Ive started digitising some of my vinyl, specifically tracks that aren’t available to buy as digital files.
Im recording in Serato as an AIF file then using Audacity to ‘normalise’ the tracks.
What’s everyones recommendation for normalise settings and export? Ive found -0.1db to be a little quiet for the normalise but I don’t want to risk clipping the file, 0db seems to work well but isn’t recommended on various forums… ive exported as 320kb MP3 for now but happy to do uncompressed (with a concern about compatibility with various players/platforms when I want to use the track) if people think there is a standard format that will work across all gear and store metadata.
Export as a wav and go from there. If you export direct as an mp3 then its already lossy
Icer to have tbe full range as you have with the vinyl to start with.
Settings wise i would say go at zero on all then tweak the file as you have it.
WAVs are pretty terrible for metadata though aren’t they? I was considering AIFF or FLAC but certain CDJs don’t recognise them and I can’t guarantee I won’t come across those models in the field.
I understand MP3 is lossy but is it the best all round option purely for ensuring the file will play on all players, and store all the data I’d like to store in the file info.
Keep as a lossless format in my master collection at home. I use AIFF or Apple lossless as both support metadata & artwork.
Convert to 320kbps mp3 before they go on my DJing drive. Yes I could use a lossless format to DJ with. But 320 mp3 is the right compromise between file size & sound quality for me.
Cheers, and what about the normalise process in Audacity etc, what DB level would you suggest? The file I’ve created today sounds fantastic but it’s quiet. That was at 0db.
Remember, your normalising to any sudden peaks or clicks in your audio. So if i’ve got a few obvious spikes, I’ll sometimes zoom right in & lower them by 4db or so, then normalise again.
Also, if you’re looking for another free alternative to audacity, have a look at ocenaudio. It’s very basic, but if you’ve ever messed around with adobe audition, it will seem instantly familiar.
Ahh that makes sense, so those odd peaks here and there are actually potentially restricting the rest of the file from lifting. I’ll have a another go later.
Got some old 45s that are mega quiet and would benefit from being raised.
WAV’s officially don’t have a written meta-data standard, but I don’t have any issues with TagScanner to see the right meta-data on all devices I use.
Instead of normalize, I’d use a loudness maximizer to get some more perceived volume. Don’t overdo this btw. In any case, make sure the “master” file isn’t higher than -3dBFS, because encoding to your suggested MP3 will create unwanted peaks so you need some dB of padding.
If you stay at WAV, AIFF or FLAC, you might as well maximize at near 0dBFS.
This is true. AIFF and FLAC are the way to go for lossless.
The gold standard for digital archiving fidelity is to not go higher than -3dBFS to prevent all intersample peak errors and to only increase in increments of 6dB. So if your max peak is already above -9dBFS, you wouldn’t even bother. In that case you only do doubling of volume and trimming. Considering you’re digitizing vinyl probably using DJ-quality carts & phono preamps and want to probably maximize loudness in a convenient way with consistency, then just normalize up to like -1 or -1.5 dBFS using the normalize function, and preferably obviously using lossless formats and even 24/48 recording directly into an audio editor if you can. As others have noted, repairing or separately adjusting individual noise peaks’ volume would help bring the average level up when you finally normalize. The more you repair, the more you can bring the RMS or LUFS of the track up so it seems ‘louder’. The actual normalization to max peak only account for so much of this loudness, and obviously you’re literally running up against a brick wall for how much you can normalize if you don’t deal with the errant pops first. If you want to get really aggressive and don’t want to bother with fidelity or messing with repairs or changing the volume on errant peaks, then you can also normalize to an RMS in some software.
Thanks for the responses, I’ll do a bit of experimenting.
Im using a Shure M44-7 to record the sound as I found the Ortofon Digitals to be too loud, especially with higher frequencies, ideal for control vinyl, not ideal for music.
I played back the 320kb MP3 and whilst I had to turn the trim up on the Radius 4 quite far it did sound really clean with no particular issues.
The M44-7 is a repurposed old juke box cartridge from way back. It’s very good at not skipping, being durable, and still being reasonable sounding. You might want to pick up a single Ortofon OM5E for the purpose of archiving. It’s got only a moderate voltage output compared to some of these carts so you don’t have to worry about overloading the preamps, lower FIM distortion than the average DJ stylus if you set it up correctly on an S-arm (that raspy thing that happens to the right channel with insufficient downforce for a given cantilever mass or when alignment is off), will get in past some of the wear caused by spherical DJ tips on your records, will have a more extended high frequency response without being harsh (assuming the preamp is good enough), and is quite cheap… at least the last time I tried to buy one. Not sure what they’re going for now. You can do better, but those better ones are now much more expensive than they used to be. You’d probably get a huge leap from something like a little OM5E. If I had a few dozen bucks to spend for transferring vinyl, I’d spend it on that first rather than a better phono preamp or some other cart. If you already have an Ortofon OM or Concorde body, you could just get a 5E tip to try. Doesn’t matter whether it’s the original or the Super (Mk2 DJ) line, but the latest Ortofon DJ bodies I believe use a completely different shape and won’t work with these hifi tips. Should be even easier to find in Europe.
That is the plan to pick up a single cart, especially seeing as Shure stylus no longer exist so I have to rely on Jenko ones, just got other stuff to pay for at the minute. The ortofon OM was the exact one on my radar as they are good value.
Yeah put into better explanation. Have the wav and use say foobar to convert. It kepos all meta stored in wav which is something not a lot of converters do
Denon of Japan moving coils maybe sound closer to the digital reference master that you’d nowadays make vinyl out of, but Grados sound massive, glowing, so warm, and vinyl. Funny thing… one of the few other companies that made any low inductance moving iron carts like Grado specializes in was Stanton, but the latter only made a couple of those variety. This low inductance MI stuff makes them pretty much immune to phono preamp capacitance ‘loading’ characteristics that can do weird stuff to the high frequencies sometimes. Unlike Grado, Stanton also usually used nickel in their cart bodies that did a decent job preventing RF interference from the motor and power supply that can be problematic on Grados with some direct drive turntables. Guess who now owns Stanton? Jack O’Donnell actually worked at Stanton way back before buying Numark. He came all the way back around. It’d be neat to have an InMusic cart like the DJ200i but with better back cueing and more RF shielding for all the non-Technics out there and people who are ham-handed like me. It’d probably be crazy expensive to develop and produce for the modern DJ market, though.
Over the tears, for archiving purposes, I’ve found Stantons sound too warm & coloured. Ortofons seem to have a flatter cleaner (more “CD” like?) response.
Their high inductance MI carts were very colored like that.
I can’t think of a company that made a larger variety of cartridges or tips than Stanton in its heyday. Stanton cartridges apparently defied uniform categorization, other than their later problems.
The 500 series, for instance, was certainly not a warm-sounding cartridge and was freakishly flat except for some of the DJ tips rolling off a bit on top. If the 500Emk2 was a crude indication of their older stuff, it must have been amazing. Unfortunately I couldn’t get any of the 500 tips low enough distortion and was too worried about damaging the vinyl further, but some claimed they used to be amazing, and the 500 was one of their cheapest.
They were certainly hit or miss depending on the design, but when they hit they still often required good preamp matching, knowing how to adjust the VTA incline, or getting more than enough downforce. I didn’t use them until like after 2000, though. Their replacement styluses reduced in variety and quality as time went on, including when they started offshoring before they completely shut down cartridge production.
I also never did get to try their low inductance MI design, but it should have measured pretty flat, had low distortion, and been tolerant of preamp differences. People still flip out when they come upon new old stock various Stanton models they used like 40+ years ago or something.
Record into audition, run a noise map to eliminate any motor noise and surface noise, pro-q3 to subtractive eq out any coloring, use Elysia master compressor, then pro-L aiming for -14 to -16 lufs.
