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Digitizing vinyl - so frustrating and tedious I'm about to give up

DesertTwang

DesertTwang

Active Member
*****UPDATE: Thank you everyone who contributed to this thread. Based on your feedback and upon discovering more shortcomings of GarageBand, I have decided to never, ever touch GarageBand again, at least for ripping vinyl. After hours of struggling through this, I ended up trashing all my work and starting over. Will look for alternatives, and I appreciate your suggestions. Thanks! ******

I have been using GarageBand to create digital files of some of my records, but the process is so time-consuming and fraught with setbacks that I'm considering abandoning the idea altogether. At the rate of time I spend on the process, I'd be far better off simply buying the digital format of the album in question.

One issue that comes up consistently is that when finally all is done, some tracks come out mono instead of stereo. At least I think they're mono based on what I hear in my headphones, since I can't find a function in GarageBand that simply tells me whether a track is mono or stereo.

There is a pattern behind this happening, and so I'm suspecting I might be doing something wrong in the process that leads to this frustrating experience. I'm hoping to find some answers and suggestions here.

[EDIT: in the meantime, I found a solution to one of my problems: There is a way to switch between mono and stereo in GB, and I successfully used that to go back to one of my projects and re-render the tracks in stereo. HOWEVER, a new issue popped up in the process: Now I have another project in which the tracks look mono (only one band of waveforms) but they sound stereo. I give up.]

My workflow: Briefly, I create a new GarageBand project for each LP side that I record. I use the preset for "Acoustic Instrument," as I can't find a better suited option. GB doesn't have an option dedicated to recording from other sound media, as I think it's meant to produce digital music from scratch using real or virtual instruments. That alone I find clunky, and it makes me wonder whether I'd be much better off using Audacity.

Once I have an LP side recorded, I split the track into chunks corresponding with the ends and beginnings of songs. I then create a new track for each song and drag and drop each chunk into its own track. Next, I mute all the other tracks and export the track of a particular song to disk as an aif file.

It's at this step that the trouble starts, I think, because interestingly, the first song of each LP side remains in stereo, and only the songs for which I created new tracks are in mono. The funky part is that they look like they're in stereo (two bands of waveforms per track), but they clearly sound mono.

Can someone help out? What is the issue here, and should I indeed follow my hunch and stop using GB for digitizing records in favor of Audacity?

Thank you all!
 
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Personally, I just digitize vinyl by the side and leave it at that. If I want track-by-track I fire up spotify.

That said, details of your recording setup? I'd go with audacity since this is such a simple task-you aren't mixing multiple instruments/tracks etc so Garage Band is kind of overkill. What I'd do if you want each individual track is just save the recording of the side once for each track, then simply trim in Audacity before/after each track ends and write that out to FLAC.

Cheers
Nathan
 
Cool! Does it do tracks automatically?

The one thing I like in Audacity is the ability to set the level after recording. I usually record in at 88.1 32 bit float at -3-6dB peak to avoid any possibility of peaking out. Then I bring whatever the highest peak is up to -1dB before writing out to FLAC at 88.1/24.
 
I'm not familiar with GarageBand but have used three different programs to digitize - one is no longer available, then Audacity (free), and just recently VinylStudio ($29.95). Have not had any problems with any of them. Splitting the tracks is the most tedious part and that has been largely solved by VinylStudio - it will split the tracks but it does it using times from imported track listings. At most, you have to go in and adjust where it splits tracks. It's pretty quick to learn and is free to try on five LPs.

Alan
 
Yes it is a tedious and time consuming process. I agree with hertzdonut that VinylStudio has got to be easier than Garageband or Audacity. I started about 8 years ago. I only work on it a few hours a week. I never expect to finish.
 
Well, I was gonna start that same process this weekend..but, only after I reread your entry post.

I may think differently after this, though.

Q
 
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I use Izotope RX, a 2-track program, to record and edit files. I'd start doing meth, I think, if I had to cope with something like Audacity or GarageBand to process my mono and stereo recordings. VinylStudio sounds promising.
 
One of the biggest mistakes people make when editing WAV files is not correcting DC offset before doing any editing. Without correcting DC offset, noise reduction, click removal or any other type of editing will not sound right.
 
Dont know GB but in Ardour, I would insert a new stereo track and record the whole album side at once. I'm too lazy to cut and name and take care of all the tracks. I want it to be like the album anyway.

Sounds like you might be dealing with 2 seperate mono tracks. You may have to PAN them left and right to get stereo.
 
DesertTwang said:
My workflow: Briefly, I create a new GarageBand project for each LP side that I record. I use the preset for "Acoustic Instrument," as I can't find a better suited option. GB doesn't have an option dedicated to recording from other sound media, as I think it's meant to produce digital music from scratch using real or virtual instruments. That alone I find clunky, and it makes me wonder whether I'd be much better off using Audacity.

Once I have an LP side recorded, I split the track into chunks corresponding with the ends and beginnings of songs. I then create a new track for each song and drag and drop each chunk into its own track. Next, I mute all the other tracks and export the track of a particular song to disk as an aif file.
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Sounds complicated. When I was heavily into this I recorded both sides as one continuous stereo track, then split them into individual tracks, trimming out the runout and lead-ins in the process. Then I exported the tracks and opened them in a tag editor. Done.

Programme used was WaveCorrector but there are a number of good, inexpensive programmes that work just as well.

The tedious part comes when you start declicking, resampling, or the record tags can't be found in any database, as was often the case for me.

Keep it streamlined and simple and you'll be fine.
 
Poinzy said:
I'd start doing meth, I think, if I had to cope with something like Audacity or GarageBand to process my mono and stereo recordings. VinylStudio sounds promising.
Click to expand...

HAHAHAHA, I'm so glad it's not just me and my limited brain power. I consider myself pretty tech-savvy and was trained using professional sound editing software in journalism school, so the fact that I still find ripping vinyl so tedious had me frustrated for that reason alone.
 
bigaltx24 said:
One of the biggest mistakes people make when editing WAV files is not correcting DC offset before doing any editing. Without correcting DC offset, noise reduction, click removal or any other type of editing will not sound right.
Click to expand...
What does DC offset mean?
 
ripblade said:
Sounds complicated. When I was heavily into this I recorded both sides as one continuous stereo track, then split them into individual tracks, trimming out the runout and lead-ins in the process. Then I exported the tracks and opened them in a tag editor. Done.

Programme used was WaveCorrector but there are a number of good, inexpensive programmes that work just as well.

The tedious part comes when you start declicking, resampling, or the record tags can't be found in any database, as was often the case for me.

Keep it streamlined and simple and you'll be fine.
Click to expand...

I don't even care about declicking and stuff like that. I'm fine with digitizing the record as it is, i.e. including any clicks or pops. I don't know about tagging, or how to do that. I usually rename all the tracks manually, copying and pasting song names over from Discogs.
 
DesertTwang said:
I don't even care about declicking and stuff like that. I'm fine with digitizing the record as it is, i.e. including any clicks or pops. I don't know about tagging, or how to do that. I usually rename all the tracks manually, copying and pasting song names over from Discogs.
Click to expand...
Then you need this. It pulls tags from several sources, including Discogs (if you have a membership).

https://www.mp3tag.de/en/

It's free and not that hard to learn.
 
Couldn't you just record the entire side, chop out each track and save it as an individual file and then reassemble the whole album?
 
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