The problem is not just technical and affects all digital media,
including the CD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
The Wikipedia article mentions it even existed for vinyl releases when
producers tried to make their music louder in jukeboxes.
Considering that trend it does make sense to do your own encodings,
although I suspect that older CDs might be a good starting point.
Peter
On 22/04/10 23:49, Kevin Wright wrote:
The OP wasn't comparing vinyl to CD, he was comparing vinyl to
whatever compressed format iTunes served up (presumably AAC or MP3)
These are both use "lossy" compression, a very accurate term for a
process that most definitely loses sound quality.
If CD were to be compared to vinyl, then the discrepancy would be much
less noticeable. Vinyl still does have the better dynamic range and
will sound better when played on good equipment, though double-blind
testing shows that only a small fraction of people can reliably
distinguish the two.
Of course, higher-quality digital formats (such as the largely ignored
DVD-audio) win hands down in any contest vs either CDs or Vinyl.
If you want your music as a file, I'd recommend the FLAC format (Free
Lossless Audio Codec). You can use this to compress both CD rips and
recordings that you make directly. Some material is also possible to
source online in FLAC format, this is especially popular amongst
classical music fans, for whom copyright infringement is not an issue.
However, I'm still not certain of the legal position on using
bittorrent to download a FLAC version of something that you've already
payed for in another format.
After all that, if you then intend to play it back over the cheap
white headphones that come free with your iPod, I wouldn't bother
going through all the effort!
On 22 April 2010 14:30, Casper Bang <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Wow, is that really worth the trouble? I can appreciate the desire to
up the sampling from normal CD (say 24bit/320KHz rather than 16bit/
44KHz) or avoid compression (PCM rather than Fraunhofer/LAME), but I'd
imagine you'd need some pretty hard core analog equipment to keep the
noise level down (record warps and low-freq rumble) - or is that part
of the charm? :)
On Apr 22, 1:42 pm, Christian Catchpole <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
> Yeah you'll probably need a phono pre-amp. I put my turntable
into a
> mixer and got gain out of it but the EQ wasn't balanced, so I assume
> the phono pre-amp will "know what to do". Perhaps even just an old
> turntable amp with tape line out.
>
> I just used normal wave recording software. You adjust the gain so
> its within range but not clipping.. But not too low that you get
extra
> noise. Then you can trim and normalize the signal (it finds the max
> point and adjusts the volume so the max fits within the bits). This
> is not compression it's just a gain adjustment so its not
quieter than
> it needs to be.
>
> There probably are software filters but I find they do more harm
than
> good.. but those are just the ones i tried years ago. if your extra
> keen you get take the clicks out by hand.
>
> I also found that my turntable was slightly the wrong speed, so I
> compared a song length with the same from a CD and worked out the
> ratio to adjust.
>
> I also found I could convert old 78s this way on my turntable by
> recording it at 45 then speeding it up.
>
> On Apr 22, 4:45 pm, RogerV <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On account there are folks on this forum that know a thing or two
> > about the art of recording audio to a digital format, I
thought would
> > try posing a question. But first the setup:
>
> > My teen-aged son and I were watching recent episode of Fringe
where
> > Peter repairs an old turn table for his alternate reality father,
> > Walter. My son commented how he was at a friends house and
that they
> > pulled out an old LP player and he listened to vinyl analog
recordings
> > for the first time. This prompted me to go to the garage and
fetch my
> > British-made Regga turn table and LP album collection. They had
> > probably been entombed for 20 years.
>
> > The Regga is an audiophile turn table, tone arm, and stylus
cartridge
> > - it was about a $500 combination in early 1980s dollars. It's
very
> > simple mechanically. The motor is off in a corner and conveys
motive
> > power to the spindle via belt. The platter is 1 inch thick solid
> > glass. Instead of an electronic feed-back loop to regulate the
> > rotational speed, it instead relies on the fly wheel effect of a
> > massive platter. The bottom line is the design and
construction keeps
> > the stylus very well insulated from extraneous vibration.
>
> > My son was, well, blown away from the sonic experience of
listening to
> > vinyl LPs played on this system. It was though he were
listening to
> > music for the first time. The detail, spatial location, subtle
> > texture, dynamic range between quite to vibrant strains were
all more
> > alive than iTunes music. A good way to tell is listen to the 1978
> > recording of the Pat Matheny Group album vs the iTunes version
of this
> > music. You'll be tempted to just delete the iTunes version -
it's just
> > flat and stale sounding in comparison to the analog vinyl.
>
> > So all this has lead me the matter of what to do with my album
> > collection. I'm thinking that the main problem with modern MP3
> > download music is that the dynamic range has been overly
compressed.
> > Surely I could make digital recordings from the phono output of my
> > turntable that would retain the character of musical experience?
>
> > Do I need to use a phono preamp before feeding a signal into
the audio
> > input on my computer?
>
> > Should I invest any any particular analog-to-digital audio
hardware
> > device?
>
> > What software would be good to use? I'll be recording entire
sides of
> > an LP at a time and then wanting to go back and split it into
separate
> > files per each song.
>
> > Is there any software filter that specializes in reducing pops and
> > clicks from analog media?
>
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