LP to CD -- Some Ideas

I really like to record vinyl to CD.  I think it sounds better than the published  CD music although this is totally my own opinion--God only knows how good me ears are anymore.  But there does seem to be a softer and smoother quality to CD music copied from vinyl, even though admittedly the CD material has much better frequency response and incredible S/N (signal to noise) ratio.  Prerecorded CD sounds a little too harsh and bright for my own taste.  The LP to CD instead seems much warmer, but maybe I'm just delusional or still living in the last century.  Anyway I have an awful lot of LPs and a good CD sound system on my computer complete with subwoofer, so I get a chance to judge the digitized music before burning it to CD.

It just makes a lot of sense to copy records onto CDs because they are so versatile.  My kids have CD systems in their cars and I have great sound in my truck.  My little son keeps asking me when I'm going to go all out and get a big sub for the truck, but I'm not ready for that yet.

Another issue is "outtakes".  So many times I have purchased a new CD release of songs from the 60's and 70's only to find that it contains concert recordings or that are not original.  When artists record songs they often do it many times--in the studio, in concert, etc.  Only the best "take" is copyrighted, published and gets royalties.  I suppose the idea is to sell you the other copies so the publisher does not have to pay high royalties or something.  But it absolutely infuriates me when I don't get an original.  So when I copy a record to CD, at least I know what I am going to get.

I often can produce good copy from a decent LP, and some of the pop filters do a fair job to even out the S/N playing field.  I never have had much luck with the crackle filters however (I need to work on that one).  I think the crackle comes from playing a record on one of those "gorilla" record players that weigh in at 1000 pounds, and this type of record destruction is hard to electronically repair without removing some good high end sound.  That's my opinion anyway.

A few things that I have learned

The single most important aspect of digitizing LPs to CD is the phono cartridge and to a lesser degree the turntable.  These two items are the weakest link in the chain to good LP sound.  You are converting all those little physical analogue wiggles in a record grove into digital impulses.  Your emphasis and money should not go toward your computer sound card as is often stressed in current literature, but may be better spend on transducer devices (those mechanical things involved in getting the wiggles into digital sound).  A good sound card will get you there.  A great sound card could be an overkill.

It has been suggested in various articles that you dump your onboard sound card and go with a better one which can be gotten for very little investment and may indeed improve the recording.  I think this is a good idea but just remember to go into the BIOS and disable your onboard sound.  Sound cards have a huge price range ($5 for a good Sound Blaster to $900 for a Lynx!!).  If you have a modest system like I do, you may want to spend $50 on a used mid-quality M-Audio sound card.  

CD sound quality depends on several things, but to me the stylus/cartridge  is the most important ingredient in this entire equation.  A decent stylus should be able to pick up 20 to 22,000 Hz. (cycles per second) with only a 2 or 3 db drop at the top.

 

Turntables also have to be better when you record to CD because digital picks up everything, especially low frequencies.  This can happen with turntable rumble which may not be apparent on a regular analog playing system.  If you have any rumble, your CDs will be sure to find it for you -- and it sounds really bad believe me.  I use a direct drive Sony PS-454 which has practically no rumble.  I also use an older Dual belt driven 510 unit for 78 RPM records which works well too and has some cool adjustments.

Some of the newer turntables don't seem to be much good.  the platters are too light.  I think a good heavy aluminum platter is one of the ways that indicates turntable quality and can certainly reduce wow-and-flutter as well as rumble.  I think it's also good to get a turntable that uses a standard removable headpiece so you can fit it with a verity of  cartridges.

Turntables are equipped with tracking calibration and antiskating.  One of the first turntables I got in Germany in 1965, a PE LB-34, had no antiskating.  Other turntables of that time (e.g. Lab-80 and Dual 1009 and 1019) were equipped with it.  Today just about all turntables have antiskating.

I have another page that talks about some of my earlier experiences with LP records. This page is my own opinions and is subject to opinion.

 

Another consideration is the pre-amp.  Don't even think about anything less than 60 decibels S/N (signal to noise) ratio.  I needed a pre-amp with 90+ s/n ratio because my 60 db one was not good enough for digital recording. The additional cost was not that much and my results were excellent.  Also you may want to shorten as much as possible your cables between the turntable cartridge and the preamp and solder the connections because that low voltage cable is quite sensitive to noise and lost signal.  Use a very small well shielded wire for this connection  because the signal is weak and it gets weaker as the line gets longer.  So keep it short.  Ground the turntable wire shield to the pre-amp.  Although most good turntables are some kind of bakelite plastic they do provide a ground shield for the low voltage wires.  It is also good to get a pre-amp with an external power supply, and keep that power supply as far as possible away from the low voltage cartridge pickup wires.  some preamps have a gain control because sounds cards are not all the same.  I found out that they can be plus or minus 5 DB.  It's nice to have a preamp that can send the right strength signal.

You should also try to match the cartridge impedance to the preamp.  Most of this is standard but some preamps (DJpre II for example) have a 100pF 200pF switch.

 

If you have older equipment like a receiver from the 1970s with pre-amp input and tons of sentimental attachments, my only suggestion is lose it, lose it fast.  90+ db S/N was absolutely unheard of in those bygone days of old and I think there is just too much built in noise in old sets.  Even the good ones like Kenwood and Harmon Kardon don't measure up to what they can do today.  The new solid-state preamps are so great and not too expensive and have all the RIAA equalization.  

RIAA by the way, is a standard that adjusted for some physical limitations in the record cutting process like low frequencies.  The RIAA standard does other things as well.  You can find lots of excellent articles on the web discussing this.

 

So if you get a good cartridge and turntable and make the investment in a quality preamp, you will get great sound going into your computer and that's the part that really really counts, believe me.

Some comments on digital recording

I go with the standard stereo 44,100 KHz sampling rate--seems to work.  It will probably get whatever is on that record but you may want to go higher for symphonic music.  I remove all lead-in and lead-out silence between recorded songs.  One way I do this is to capture a complete record side then zoom in and put markers at the end of a song and at the beginning of the next song.  Most recording software can write data between markers as separate files.  I then delete the little silent files between each actual song.  I find it a lot easier to do it this way than to edit a great big ugly file.  I have noticed that the automatic software that tries to separate songs doesn't work very well -- sometimes you have segues between songs anyway.

Once the material is digitized as separate files you may need to go into each file with a more powerful editor and do some filtering and cleaning up and maybe some fading at the beginning or end.  Some software has LP filters that can be quite effective.  Some clicks and pops will occur even on new records.  I usually fade out and in because that part of the record has more hiss. 

I use wav files for all CD recording.  I can easily get two standard records on one CD and that works for me.  I have had way way too much trouble with MP3 on all the CD players around my place and in the cars so I decided just to stay with wav format.  Works for me.

My web music has to be MP3 because of size but that's the only reason to use it.  If you like to get 50 or 60 songs on one CD then MP3 is a good way to go.

After I build up a folder of songs I burn it at least twice to CD, once (or several times) as a music CD and then as a data CD.  If you don't back up and delete your audio folders as you go, you will quickly run out of hard disk space.  It is for sure faster to restore a data CD than to capture the record again.  It is also easy to burn an extra music CD or two and keep them is a controlled environment (the car is not that). 

I use a separate hard disk or partition formatted NTFS for all my audio and video work because I am constantly writing and deleting large files.  This causes the drive to frag like crazy.  I can therefore keep my system drive fairly stable and I don't have to de-frag it at all.  If you have just one big hard disk, I suggest you partition it.

Pops and Crackles

I have had good success lately with the pop filters now available, especially with Nero.  I usually keep my pop time around 1 millisecond and pop threshold at 20% but this all depends on how much Hi freq may be lost and how bad the pops are.  The crackle is another matter and often occurs in just one channel (the inside one of course).  I have never been successful at removing crackle without compromising some sound so I choose to keep the sound and put up with the crackle.  Often I just don't even try to kick the crackle dogs.  

It's a good idea to monitor older records that have scratches.  If it's an excellent record I just let it digitize away.  But if a record gets stuck I write down the recording time and carefully try to adjust the anti-skating (which applies a little back pressure to the arm to compensate for the inward torque of the rotation which describes an arc slightly above center--aaahhhh).  If this doesn't work I try to nudge the stylus to see if I can get it past the bad spot.  If that doesn't work I re-queue the stylus several groves over.  I then go in afterwards and try to fix the digital sound--or delete the song.  One way or another I make it work and you can too.  If I can't make it work I throw the record away. 

When I converted a bunch of old 78 rpm records I did fool around with some scratch filters and you are welcome to check this out on one of my web pages but the results were ugly and some day I will try again.

Cassettes

The only real difference when you record from cassettes is that you go directly into your computer and not through the preamp.  This kind of recording requires some equalization depending on the type of cassette player you have.  I usually boost my 2k, 5k, 10k ranges at least 5 dbs to make the sound more lively.  It depends in the tape player.  I have really never been able to get as good recording from cassettes as I can from records.

78s

When I converted a bunch of old 78 rpm records I did fool around with some scratch filters and you are welcome to check this out on one of my web pages:

http://dvautier.home.comcast.net/records/records.htm