recording lps to CD

I'm getting set to burn some of my Hawaiian/exotica music collection onto CD and am wondering if anyone can advise me on what software is best for hiding some of the pops, clicks and other surface noise that comes from vintage vinyl? Any other tips or websites with info. on how to do a quality transfer would be appreciated.
Mahalo,
KG

Came across these two programs:
Audio Cleaning Lab 3.0
Clean Plus
You can find them listed on amazon and read more on each.
Great "how to" article here:
http://www.napathon.net/LPtoCD.asp

[ Edited by: susane on 2004-01-20 07:07 ]

The Pros who restore vintage recordings and other important audio use two main systems: Sonic Solutions and CEDAR. Unfortunately, these will set you back a minimum of $10K each.

Slightly less pricey is Pro Tools, which doesn't remove clicks, pops, scratches, and surface noise per se, but you can get plug-in software for it that does... but not quite as well as Sonic or CEDAR.

Anything other than those three is purely in the consumer realm, and frankly is probably going to do more harm than good to your source material.

I like to go in and pull out a few of the biggest, worst pops and crackles manually (using a pro-sumer application called PEAK), and just live with the rest of the clicks. That's vinyl... The programs that automate these processes and try to pull out ALL of the anomolies aren't quite 'smart' enough to determine the good material from the bad, and usually end up making things worse.

[ Edited by: tikibars on 2003-10-07 12:08 ]

Mac or PC? If you own a Mac the program Toast 6 (for OS X) by Roxio allows input from analog sources and has noise filtering functions. I have been considering buying it myself.

The same company makes Easy CD creator 6 for Windows with the same capabilities as Toast.

There's a how to on cnet.com that suggests using a software called Goldwave, a shareware program for PCs that can be downloaded at http://www.goldwave.com.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Music/4520-6450_7-5020879-1.html?tag=dir

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[ Edited by: thejab on 2003-10-07 13:17 ]

I've used DartPro software for years, and have been very happy with it. They carry software designed specifically for moving other media to CD. Features great adjustable click/noise/hiss features, track recognition (so when you record lps or cassettes, you can just record all of each side, and it will separate the tracks for you).

For those of you familiar with my crawl CDs, this is the software I use to get professional results from old lps.

http://www.dartpro.com

I use Sound Forge, but not the vinyl plug-ins. They are simply filters and don't really help. I just find the pops, zoom in, select and smooth. The main thing is to get a good dynamic recording to start with. And to clean the record well.

Just my $.02
It really depends on how serious you are about quality (and how much you are willing to spend for it).

With minimal investmest you can use consumer software and your computers sound card.

With slightly more investment: Check eBay for a used Motu (Mark of the Unicorn) Firewire interface Model 828 is great and RELATIVELY cheap (500.00 - 600.00). This will provide a professional interface between your Turntable (Technics 1200 preferred 300.00) and your firewire equipped computer (firewire card 35.00).
Use any decent (I use Steinberg Wave Lab 100.00) sound editing program, record a wave file and manually remove pops and clicks by chopping off the offending waveforms.
This 1000.00 option will allow you to record any vinyl to cd with tremendously pleasing results.

With limitless funds: have a professinal do it and then make lots of copies

"I like you, man. You're crazy, but I like you."

[ Edited by: Primo Kimo on 2003-10-09 13:48 ]

[ Edited by: Primo Kimo on 2003-10-08 04:37 ]

Email me.

:)
emski.

Mahalo all,
The article SES sent was really helpful. And some of the software suggestions look reasonable. I may try Swanky's suggestion of SoundForge since his transfers sound great.
I'm not looking to do a professional grade job, just be able to play some of the stuff I really like in the car or throw it on my CD player instead of babysitting a turntable all the time.
KG

What's the best way to connect an ordinary (non-DJ model) turntable to a PC? Is there some sort of interface card available?

--cindy

Probably the easiest way to hook up your turntable to your pc is to run it thru a stereo receiver (the kind you'd get for a nice component home stereo system), and run a line out from the receiever to your sound card. You need the receiver or an amplifier since turntables typically don't have built in amplifiers, and the signal would be way too weak to input directly thru your sound card.

I picked up a nice receiver for my pc from a pawn shop pretty cheap, now I can connect cassette, 8-track, turntable, vcr, etc. to my pc thru the receiver. It is great having a vcr hooked up to the pc, many movies and documentaries not available on DVD have great sound clips to record!

If you already have a component stereo system, you can just run a line to your pc from that if it is close enough. Saves expense of getting any special equipment.

That's the "Line Out" not the speaker out. Speaker out will kill everything!

The biggest trick to making it all work is being able to adjust the levels. For Windows, you can find the sound in your control panel, but hopefully it's there in your tray. Double click it and in the options, go to recording. That brings up a different set of levels, mainly "Line In." With your software on record, and a nice steady song playing, adjust the level so that you don't clip, except for maybe the occasional pop, but as loud as possible.

My new computer is too sensitive though and at the lowest level, it's too loud still. I have had to do a lot just to be able to record.

The other choice is to "Normalize" the music which is usually and option when converting to mp3.

[ Edited by: susane on 2004-01-20 07:07 ]

How do you record from CD to LP???

(this future-rama stuff is killing me!! I can't even post a pic correctly!)

Are there devices that would let you pull out the voice track of a cd and just have instrumental?? (would be good for the kids!)

Ben, you need one of these handy-dandy gadgets to take those CDs back in time:

Presto Record Lathe

Or use this company:

Custom Cut Record Service

[ Edited by: Traderpup on 2003-10-08 21:28 ]

On 2003-10-07 19:20, Primo Kimo wrote:
Just my $.02
It really depends on how serious you are about quality (and how much you are willing to spend for it).

With minimal investmest you can use consumer software and your computers sound card.

With slightly more investment: Check eBay for a used Motu (Mark of the Unicorn) Firewire interface Model 828 is great and RELATIVELY cheap (500.00 - 600.00). This will provide a professional interface between your Turntable (Technics 1200 preferred 300.00) and your firewire equipped computer (firewire card 35.00).
Use any decent (I use Steinberg Wave Lab 100.00) sound editing program, record a wave file and manually remove pops and clicks by chopping off the offending waveforms.
This 1000.00 option will allow you to record any vinyl to cd with tremendously pleasing results.

Primo - the MOTU stuff is indeed great, I use it myself (there is an older 2408 about 18 inches from where I am sitting right now), but the MOTU system is simply audio I/O, and offers no intrinsic noise / hiss / pop / crackle / TTnoise elimination. Also, you can't plug a turntable directly into it; you need a turntable preamp.

On 2003-10-08 16:31, Swanky wrote:
The other choice is to "Normalize" the music which is usually and option when converting to mp3.

Normalizing, which is a function that attempts to make your sound levels as hot as possible after the recording as been completed, forces the computer to requantize the audio data, and more often than not will damage your audio more than it will help, unless you're working at a bit depth of 24 bits or better. ALL CDs require a bit depth of 16, and therefore it is best to avoid normalization.

On 2003-10-08 20:15, RevBambooBen wrote:
Are there devices that would let you pull out the voice track of a cd and just have instrumental?? (would be good for the kids!)

There are devices that claim to do this, but they are crap. They work via phase cancellation, which (to vastly oversimplify) removes anything that appears to come out of the center (both speakers) and leaves alone things panned to the left or right speakers only. You're better off buying a home karaoke machine that comes with discs of pre-recorded instrumental versions of songs.

Or not.

JT:
Sorry I haven't figured out how to use the quote feature yet.

You are correct. I did forget a key ingredient in my vinyl to CD cocktail; the mixer. I use a vestax pmc 250 which will set you back another 300.00. I was told however, but have not yet tried, to use channel 1 and 2 which, on the MOTU 828, has a built in pre amp and has 48v phantom power usually used for mics. Thank you for pointing out this oversight.

This method does not have intrinsic noise / hiss / pop / crackle / TTnoise elimination but does transfer the source material cleanly and without adding any noise. I use PCs only and have a great selection of audio editing programs. I have found that the Steinberg series of software work well for my purposes. I use wavelab 4.0 and literally chop off/out the pops and clicks. Usually, I leave in any other anomalies because it is vinyl afterall.

"I like you, man. You're crazy, but I like you."

[ Edited by: Primo Kimo on 2003-10-10 11:49 ]

Here is a gadget I've been eyeballing for a while, that sounds like a cool solution for the task of digitizing LPs.

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/archosmultimedia.html

The idea is that it's a portable MP3 player and recorder, about the size of a cassette tape, but with a 20 Gb hard drive. So, it doesn't matter if your computer is anywhere near your turntable, and you don't have to burn cds. The player itself has line outs, so you can play it through any stereo. Ugh, I sound like a sales pitch. Anyway, the problem with the Ipod and lots of the other "jukebox" players is that they don't have any line-in or recording capability.

I think Creative Labs has something similar - most of theirs don't record but a couple models can. And Philips and Samsung and some other brands are coming out with their own ones soon. Dunno anything about the quality of these things, but probably hi-fi mp3 encoding is good enough for most people.

Looks like these things cost about $250 and up, and the next big deal is to include video recording and playback capabilities too. If you don't need the big hard drive, I think there are a few cheaper super-mini flash based players with 128 or 256 Mb that have analog line-ins and USB jacks for moving files to/from a computer. That could be plenty of space if all you wanna do is record an LP and then dump it onto a hard drive on a computer, without necessarily having some device that holds your whole collection of mp3s at once.

I was thinking of getting one of these doohickeys, but decided to wait til next year when more come out.

-Randy

[ Edited by: SES on 2003-12-28 13:54 ]

Somewhat tedious, but very effective way of removing giant pops is to use Cool Edit, I have an old copy that was freeware, had no limit on how long it could be used. It allows you to stretch out the waveform and drag and drop the pop out of existence by moving the actual sample point amplitudes. Perfect removal without filtering (which can be unpredictable). Only really practical for a few big pops unless you have lots of spare time!!!!