather well), and 16 bits is not nearly enough for a wide dynamic range. Remember, this technology was designed in the early 80s and was supposed to be cheap even then. Even the audio industry is now switching to new formats, such as SACD and DVD Audio.

Unlike records, you can't extract any "extra" quality from the CD. It's digitized, and you can't get what's not already on the disc. With LPs, better equipment makes a world of difference. With CDs, a better transport will at best reduce jitter but will not improve the quality significantly. That's why audiophiles prefer LPs -- that's currently the only way to get better-than-CD sound.

Finally, please listen to a truly good-quality audio system (no, I don't mean a trashy Bose or Infinity 5.1) at least once in your lifetime before posting such idiotic comments. You would be surprised.

The Need For a Long Patch Cord

[tres3]

This could actually be the program that gets me to dig out the hundred plus albums and my old turn-table from storage and start to work. Now I either need a really long patch cord or I'll have to find one of those old Radio-Shack pre-amps that allows you to hook up a turn-table to a standard Line-In plug. The impendance is not the same on a decent turn-table as it is on other things that you plug into stereos (like CD players, tape decks, etc.) and if I remember correctly you can barely hear the music without one. Hell, I'm not even sure that my current pre-amp (my system has seperate components: pre-amp, tuner, and three power amps for the front, center, and rear speakers) in the other room (yes I'm too lazy to get up and check right now) has a Phono connection. I know finding one of the old pre-amps from Radio Shack is probably out of the question - does anyone else remember the little black boxes with RCA in and RCA out jacks, a screw terminal for the ground wire that also comes out of turn-tables and a power cord? They didn't even have any knobs or switches!!! If I can't find my old one and my current system doesn't have a Phono in then I'll have to find an old stereo at Goodwill to plug the turn-table into. If my component pre-amp does then how much sound quality will I lose with a 30 foot patch cord? I've never plugged my computer and stereo together. How many other Slashdotters are going to have to figure out some creative wiring to make this work? For that matter how many other Slashdotters still have vinyl? I wonder if this trip down memory lane will induce any flashbacks! ;-)

Re:Great news for Jazz

[Aetrix]

I agree - And old friend, has over 10,000 VERY unique albums dating back to the first pressings of vinyl. (He's been collecting AVIDLY since he was a child - he's in his 80s now.) Through him I learned that the first vinyl was actually pressed into the medium LIVE (Not drums of wax, actual vinyl). The artist would play, and that unique original recording would go onto the disk. If he wanted to make 10,000 albums to distribute, he would have to perform the song 10,000 times! There's albums of these types of albums that are worth $50 and others that are worth thousands of dollars - just because someone sneezed in the background, or the artist did something unique or original in that individual recording.

I highly agree in saving very old recordings. Frankly, I think they're much better than the "digitally remastered" versions (Read: Guido shot first).

Dude... HEADPHONES!

[metamatic]

It's very worthwhile investing in good hi-fi equipment if you listen on headphones, as many (if not most) audiophiles do.

You certainly can get a worthwhile improvement from spending moderately serious amounts on equipment, but you're right in a way--the place to spend the money isn't always obvious, and a lot of expensive kit is wank that's beaten handily by stuff a fraction of the price.

For example, you can spend $1000 on a set of incredible audiophile speakers... or you can spend $300 on a pair of good headphones and a headphone amp. Unlike with speakers, you can put an audiophile headphone system in a shared apartment and not have to compromise. In fact, you can build a portable headphone listening setup that'll sound better than anything with speakers that you might plausibly set up in the communal living room.

Even cheap equipment can often be improved greatly by add-ons. I just upgraded to some Sennheisers for my Sony Walkman, and the difference is incredible. I have a better headphone amp on the way too...

Last time I auditioned CD players, one thing that surprised me was the amount of difference in sound quality in half a dozen big-name players at around the same price. If you're serious about sound quality, you really have to audition the stuff.