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

I thought the correct way of ripping a vinyl was

[tamnir]

to scan it?

Other possibility

[mirko]

I personnally enjoyed the way this guy rips vinyls: by scanning them !

Re:Amazing new tech!

[Michael's a Jerk!]

Most people know how to connect line out to line in - but there are other issues. RIAA filtering (No, it's not evil - google it), wow and flutter filtering, among others.

You can't just hook line out to line in and expect a decent result. You need some decent software as well. this guy makes a living doing decent conversions. If it was truly as easy as you say, he'd be out of business.

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.

Request for Name Change...

[evilviper]

One more example of the analog hole in action, I guess ;)

I don't want to sound picky, but I REALLY think we need a new name to replace "analog hole". Something about it just doesn't sound right.

Re:Why do this?

[Michael's a Jerk!]

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

Those guys are wankers - but valves do have a different sound. When valve amps clip, they have a nicer sound then transistor amps. This is thought to be caused by a more 'rounded' curve, caused by even order harmonics. see this page for more information.


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.

Remember when 256 colour graphics cards came out? I bet you thought 'Wow! I'll never need more then those'. When high colour came out 'This is great - more won't make a difference, since the eye can't see any more'. as technology improved, so did our desire for more quality.

Digital

[billy_troll]

if you want better quality when you are recording vinyl, a high end pro turntable such as Numark ttx1, (http://www.ttx1.com/) stanton str8-150 (http://www.stantonmagnetics.com/alpha44/tt_str8-1 50.asp) does onboard digital, so you can get digital straight out into your computer. better than your onboard soundcard. (although you need a digital in....)

Re:I thought the correct way of ripping a vinyl wa

[Kieckerjan]

Duh.. The other way around would be a much cooler hack, because it would be even more useless: software to convert an mp3 into a huge PNG of a well worn record, that plays just fine when fed back into this guys software.

iMic and Final Vinyl

[Davidge]

A similar, but non-linux solution is to use the extremely useful Griffon Technology iMic (USB audio) and their software, Final Vinyl on MacOS X (not everyone runs x86 hardware).

F.V. allows you to rip to wav or aiff and allows you to split tracks based on cue marks. It includes built in RIAA filtering and auto or manual gain and equalisation.

You just plug the iMic into you USB port on your Mac, plug the turntable directly into the iMic's input socket (well, ok, with an RCA to 3.5mm plug adapter), setup your preferred gain in F.V. and off you go.

So what?

[n3k5]

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

A digital file with a high enough bitrate will also sound far, far better than a CD, no matter how old it is. Just remember -- you don't have to restrict yourself to 44.1KHz, 16bit on-board sound. In fact, many people buy good soundcards for the sole purpose of digitising their records the very first time they play them back, to have a non-degrading copy before using them for DJing or just normal playback.

Re:So what?

[alanh]

That HowStuffWorks article is wrong. It completely ignores the reconstruction filter in CD/DVD or D/A converter. Any well engineered D/A system will capture ALL of the information up to 1/2 the Nyquist frequency assuming you don't exceed the dynamic range. The reconstruction filter turns the stairstep output into a smooth analog representation and is a necessary step in any good D/A.

Even though PCM is limited to 65536 discrete steps, this amounts to over 90 Db of dynamic range in a properly dithered recording. Although a record does have a continous representation, it is limited to something on the order of 50-60 Db of dynamic range because of background noise and the physical limitations of the vinyl, the cutter, and the playback medium.

Continuous does not equal infinite!

Re:Why do this?

[zcat_NZ]

Gramofile is special because it's useful, small, free, and open source.

What is does is;

Record a whole side at a time

Apply some filtering to remove clicks and pops

Find the gaps between tracks for you, and split the final tracks into individual files.

Not sure why you can't just go read the article; It loaded fine for me just now.

Re:Why do this?

[LizardKing]

Aren't records made from digital sources?

Depends. Many studios still use magnetic tape, although others use Pro-Tools and their ilk for everything. Once the multi track recordings are done, then the mastering might be to magnetic tape, DAT or Exabyte (amongst others). Then comes the mastering at the pressing plant, which is where any recording will go digital (if it's being pressed onto CD) at the glass mastering stage. Vinyl mastering produces a die, and this is still an "analog" process.

And yes, bass frequencies are limited on vinyl, I remember an early acid house track called "Oochy Koochy" which had such a massive kick sound that it trashed the mastering studios cutting head, something they weren't insured for. That reminds me - I'll have to extract that record from my brothers grubby mitts next time I see him ...

Chris

Re:Why do this?

[fruey]

One of the reasons that LPs have a different sound is to do with the mastering process. The lower frequencies (bass) cannot be mastered at full volume and cut onto a record, because they'd cause the grooves to be too wide and literally make the needle jump out of the groove. So, the bass frequencies are attenuated or reduced in order to get "as much sound" in the grooves as possible (referred to as pre-emphasis). Then, the levels are all set to as high as they will go while bearing in mind that a groove will be wider as amplitude increases, so if a side of a record is going to be over 20 minutes or so long, then the grooves need to be narrower to fit all the tracks on one side, so the levels are adjusted accordingly.

Now, the equalisation curve was specified by our good friends, the RIAA... all amplifiers that have a "Phono" input use an RIAA EQ curve in the pre-amp stage to boost/reduce the frequencies to get back to a flat response that should sound like the studio mix off the (pre vinyl mastering) master tape.

Often these days all mastering is done at a flat EQ curve, because CDs can handle this, and then mastering happens *again* for the vinyl stage. It used to be the other way round, so early CDs were replaced with "digitally remastered" cuts - Brothers in Arms, Pink Floyd catalogue, that sort of stuff - and had a sound that was more faithful to the original, pristine LPs without sounding "tinny" like the first released CDs.

Digital to Analogue converters and preamps are so good these days that there is little difference between vinyl and CD. A lot of the "warmth" that supposed audiophiles go on about is probably "rumble" anyway (that is, the 50 or 60Hz drone that comes from the platter's electric motor and is passed to the needle, and other artifacts created by the rotation of the record in slightly less than perfect circles, etc).

What I like about LPs is the bigger artwork, the physical effort required to play a recording, and the soothing 33 and one third RPM of the disc as it spins on my old JVC turntable. Also, records which are well kept - as they generally are in my collection - sound pretty good too. However, they're not *better* than CDs. Just different. Old analogue stuff has afficionados everywhere, but please stop bleating that it's because it's better. It's just different.

One interesting argument though - a big thing in digital audio is to keep a fully digital path all the way to the very last, then have a top D to A converter right in the amp and straight to the speakers, some people even sending a digital feed to speakers which have reference D to A converters or even some system to use the digital signal to generate an analogue wave which goes beyond normal D to A electronics (can't remember too much about that, Google around if you feel so inclined). With my vinyl setup, however, I have a signal path that is fully analogue, and no need of a DtoA stage at all ;-) - although I do have solid state electronics in the system... which old wind up 78rpm players didn't have. I bet some people claimed they sounded better than the newer 33rpm records with electric motors and all that, too.

I did

[Konster]

I did this last November using a trial edition of Sound Forge and their lp restoral plug in.

It took a few hours' worth of fiddling (even with the plug in), but I finally constructed a digitized version of a recording made in the late 40's and it sounded excellent, save for the last disk which had an off center hole. It had varying pitch, which I was still able to tone down a bit.

The rest of the lps in the collection were in very good condition, but still had poor sound attributed to its 50+ year age.

I am unfamiliar with the results that the professionals produce, but even a simple trial version of Sound Forge can work wonders on old LP's for merely the cost of electricity and a blank cd.

Re:Why do this?

[AlecC]

Long, long ago, I set up a really cheap and crappy stereo system in a really perfect room - the library of a stately home. The wallw sere lined with books - acoustically absorbing but not dead. The wall behind was coverd with curtains. teh room was large (say 50 ft by 40) and exactly symmetrical, and with a sofa at the optimum listening position.

This cheap stereo system (high street retailers cheapest "got everything" model) sounded absolutely marvellous. Like kit costing fity times as much.

Ever since then, I have been of the opinion that it is not worth spending a fortune on hi-fi kit if you intend to install it in a room in which you intend to Have a Life. The necessary compromises to live in a room - particularly if you share with other people - will cancel out all the advantages of super-duper kit. If you are prepared to set up a special listeneing room, it might be worth investing in this kit. Until then, buy more music or more beer.

Re:In Your Cupboard?

[zakezuke]

Vinyl is highly reccomended if you have kids as far as demonstrating how sound works. You really don't get that positive feedback system, nor can you use a catas needle in a styrophome mug to demonstrate the whole gramaphone concept. Ok, this will definatly cause your record to degrade.

Dispite the fact that I was born in the 70s... I only recently gained an apprication for vinyl. As a kid, when I bought records, it was cause I didn't have a tape player, and I treeted my vinyl poorly. I went with cassettes cause they were so much more portable, I could play them on my TI-99/4a data recorder, and they didn't get damaged too much if I didn't put them back in their cases.

But I was missing something actually. Amazingly enough vinyl is actually a really good standard. Part of my prejustice was the fact that I was a kid and was listening to the stuff on my folks record player, some wooden cabinate deal with cheepo tv tweaters, stereo that was screwy from date of purchace, and an 8track that the program button was screwy. And plus the fact that all the records I had at the time were hand me downs from family members, played to death.

When CDs came out, I was instently impressed... vast sound improvement vs cassettes I noticed right off the bat, no background hiss, and vs the vinyl players *I've experenced* no background 60 cycle hum. So I went for one of those, I was older and could afford one, at first a simple boom box, eventualy a dedicate amp and a multi-disk changer with remote, and then I had something resembling a servicable sound system.

While I'm not a true audiophile, there are those who believe that vinyl is a superior standard to CD. Recent experiments have show me personaly that it's good, it's pretty damn good. If you are lucky enough to have a decent turntable, with a decent cartrage, a new needle, proper alignment, and kick ass wires that don't pickup that annoying 60 cycle hum that most turn tables seem to be a victim of, they sound great, in fact, they do kick ass. Wether or not they have a more natural sound due to the fact that they are analog and have more descrete values between their max and minium range, or if the better cartrage / styluses pickup more noise giving it a warmer feel rather then accurate, I don't know.

Before I get too off the mark, it's reasonable to believe that an analog vinyl record can more accuratly produce natural sounds due to it's analog nature, that whole issue with descrete values in the human percieved range is easy enough to believe. I've never seen it personaly, but i'm willing to believe this. However, in order to achive maxium effect, you need a virgin pressing, virgin record, kick ass turn table, etc... etc... and ya know... I am not going to spend that sorta money on a sound system, nor am I going to spend hours tweeking with my stylus alignment. Forget that. CDs sound pretty damn good, mp3s at a high enough bitrate are adquate for portable audio. Even an old goodwill CD-rom drive will proved *great* audio at sub $20.00.

So to answer your question, no you are not weird like that. While some will argue that the vinyl standard is superior in quality, you can't argue about the entry level cost of CD vs vinyl. CD provides damn good sound for few bucks. CDs are damn cheep to produce dispite the phohographs simple technology to extract sounds from a disk.

But now we are getting stanards for digital audio that more then double the sample rate and 33% the bit width... it would be interesting to see how phonophiles feel about sound quality vs ye old snap crackle hiss humm.

There's still music that's vinyl only.

[phaxkolumbo]

There's lots of (quality) music released today that's released only on vinyl. DIY punk/noise, techno, electro and house, to name a few.

Personally (as a wannabe-DJ) I buy vinyl instead of CD (as a form of protest?), and preferably from small labels. And I've got a collection really old 7" artifacts and oddities. It's a big plus to get the tracks in mp3 (or ogg), for archival and sharing purposes (which I almost consider the same). After all, one day, you might not find a working turntable anymore...

Yes, I believe it's okay to share stuff that's limited to 500 pressings, sold out and almost impossible to find. There are actually labels that release their music on vinyl and free mp3 download.

The point of this post? Not really any, just wanted to let you know what this software might be used for.

Re:The Need For a Long Patch Cord

[lateralus]

I buy at least as much vinyl as I do CDs. I used Baudline to tune the setup before creating a digital representation of the music on my hard disk in the form of an OGG file.

I have a number of artists; old and new on heavy vinyl. Stunning.

Try this interesting experiment. Play a CD and a vinyl record of the exact same track into Baudline's spectrum analyzer and notice the average DB across the high frequencies. Doing so with Fugazi's "End Hits" album showed me that the CD cuts off above 16Khz while the vinyl continues to reproduce the signal up to 20khz.

Most people can't hear above 16Khz but such signals create harmonics that extent down into the audible range.

Re:Finally

[Lumpy]

I can get the Ethel Merman Disco Album and the Beatle Barkers Album

lightweight....

only a real audiophile has the holy grail of albums....

Leonard Nemoy's album... Nothing beat's hearing ol' spock ripping out "Proud Mary"...

Re:The Need For a Long Patch Cord

[James Youngman]

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?

I always use one with my amp, because it's better than the phono stage in my amp. They're called "phono stages" or "phono amplifiers" usually.

The one I use is a Musical Fidelity X-LPS, which I find works very well. You can plug it into your amplifier (which is how I use it for normal listening) and then connect your PC to the tape or MD output jacks of the amp to do the recording, or you could do it the other way and plug the X-LPS line-level outputs directly into the PC (I do it this way).

The critical thing when using Gramofile is to get the recording level right (this is the "igain" control in your audio mixer). If you get it wrong, you will saturate the A/D converter's input. This only needs to happen very occasionally to ruin the recording, and it normally happens at sractches. However, Gramofile, while it does a good job with scratches generally, can't deal so effectively with the aftereffects of saturating the soundcard's input (you tend to get a kind of echo of the crackle). So, even if it tells you that "0.0%" of the samples were at full-scale, check the actual number of full-scale samples.

The best way to do this in my opinion is to launch the ReZound audio editor. This will colour-code the full-scale regions of the sample file, enabling you to identify at a glance if you need to re-record.

Lastly, I suppose this is a rather obvious point, but the result of doing this will never be as good as the results you get listening to the original record. You can only lose information, not recover it. So, if you really care about those LPs, invest in a good turntable and cartridge! This doesn't have to be so expensive. I bought a second-hand LP12 earlier this year for less than 1/3 the price of a new one (obviously to do justice to it I will need to get a much better sound card than the one that comes on my PC's motherboard).

Great news for Jazz

[moc.tfosorcimgllib]

This is great news. Now we just need to get people with older record collections to rip them to MP3 so we can properly archive music before it's lost forever.
Just think of all the music produced in the 20's, 30's and 40's that was never remastered and released on CD. Big Band Swing, Jazz, Blue Grass, tons of music that still has a copyright on it (thank you disney), but the copyright owner doesn't want to keep current in their catalog (too expensive). Get this music out on Kazaa, and introduce yourself to a generation of music that is slowly being lost.

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).

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.

Re:Audiophiles : pedantic idiots

[mysticgoat]

Offtopic, but can a native english speaker tell me why exactly semiconductor devices are also called "solid state" devices ?.

The term dates back to the 1960's when transistor radios were first developed. As the signal in a tube radio is processed from the radio spectrum to the audio output at the speaker, there are physical gaps within the tubes where the signal is transferred to radiant energy and sent across a vacuum that is a few millimeters wide. But in a "solid state" radio, the signal remains in solid materials-- wires, semiconductors, etc, for its entire processing.

At the time, the breakthrough of solid state technology was not seen as a matter of quality, but of reliability and portability. A portable tube radio required a car battery or portable generator, a case that would withstand the bumps of travel, spare tubes, and the tools and know-how to do tube replacements in the field. So a hundred pounds or more of delicate equipment to lug around, plus someone trained as the "radio operator". But a solid state transistor radio needed only a pocketful of nine volt batteries and a spare radio if you had to have back-up. Total weight less than a tenth of that of the tube option, and no special training required. Even fishermen in rowboats could now keep up with weather reports. It was a pretty big deal at the time.

I wouldn't say your query was off-topic. I think questions about the words used in a discussion are generally germane to that discussion.

Of course your inquiry did lead to this pedantic reply. But slashdot does no modding down for pedantry-baiting!

pedantically yours...

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.