deleting tracks from cd and vinyl digital conversions??

[CT Jim]

I already know Audacity is for vinyl, and it looks like I'll be buying dbpoweramp for my CD stuff.

Fir each type, vinyl or CD, do you copy/digitize the complete album or cd, then delete any tracks you don't like? Does it keep the original numbering or will it say after deleting track 6, move everything from 6 on up one number?

Knee operation coming up, so I'm going to have about a month to do this....

 

[palsapal]

With Audacity, you can record individual tracks or all of them but you will need to "divide" multiple tracks & name/save them as Audacity doesn't do this. I find it easier (& more therapeutic) to record a whole side of vinyl, divide the tracks, delete those that are not required & name/number/save the ones that you want. Audacity just records a wave form & you'll be able to see track ends/starts so that you can home in on them. It's then a case of copying a track & pasting it to a new file. It's like a paragraph of text in a word processor where you want to save every other sentence. Highlight, copy/paste to new & save with a different name.

It's quite a long-winded job as your playing the record in real time unlike ripping a CD which is at a much higher speed than when you're playing it. You will also consume time with Audacity if you want to remove pops & clicks. Labour or love.

There are paid-for applications that will divide & name the tracks (using an internet database like the CD rippers).

You'll need to give some thought to how you file your digital files. The rippers will have alternative formats from which to choose. Folder for each artist, sub-folder for each album? Tracks with track numbers?

 

[sKiZo]

I'd think twice about deleting any music. Who knows? What you now consider filler material may turn out to be favorites as your tastes change, and storage options keep getting cheaper. I WOULD stress having a good backup plan, especially with vinyl rips, as you've invested a lot of time in your library and probably have better things to do than starting over.

As far as hard drive organization goes, I leave that up to my ripping software. I have the basics (CD Rips, Album Rips, Digital Download, etc.) but beyond that, I let the ripper put the software where it wants to based on the tags. Then again, I use jRiver Media Center's libraries to catalog and sort music and seldom see the Windows Explorer anymore. Only place I'll change folder names and such is if I run into some gawds awful long path/filename that won't fit Windows naming conventions. Good example there was Toscaninni's "NBC Years" - 70 plus CDs got renamed 1-70 just to simplify storage. Those all become organized by composers and works, which is all I'll ever need (or want) to see.

Here's a view of the Explorer ...

... And here's what I see in jRiver ...

PS - any CD rips and such should have track numbers and such automagically assigned during the rip. Those won't change with file deletion and such unless you manually change them yourself.

 

[Yamaki]

The metadata on your CD rips, i.e., track number, track name, album, artist, etc... are specific to that digital file. It won't renumber anything if you delete a track from your files.

You can, if you want, select which tracks to rip and deselect any you don't want to rip if you know at that point in time whether or not you want a digital copy of a specific track.

 

[rwartner]

You always want a backup. I would rip all tracks as backup. Copy it to create play folder. There delete tracks you don't want. My backup would be on removable USB drive.

 

[baneste]

Ditto for ripping the entire disc, be it vinyl or digital. Use a playlist if you only want to hear selected cuts from the disc. Best of both worlds. In any event, making a playlist will be much easier than going back and deleting individual tracks.

As far as software goes, you might consider getting Vinyl Studio for digitizing your LPs. I've used Audition and Audacity. They are both fine programs, but to enable a wider range of applications, they are complicated and cumbersome for recording LPs. Vinyl Studio is specifically designed for this task and is the best, most efficient one-stop software for digitizing LPs and cassette tapes I've yet tried. It is very affordable and will do everything you need in 99% of the situations you're likely to encounter. It even includes features like correcting the speed and EQ for 78s in case you don't have a turntable that actually plays at 78rpm or the right EQ in your preamp.

Except as a satisfied user, I have no affiliation whatever with the business that sells Vinyl Studio.

Good luck and hope your recovery goes well.

 

[Yamaki]

when using dbpoweramp cdripper you can deselect any file you don't want to rip from the cd before the ripping process commences

 

[E-Stat]

I keep them all as space is cheap.

 

[KeninDC]

If you delete all the crappy tracks you don't want, you'll no longer have any Steely Dan in your collection.

 

[Chip Chester]

Well that escalated quickly...

 

[Bob]

nah, the purist approach is to keep the vinyl rips as is, the explanation being hiss/pops/ticks
removal will continue to advance the state of the art.

unless you are used to a programmable linear tracking turntable (Carrera lt120, pioneer pl910, etc)
then most folks listen to an LP from start to finish. or jump up every track to move it over and back.

far more work to do all the post-processing then find out your buddies love the track(s) you just deleted.

and to some, the first seconds of needle drops with the pops, ticks, is like
the cigar cutoff, dipping in flame-heated cognac
sommelier pulling the cork, letting you sniff it, and giving you first taste, with proper white towel on arm

enjoy the music

 

[cpt_paranoia]

Fir each type, vinyl or CD, do you copy/digitize the complete album or cd, then delete any tracks you don't like? Does it keep the original numbering or will it say after deleting track 6, move everything from 6 on up one number?

It's entirely up to you...

But I'll just say that storage is cheap, so I would advise keeping everything, warts and all. You don't ever want to have to re-rip any large number of discs (especially vinyl, since that's real-time). Do it once, do it properly. Do it lossless.

But I would suggest you organise your ripped directories to reflect the physical discs. Then, should you ever need to re-rip them, it's easy to find where they should go.

e.g <filesystem path>/Album Artist/Album/<track#> Title.ext

Keep the <track#> as two digits, with leading zero, so give mediocre playback tools a chance to play the album in the correct order.

An alternative for multi-disc titles is to add disc number to the track title prefix: ../<disc#>-<track#> Title.ext

Do all the fancy genre/likes/year/producer/name of studio cat sorting with the metadata tags and a decent media manager.

Oh, and, with a decent media manager, you can simply remove unwanted tracks from the database, but keep the physical track. Essentially hiding those warts...