[ale] copying lps to cds

[Steven Rice]

Thanks for a really good post that was informative and interesting to
read.  I
wish more people would spend the time to help people instead of telling
them to
RTFM.  The people who know tend to forget the hard aches they went
through to
learn so they think a simple search or man what ever can be the super
source of
info.  Most of the time the person asking just want to know a simple
answer 
that might take hours of searching or trial and error.   Is the time of
some 
people so valuable that they can not help another person?  What a shame
indeed.

It's funny when they are the one asking.

-Steven

Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> 
> I'm real sorry, but if it were trivial to him, do you really think he would be
> asking?  This isn't the kind of reputation I'd like for this listserv to gain
> when it comes to giving support.  This fellow ("Wandered Inn") has been on the
> list for a good long time and I don't think this is how he or any of us should
> be responded to.
> 
> Having dispensed with that, let's see if I can give the guy some useful
> information.
> My experience is limited to CD-R production under Windows 95 using the bundled
> software that came with my HP SureStore and Syntrillium Cool Edit 96 for
> recording and editing.  Sound card is a Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold.  I'd be more
> than happy to use Linux for this purpose once no-cost software similar to Cool
> Edit becomes available.  I deal mostly in transferring reel-to-reel tapes to
> CD-R and I have also done several acetate 78s.
> 
> You will want to produce separate .wav files for each track on the LP.  It is
> very important to watch your levels, much more so than when dealing with tape
> recording, because the result of an overload - basically a "clip" of the
> waveform - sounds bad and is very bad for power amps and speakers on playback.
> Cool Edit has really nice filtering and noise reduction features.  For LP
> recordings, it would be good to filter out everything from about 15Hz and below
> (watch what your woofers do when playing an LP between tracks really loud and
> you'll see why - they usually wiggle all over the place).  For setting levels,
> you may want to pull some tracks from a commercial audio CD into your audio
> editing sw and look at a track to get a feel for where you should aim
> level-wise.  I'm not sure where the absolute maximum should be parked in those
> 16 bits' worth of headroom, but suffice it to say that the peaks ought to go
> somewhere between half-max and max.
> 
> Regarding clicks and pops:  I imagine there are filters you can develop that
> would go a long way to eliminating these but Cool Edit doesn't have anything
> specific for that.  I am dealing with a lot of 78s so you can imagine that I
> have to deal with that a lot.  I find that although it's a little tedious, you
> can sit down and splice them out by hand, and if you are careful about how you
> do it, the missing few milliseconds will go unnoticed.  Another technique I use
> - which sdly won't be available to you because you're already at 33 1/3 RPM on
> the turntable - is to record 78s at 33 1/3 using a sample rate equal to 44,100 *
> (33.333 / 78).  When you look at the result in the frequency domain (i.e.,
> spectrograph mode), you will see that there isn't any useful program above about
> 300 Hz; the rest is all noise.  So, I do a lo-pass brick-wall filter at 300Hz
> and then change the sample rate back to 44,100 - and the pops will have been
> significantly muffled.  This works because slowing the turntable down moves the
> program material down in frequency but the pops and clicks stay the same.  When
> you do the brick-wall filter, you cut a lot of the sonic energy out of the noise
> while not affecting the program.  It isn't perfect, but it's better.
> 
> I started working on CD-R burning some two years ago and I have managed to
> salvage some unique (i.e., no other copies exist) recordings.
> 
> You can "rip" .wav files from individual audio CD tracks and burn a new CD with
> the .wav files rearranged or interspersed with .wav files from other sources.
> 
> I am not well-versed in the kinds of audio software available for Linux, but
> Cool Edit is VERY nice and we should bug them to support Linux.  For the time
> being, you may have to bail over to Windows to do this properly.
> 
> - Jeff