Vinyl cleanup tips needed -Sound Forge - PC - MAGIX Community Forums Archive

Subject:Vinyl cleanup tips needed Posted by: mjb Date:11/4/2002 11:20:21 PM I often use Sound Forge (4.5) to make WAVs of recordings from vinyl, before burning them to CD and compressing them to MP3s. After a couple of years of doing this, I have it down to a science, but unfortunately not one that can be fully automated. My usual process goes like this: - Capture audio as 44.1 KHz, 16-bit stereo WAV. - Paragraphic EQ: "Remove very low and inaudible frequencies below 20 Hz" preset. - Cut intro to just a few samples before music starts (approx. 0.0005s). - Apply Fade In up to where music starts, to ensure audio always starts at -Inf (prevents a click in some DSPs when the file is played). - Cut outro at end of music. - Apply Fade Out to last 1.0s or so (longer if relatively high surface noise). - Adjust balance: this requires listening. Typically (and here's my problem), the phonograph reproduces bass frequencies in the left channel by about 1.0-1.7 dB more loudly than in the right, presumably due to the physics of the system. Applying 1 dB gain to the right usually produces an acceptable balance, but as you can guess, it is still slightly weak in the bass and slightly too loud in the mid & treble ranges. Of course, there are times when the original recording is not well-balanced, or when the record has been poorly mastered, so it is still crucial to listen before doing anything, and applying only as much correction as is necessary to bring it up to "close enough". The final steps are: - Zoom out and eyeball the overall waveform, looking for major clicks/pops. Zoom in and edit these by hand with the pencil tool. My greatest difficulty here comes when there's a massive defect that needs to be replaced with both bass and midrange frequencies. I usually can get away with a little hand-drawn, sloping sawtooth that spans the gap, but I wish the software could make an intelligent guess at what goes in there, rather than just EQing down the glitch. - Apply Sonic Foundry Click and Crackle Removal: for relatively clean vinyl, use sensitivity 3, click shape 7, max click size 1.5, noise level low. For noisier vinyl, increase sensitivity as much as possible, using "Keep residual output" with the Preview feature to make sure that only anomalous sounds are being removed. If you can hear a melody or you get clicks on every beat, it's too high. Apply extra-sensitive noise reduction to quiet passages, if necessary. - Apply Sonic Foundry Graphic EQ: ramp up from 0 dB to ~10 dB across the 6.5-20 KHz range, to compensate for treble loss in the system. I think the loss is in the cheap Radio Shack cables between the preamp and the sound card; a high-end sound card made no difference, and at the preamp there is no loss, so it's either the cables or something going on in the OS. I decided on this ramp by comparing the live spectrum analysis of identical recordings from vinyl and CD, noting that the CD was mostly flat across the spectrum while the vinyl started rolling off at 6.5 KHz. - Normalize to 0 dB peaks. I'm sure some of you are cringing as you read this, but this procedure has been serving me fairly well for a while now, and is IMHO a good trade-off in quality vs editing time. I feel I should be able to clean up a recording in about as much time as it takes for it to play all the way through. What I am wondering is what to do about the balance adjustment. This is the most annoying part of the process because there's no easy way (that I can see) to analyze the problem and come up with a suitable EQing strategy. I would hate to 'earball' it any more than I already do. Also, any other tips for vinyl cleanup would be appreciated.
Subject:RE: Vinyl cleanup tips needed Reply by: rraud Date:11/7/2002 7:26:35 PM Dumb but pertinate question: Are you going though a phono preamp which has the RIAA EQ curve? If you are playing back on a good turntable and phono preamp.. way change it much... this is probably the way the mastering engineer and the artists wanted it to sound.
Subject:RE: Vinyl cleanup tips needed Reply by: mjb Date:11/9/2002 2:25:47 AM > Are you going though a phono preamp which has the RIAA EQ curve? Yes, and actually, I just did more tests to confirm that the loss happens in the computer, only when sampling. The simplest test is to plug the headphones directly into the soundcard's line out (it's a 1/8" mini), and monitor the audio coming in on the line in. No loss at that point. When I sample the audio in Sound Forge (44.1 kHz, 16-bit stereo, of course) and play it back, the high end has rolled off. To rule out that it's only a decoding problem, I burned the sampled audio directly to CD and played it through 2 different CD players, each time noting the problem was still there. The high frequency audio data is just plain gone. Things I have tried: 1. A different sound card (a nice M-Audio "Audiophile" card) and the mixer control panel that comes with it... same results; no discernable difference between that and my OEM SB AudioPCI 128D. 2. Configuring Sound Forge to use the sound card's device rather than Microsoft Sound Mapper. 3. Adjusting sample rate to 48 kHz. 4. Using Cool Edit 2000 instead of Sound Forge. 5. Instead of sampling via the mini jack input, using the 4-pin CD connector to record a CD from my CD-ROM drive. Same results! When the CD is playing, the high end is there, but it's not there in the sampled audio. I'd try using another computer if I could, but I don't have another one that can be used for audio recording. So, I'm at a loss here... a signal loss, har har.

I often use Sound Forge (4.5) to make WAVs of recordings from vinyl, before burning them to CD and compressing them to MP3s. After a couple of years of doing this, I have it down to a science, but unfortunately not one that can be fully automated.

My usual process goes like this:

- Capture audio as 44.1 KHz, 16-bit stereo WAV.
- Paragraphic EQ: "Remove very low and inaudible frequencies below 20 Hz" preset.
- Cut intro to just a few samples before music starts (approx. 0.0005s).
- Apply Fade In up to where music starts, to ensure audio always starts at -Inf (prevents a click in some DSPs when the file is played).
- Cut outro at end of music.
- Apply Fade Out to last 1.0s or so (longer if relatively high surface noise).

- Adjust balance: this requires listening. Typically (and here's my problem), the phonograph reproduces bass frequencies in the left channel by about 1.0-1.7 dB more loudly than in the right, presumably due to the physics of the system. Applying 1 dB gain to the right usually produces an acceptable balance, but as you can guess, it is still slightly weak in the bass and slightly too loud in the mid & treble ranges. Of course, there are times when the original recording is not well-balanced, or when the record has been poorly mastered, so it is still crucial to listen before doing anything, and applying only as much correction as is necessary to bring it up to "close enough".

The final steps are:

- Zoom out and eyeball the overall waveform, looking for major clicks/pops. Zoom in and edit these by hand with the pencil tool. My greatest difficulty here comes when there's a massive defect that needs to be replaced with both bass and midrange frequencies. I usually can get away with a little hand-drawn, sloping sawtooth that spans the gap, but I wish the software could make an intelligent guess at what goes in there, rather than just EQing down the glitch.

- Apply Sonic Foundry Click and Crackle Removal: for relatively clean vinyl, use sensitivity 3, click shape 7, max click size 1.5, noise level low. For noisier vinyl, increase sensitivity as much as possible, using "Keep residual output" with the Preview feature to make sure that only anomalous sounds are being removed. If you can hear a melody or you get clicks on every beat, it's too high. Apply extra-sensitive noise reduction to quiet passages, if necessary.

- Apply Sonic Foundry Graphic EQ: ramp up from 0 dB to ~10 dB across the 6.5-20 KHz range, to compensate for treble loss in the system. I think the loss is in the cheap Radio Shack cables between the preamp and the sound card; a high-end sound card made no difference, and at the preamp there is no loss, so it's either the cables or something going on in the OS. I decided on this ramp by comparing the live spectrum analysis of identical recordings from vinyl and CD, noting that the CD was mostly flat across the spectrum while the vinyl started rolling off at 6.5 KHz.

- Normalize to 0 dB peaks.

I'm sure some of you are cringing as you read this, but this procedure has been serving me fairly well for a while now, and is IMHO a good trade-off in quality vs editing time. I feel I should be able to clean up a recording in about as much time as it takes for it to play all the way through.

What I am wondering is what to do about the balance adjustment. This is the most annoying part of the process because there's no easy way (that I can see) to analyze the problem and come up with a suitable EQing strategy. I would hate to 'earball' it any more than I already do.

Also, any other tips for vinyl cleanup would be appreciated.