Vinyl to CD service?

LinearMan

LinearMan

Joined
Dec 10, 2004
Messages
212
Reaction score
0
Location
East Sussex
Hi,

I have some LPs that I'd like transferred to CD. Now, I could go and buy a turntable and recorder and muck about doing it myself. But I have neither the time nor inclination so to do (I gave up my turntable some while back, but I do have about 50 albums that I'd like to enjoy again).

Does anyone know of any outfit offering such a service or would any ZG member like to undertake the task (for suitable recompense, of course)?

Thanks
 
I can't say I know of anyone doing this (but if Selfridges do, fair enough). However I can't imagine it would be cheap.

Transport of heavy records to wherever, recording in real time - with attention needing to be paid as there is a lot more could go wrong than a CD rip. 50 albums is likely over 50 hours work - admittedly a facility might be doing loads in parallel. And then trasnport 50 albums back again.

Let us know if it proves otherwise eh :)
 
I do a bit of business doing this, through friends of friends and so forth. 50 albums is a BIG job though, I usually only do one or two at a fiver a disk as it takes quite a long time.

Unless it is something its usually much easier to find someone with a digital copy and get them to burn it for you or look on amazon market place, ebay and so forth to get a cheap copy. There are people on the web that do it but they charge £10-15 ish per disc.
 
Anex said:
I do a bit of business doing this, through friends of friends and so forth. 50 albums is a BIG job though, I usually only do one or two at a fiver a disk as it takes quite a long time.

Unless it is something its usually much easier to find someone with a digital copy and get them to burn it for you or look on amazon market place, ebay and so forth to get a cheap copy. There are people on the web that do it but they charge £10-15 ish per disc.
Click to expand...

Trouble is that the albums in question are very difficult to find (if not impossible) in digital format ~ if itproves ridiculously impractible/expensive then I'll just bite the bullet and buy the equipment, take my time recording and then re-sell the equipment.
 
Hi,

LinearMan said:
I have some LPs that I'd like transferred to CD. Now, I could go and buy a turntable and recorder and muck about doing it myself. But I have neither the time nor inclination so to do (I gave up my turntable some while back, but I do have about 50 albums that I'd like to enjoy again).
Click to expand...

A while ago I thought doing this kind of stuff seriously, I figured the only way you can actually offer quality and solidity of the work would cost way too much on a recording by recording basis (I don't work for less than £ 30 an Hour) with each LP taking over an hour (more if noise cleanup is included).

The way I figured one MIGHT make this work is to keep a library of transcriptions and in effect transcribe each title once and provide multiple copies drawn from this. That all of this of course violates copyright scuppered it good.

I suggest you get a 2nd Hand Technics 1210, a Denon DL-103R pickup and a NAD PP-2 Phono and a suitable PC/Laptop Audio card with good A2D converters and do it yourself. You should be able to sell of the Technics without major loss and probably get a third back on Cartridge and maybe halve on the Phonostage. At least you will know to what standards the transfer work was done and you might be able to use 24Bit/88.1KHz originals and later downconvert them to 16/44.1Khz with suitable gainscaling and SSRC to get minimal loss in quality.

Ciao T
 
Surely it would be nearly as good to source the cd's online or bit the bullet and go the MP3/4, Ogg, flac way and download them.

We do sometimes transfer vinyl to PC here but it's usually nosebleed techno and we don't bother with too much clean up. We use the Technics 1210 dj gear with some pretty crappy carts and software called Audacity.
 
3DSonics said:
The way I figured one MIGHT make this work is to keep a library of transcriptions and in effect transcribe each title once and provide multiple copies drawn from this. That all of this of course violates copyright scuppered it good.
Click to expand...


You can keep them if you own a copy of the disc. I do this when its something I already have, no point doing it twice. I just keep a library of wave files on a few hard disks for whenever I may need them.
 
zygote23 said:
Surely it would be nearly as good to source the cd's online or bit the bullet and go the MP3/4, Ogg, flac way and download them.
Click to expand...

Where's the wash your mouth out with soap and water smiley (joking). Seriously though he did say they were next to impossible to get on CD.

I do a fair bit of it myself and find it fun, Its not time consuming for me really as its just a case of remembering to get the recording software going before listening to an album in my office .... Linearman, what sort of rare stuff is this?
 
3DSonics said:
At least you will know to what standards the transfer work was done and you might be able to use 24Bit/88.1KHz originals and later downconvert them to 16/44.1Khz with suitable gainscaling and SSRC to get minimal loss in quality.
Click to expand...

This SRC looks interesting:

http://www.voxengo.com/product/r8brain/

But you only need it if you intend to keep high resolution copies as well as make CDs. If you just want CDs, then it might be OK just to record in 44.1.
 
I offer this service myself but it's not a simpe process as not only do you obviously have to spend the time playing the vinyl in it's entirety to record it but there is also the issue of any cleaning with the Pro Audio software.

I try to remove and surface noise that occurs and depending on how old/well the records have been looked after will depend upon how long it takes.

There is a standard copying cost for vinyl that can not be sourced elsewhere but should the sound file need extensive cleaning then that will boost the cost up.

I currently run this service for DJ's and collectors who can not source deleted and hard to tfind vinyl.

I also offer a full record cleaning service on my Nitty Gritty Pro machine with anti-static inner sleeves.
 
ListeningEar said:
I try to remove and surface noise that occurs and depending on how old/well the records have been looked after will depend upon how long it takes.
Click to expand...

I don't bother with this myself, but then most of my records are in good nick. Doesn't the process of removing surface noise do more harm than good? That's an honest question to a practitioner not a dig btw :)
 
what about copyright ? I mean ok doing it for yourself at home but to do it commercialy and keeping copies hmmm you could end up in trouble maybe?
 
hi,

Baudrillard said:
This SRC looks interesting:

http://www.voxengo.com/product/r8brain/
Baudrillard said:
Indeed. But you still first need an editor software that allows you other manipulations.

Baudrillard said:
If you just want CDs, then it might be OK just to record in 44.1.
Click to expand...

No, I would not record in 16/44.1. Here is why:

LP and CD have broadly similar dynamic ranges, if comparable measurement standards are applied. This means you must get the recording level JUST right or you will loose dynamic range/clip the A2D, plus LP contains sounds higher than 20KHz which may be recovered by a good quality Turntable/Pickup solution.

If you record using a nominal 24 Bit A2D which has a near 20-Bit actual resolution (eg the better EMU cards) then you can afford to record at up to 4 bit (24db!!!) less level than you would need for a single pass 16 Bit recording. Recording at 88.2KHz or even 176.4KHz pushes many undesirable recording artifact well outside the audible range and any "problem" items (clicks, noise) are recorded at a much greater degree of precision allowing easier digital manipulation.

So basically, you gain "headroom" and "footroom" and "resolution". Any manipulations, be they re-equalisation, de-clicking, noise reduction or anything else will work better (if much slower) on the higher resolution wave file.

You then analyse the resulting wav file for the maximum level present and if this is a tick or pop, you use the peak value of this to apply "digital gain" to in effect make this highest peak digital full scale -1db.

If you then downconvert the wordlength to 16 Bit (with whatever dither you like best or in my case by simple truncation) and the sample rate down by the integer multiple 2 you have made sure that you get the best possible dynamic range from your LP2CD transfer. It may be worth to also author a version as 24/88.2 or 24/176.4 DVD-A or just keep the wve file on the HDD, as I would argue that good quality 24/176.4 retains the original of LP well, which in not my experience with 16/44.1, where especially the noise components seem to undergo hard to predict changes making things often sound not identical to the analogue original.

Ciao T
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
3DSonics said:
Recording at 88.2KHz or even 176.4KHz pushes many undesirable recording artifact well outside the audible range.............
Click to expand...

T, not everyone would agree that going into super high sample rates is a good thing. Dan Lavry (maker of Lavry high end AD/DA converters) here argues that anything over 60/70 KHz is overkill (although concedes that 88/96, despite faster than the optimal rate, is an OK compromise)

"......all the objections regarding audio sampling at 44.1KHz, (including the arguments relating to pre ringing of an FIR filter) are long gone by increasing sampling to about 60KHz".

http://lavryengineering.com/forum_images/Sampling_Theory.pdf
 
Hi,

Baudrillard said:
T, not everyone would agree that going into super high sample rates is a good thing.
Click to expand...

It depends.

I am familiar with Lavery's work.

Yet work by Oohasi (and others) suggest that supersonic frequencies, while not heard in any concious way (eg. in the test the subjects failed to HEAR according to the DB Test results the effects of extended HF content past 20KHz) they appear to affect the unconcious and the brainwave patterns severely (eg. in the test a near perfect correlation well past .05 confidence level was established between brain activity and present/absent supersonic content.

This suggests that a bandwidth greater than 20KHz is desirable and that HF effects at frequencies higher than those suggested by Lavery may make an impact, unconciously, on our perception of music.

From that angle, in the day of dirt cheap 300GB Hard Drives and excellent pro-audio recording interfaces for PC's it seems poorely defensible to NOT record at the highest sample rate and wordlength, even if the final release is aimed at a lower grade medium.

It is always easy to throw information that is unwanted or cannot fit the available dataspace on the release medium (as long as sample rate have integer relationships), on the other hand it is impossible to recreate what is lost.

BTW, I have previously theorised that what "Non-Os" DAC's perform, which normal ones do not, is to give a reasonable facsimile of the supersonic content normally expected in music, through the release of the first image (22Kz - 44KHz band) an effect similarly observed with Wadia Digimaster, Denon Alpha Processing and Pioneer Legato Link.

Of course, "Non-Os" DAC's have other effects, such as the application of a accuratly level dependent super sonic dither which linearises the DAC and of course, possible unwanted sideeffects when used with certain electronics have their own dangers and thus are hardly the universal panacea some make them out, but there are many unique issues here.

Anyway, sorry for the off topic digression.

Ciao T
 
3DSonics said:
Yet work by Oohasi (and others) suggest that supersonic frequencies, while not heard in any concious way (eg. in the test the subjects failed to HEAR according to the DB Test results the effects of extended HF content past 20KHz) they appear to affect the unconcious and the brainwave patterns severely (eg. in the test a near perfect correlation well past .05 confidence level was established between brain activity and present/absent supersonic content.
Click to expand...

Hi T

I interested in the above information, can you direct me to a thread/link that would shed more light on this subject?

Thanks
 

Latest posts

Back
Top