Post #106051 by Kono on Tue, Aug 3, 2004 6:38 PM

Thanks for all the info!

TikiGardener: I didn't understand why water was so bad for vinyl, but what do I know? I thought perhaps it left some kind of deposit? Then again, what's it matter with a crappy scratchy record? Next scratchy record I will try it.

tikibars: I have been using 44.1 KHz sampling rate as this was default with the software. Thanks. I don't see where to set bit depth but I'll keep looking. OT: In another thread I asked you this but you probably missed it; have you ever written any pieces on tiki establishments for Chicago papers? I'm just interested for personal "tiki history" reasons.

Digitiki: For years and years I would record my own mix tapes, road tapes whatever you want to call them. I got quite good at pushing the envelope with the signal level and getting it a little hot without over pushing it. There is no envelope to push with digital! You hit the red and it sounds awful. I am leaning towards keeping the signal on the softer side and not getting very close to 0dB. I have a couple of recordings that I watched the signal level for the entire recording and they never peaked out yet some of the louder portions do not sound natural which leads me to believe: That my software doesn't use peak clipping but uses output compression. Two reasons I think this. 1) When the signal goes into the red, an indicator comes on and the signal is subdued for what seems to be two or three seconds in that channel. 2) Some recordings that definitely did not hit 0dB still sound compressed in some of the louder passages. I'm going to keep the signal well below the red. It's certainly a different technique from analog recording.

spy-tiki: I cleaned my Kapu record thoroughly (several times) with a product a local hoity toity record shop uses on their albums but it still sounded like the boys were playing on the back of a flatbed truck as it eased down a gravel road. Snap, crackle, pop. I did use the software to clip out some of the more offensive pops that were left after I used the continuous noise filter.

Thanks for your input. Sometimes the answers to the easiest questions can be hard to find because so many take the answers as a given. This software's got a fairly steep learning curve but thankfully I've dealt with some of this stuff in school so it's not too bad. My recordings are improving in quality fairly quickly. I'm not going to make any mp3s unless someone wants to host them because otherwise, what's the point? Thanks everyone.