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

I do it in a totally different way: I have an audio CD recorder in my stereo system . I record the record onto a CDRW, then rip it into my computer with Windows media player. No high resolution format used. This is only for phone and car. I also make a CDR copy of the disc. Then I can erase the CDRW to record another album. Works for me.
 
I got tired of screwing around with software and computer dongles to record analog to digital, so I picked up a TASCAM DR-40 for now, and it attaches to my tape output on the preamp. I can digitize up to 24-bit/96kHz. I record one side per file. I pop out the SD card, toss the files onto the computer and edit in Sound Forge. It only takes me a few minutes to go through and create the markers in the file where each track should start, then I export the individual tracks in just a few clicks. After doing both sides, I pop 'em open in MP3Tag, add the data and cover image from the Internet, aaaaand...done!

Eventually I would like to get the TASCAM DA-3000 (which has 24/192 and DSD encoding), or, the PS Audio NuWave Phono Converter which is a great phono stage plus an analog-to-digital converter which records to 24/192 PCM, or 1X or 2X DSD.
 
My go-to audio editing program for vinyl digitizing (and almost everything else) is Goldwave. I've tried Audacity, but I hate it overall. It's not user friendly or intuitive and it's pop and click filters are total crap, IMO. Goldwave's pop and click filter is good, but Click Repair is probably the best you can get for it's price.

Here's my typical vinyl workflow using Goldwave. I don't over complicate it.

Set recording levels
Capture the whole album as a WAV file.
Run the automated click filter over the whole file, as needed, in one of the preset settings (passive, default, or aggressive)
Adjust levels if necessary. Usually I have them set close enough when I record that I don't have to.
Sum to mono if doing a mono record.

One at a time, start saving the songs by:
Set start and finish markers in the waveform
Go to "save selection as", where I choose the file type, destination folder, etc and name the file

It's actually not as hard or time consuming as it sounds.

So far, I haven't bothered with the file tags, but may start in the future.
 
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restorer-john said:
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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Not with GarageBand. It won't let you choose a single track. You can only save the whole project as one file. That's what I've been doing - mute all tracks except one, and export the whole thing as whichever song is the track that's not muted. Then repeat for all the other songs. BUT: I just found out that if one does this, each song will be the length of whatever the longest track is. In other words, if you want to save any of the songs that are shorter than the longest one, they will end up being the length of the longest track - with GB filling in the "unused" time as blank space. UNBELIEVABLY annoying. I ended up trashing hours and hours of work. I'm utterly done with GB and will never touch it again for ripping vinyl from now on.
 
Jeff449 said:
I do it in a totally different way: I have an audio CD recorder in my stereo system . I record the record onto a CDRW, then rip it into my computer with Windows media player. No high resolution format used. This is only for phone and car. I also make a CDR copy of the disc. Then I can erase the CDRW to record another album. Works for me.
Click to expand...
Exactly how I do it .
 
Jeff449 said:
I do it in a totally different way: I have an audio CD recorder in my stereo system . I record the record onto a CDRW, then rip it into my computer with Windows media player. No high resolution format used. This is only for phone and car. I also make a CDR copy of the disc. Then I can erase the CDRW to record another album. Works for me.
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Huh. Nice. I never thought about this. I think the last time I burned a CD was ten or more years ago, so I kind of forgot about CD burners. Sounds like a very elegant solution. Can one simply go into the CD recorder from the "Tape out" jacks in the amp?
 
DesertTwang said:
...Sounds like a very elegant solution. Can one simply go into the CD recorder from the "Tape out" jacks in the amp?...
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They are reasonably elegant. The Yamahas should be able to be found pretty cheaply now I'd say. Sadly however, they need a consumer CDR, some of the Teac units I believe used normal CDRs.

This one uses the music CDRs http://www.teac.com/product/cd-rw890mkii/

This one appears to use any CDR : https://www.storedj.com.au//tascam-...MIma3WvZrr2QIVUo9-Ch37VQmiEAkYAiABEgI7WfD_BwE
 
DesertTwang said:
Can one simply go into the CD recorder from the "Tape out" jacks in the amp?
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Yes, they hook up just like a tape deck.
If you watch the thrifts, CD recorders can be had CHEAP. I don't know why I bought them because I will likely never use them to record much, but I have a JVC that I got for $10 and a Sony that I got for I think $6. I assume that they only take "Music CDRs" instead of regular CDRs. There are ways that some units can be fooled to take regular CDRs, at least so I've read. I never looked very far into it, though. Or just do like the others who have posted and record on Music CDRWs, copy them with the computer, and reuse them.
 
IMO, digitizing vinyl well is tedious and time consuming. The only reason to do it (if your time is worth more than a nickel an hour) is if the material isn't available on CD, or the quality of said CDs is inferior to what you can pull from vinyl. There are many roads to success. First, make sure your vinyl rig is first rate- decent turntable in good repair, quality cartridge and stylus that isn't near the end of its life. I use an old Emu 0202 from the rec out of my preamp, with Audacity. I record each full side as a stereo track. No automatic filters have ever made me happy, so I manually edit the waveforms for pops and clicks. Takes 2-6 hours. Headphones essential to hear defects in sufficient detail. I usually break up the sides into individual tracks and have found Clive Backham's Wave Repair program handy for that. It also has some better filters than other programs, but again, there are many roads to success. http://www.delback.co.uk/wavrep/
 
+1 on Wave Repair, I've been using it for years. For clicks and pops I've found that Creative Wave Studio's works very well. It gets rid of the noise without affecting the sound of the track. For a free WAV editor it's hard to beat.
 
EngineerNate said:
Personally, I just digitize vinyl by the side and leave it at that.
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This is what I do and take the file and mark it side one or two.

I use a Marantz PMD580 and it records like a tape deck to a CF card or directly to the computer. I don't worry about ant editing and the digital copy sounds like I'm listening to a record.
 
I was a DJ back in the late 1970's and early '80's, and I have almost 6000 LP's and about 1400 45's. I had a Mac Desktop and with Roxio's CD spin Doctor. I could use my preamp and turntable with choices of carts. I even used a DBX 118 to 'fix' some issues, and I could switch it out for better S/N. I started in March of 2000, and every Saturday and Sunday I'd get up, make coffee and grab 15-25 LP's and head for the computer and Audio table. I generally used Koss Pro 4aa phones to listen to the quality of the tunes I wanted. Those I played too many times usually got rejected. I'd do this for 2-3 hours every weekend morning for 3 years before I pretty much got everything I wanted. Some weekends I just bailed if I didn't really wanna listen to old music. I also had about 20 cassette tapes of important stuff that I transferred. I saved all tunes as AIFF. I transferred over 2000 individual tunes during that time. I keep at least 3 complete copies on various hard drives, stored away, and 2 active versions on line in my house. Yeah it was a pain.
 
6DZ7 said:
Are you sure you are not confusing the term "track" with "channel?" A stereo recording should have 2 tracks you can see in the editing window. If you have that, then you want to drag the mouse from the beginning of a "cut" to the end of it to "select" the part you want to "save as" or "export to" a seperate file. These are standard editing steps but I don't know if GB works like that.
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The process you describe is exactly what I want to do, but GB won't let me. Unless I'm missing a function, GB doesn't allow to only select a certain cut and export it. One can only export the entire project with all the tracks that have been created as part of that project.

So what people usually do is create one track for each song within the same project, then export the project (as a whole) repeatedly for each and every song. In each export, all the tracks of the other songs have to be muted, and only the track of the song of interest is unmuted. In principle, this works, BUT: I noticed yesterday that GB will export each song to the same length, i.e. the length is dictated by whichever song is the longest of the bunch. All the tracks will be exported as songs of that same length, in other words, the shorter songs end up having dead space at the end. I have not found a workaround for this issue.

The only thing that did work was to create an entire new GB project for each and every song of an album -- which is not a solution as it is much too complicated and time-consuming. Simply ridiculous. I'm done with GarageBand, and after this experience, paying a bit of money for dedicated vinyl ripping software as suggested in this thread seems like a total no-brainer. The time I've already invested in my attempts to get just one single album into iTunes would be worth hundreds of dollars if I was doing it for work.
 
FONSguy said:
I'd do this for 2-3 hours every weekend morning for 3 years before I pretty much got everything I wanted. Some weekends I just bailed if I didn't really wanna listen to old music. ....Yeah it was a pain.
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Thank you for that insight. See, that kills it for me right there. In light of the fact that my first and foremost ambition is improving on the guitar and that my wife and I just had a baby, I think the conclusion here is obvious: Digitizing vinyl is simply not something I should invest time in at this point. My experience over the past few days and the insights provided by you all made that very clear to me. :thumbsup:
 
OK, that guy had 6000 LPs and 1400 45's. It's easy to record as you listen to something and save the file, come back the next day and spend a few minutes finishing out the split and save. It is a whole different thing from the DJ and the experience you've had so far.
 
From someone who did this professionally for a LOT of years.... There is no 'easy' way to transfer vinyl to digital that will sound good (or 'clean'). I still use a variety of programs, depending on the task at hand. I have yet to see one program that 'does it all', let alone does it 'easily'. The first 'hint' I can give you is this however: if you start with a clean record it makes your job a LOT easier. The second hint is to 'practice' - play around with a program for a while until you try to make a CD or anything. But it takes a LOT of time and experience to do it 'right'. But once you've figured it out it goes pretty quickly. I can usually scan and clean the cover digitally while it is played, and finish the audio within an hour of transfer (all cleaned, tracks split, fades, ect.). That all comes with familiarity with your programs and what you want/need to do. One more hint: I've found better programs made by people like the folks that are on here than the larger, well known programs - and for a lot cheaper too.
 
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