Vinyl rips - Best practice?

Commander

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Hi all,

I have been on a little mission of ripping some of my vinyl into wavs (convert to flac afterwards) using my Traktor S4 controller. When ripping vinyl i tend to have the Traktor main levels, recorder levels and the gains just out of the red so they don't clip. I have my decks set to 0 pitch and the eq levels set in neutral.

How do you guys go about ripping you collection (if you do that is) and is there a way to make them sound even better? I have heard about platinum notes but never gave it any thought.

Also is there a way to make the BPM more accurate when reading in Traktor?

Thanks all

CMDR
 
I rip through my s4 (and put into platinum notes as you know). The channel volume gain is on about +9 because the phono input seems to be extremely quiet.

You can warp them in ableton afterwards to get more precise bpm's figures if required.
 
Ive used platinum notes on all my tracks and never thought much of it. Other than fiddling with gains a bit less I didnt notice anything, might do worlds of good for vinyl ripping though.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk
 
If you wanna make sure your vinyl rips are all 100% on the money in terms of their bpm (so 174.00 for example) you'll need to rip the vinyl as a wav and then load it into Traktor and tempo sync it with an mp3/wav/flac which is the exact bpm you're after, then record your vinyl rip at the new precise tempo. That's the best and most accurate way I can think of to do it although I don't actually bother myself as the tempo's usually only out a tiny bit and you never really notice the difference.

I personally always rip my vinyl in Audacity and then use the "click removal" tool to clean up any pops/clicks etc., really handy and can actually leave you with something that sounds better than your vinyl does!

I remember looking at Platinum Notes and it being pretty vague about what it actually does, so I didn't go with it.

Hope this helps mate!
 
I rip through my s4 (and put into platinum notes as you know). The channel volume gain is on about +9 because the phono input seems to be extremely quiet.

You can warp them in ableton afterwards to get more precise bpm's figures if required.

cool cheers mate. Yes mine was quiet too but I bought a new pair of needles (ortofon scratch) and the levels are now loud!

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If you wanna make sure your vinyl rips are all 100% on the money in terms of their bpm (so 174.00 for example) you'll need to rip the vinyl as a wav and then load it into Traktor and tempo sync it with an mp3/wav/flac which is the exact bpm you're after, then record your vinyl rip at the new precise tempo. That's the best and most accurate way I can think of to do it although I don't actually bother myself as the tempo's usually only out a tiny bit and you never really notice the difference.

I personally always rip my vinyl in Audacity and then use the "click removal" tool to clean up any pops/clicks etc., really handy and can actually leave you with something that sounds better than your vinyl does!

I remember looking at Platinum Notes and it being pretty vague about what it actually does, so I didn't go with it.

Hope this helps mate!

That sounds like a lot of work haha! Do you use an s4 to record in audacity?
 
cool cheers mate. Yes mine was quiet too but I bought a new pair of needles (ortofon scratch) and the levels are now loud!

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That sounds like a lot of work haha! Do you use an s4 to record in audacity?

Sorry I'm talking rubbish mate, I actually use Serato to rip the vinyl originally, then load the file into Audacity to trim the recording start and finish properly, use the click removal, then normalize it (make it as loud as possible without clipping).

But yeah unfortunately I'm sure the majority of turntables out there won't run at exactly e.g. 174.00bpm with the pitch set at zero, so if you want your vinyl rips to be right on the money that's really the only way to do it.

To be honest though it's not really a problem unless you can't mix by ear and are relying on all the numbers to match up..
 
Sorry I'm talking rubbish mate, I actually use Serato to rip the vinyl originally, then load the file into Audacity to trim the recording start and finish properly, use the click removal, then normalize it (make it as loud as possible without clipping).

But yeah unfortunately I'm sure the majority of turntables out there won't run at exactly e.g. 174.00bpm with the pitch set at zero, so if you want your vinyl rips to be right on the money that's really the only way to do it.

To be honest though it's not really a problem unless you can't mix by ear and are relying on all the numbers to match up..

Haha cheers geez, very well explained. I'm a bit of a perfectionist in regards to rips sounding as good as possible hence the bpm read. Thanks for your help, will download audacity & give it a go
 
Haha cheers geez, very well explained. I'm a bit of a perfectionist in regards to rips sounding as good as possible hence the bpm read. Thanks for your help, will download audacity & give it a go

No worries mate just post up on here if you need any more help and I'll do my best.
 
So before you use click removal you wanna normalize the recording, which you actually do by using the "Amplify" option (bit weird I know but this works better I think).

So on the far left hand side next to the wave of your recording you have a little box with some info inside it, so click on the box until it turns blue and it'll highlight the whole recording for you...

Then choose the amplify option and press ok and that'll normalize the track for you.

Then I always just use the click removal on the default setting which seems to work absolutely fine, and then after I've used that I'll amplify it again just to make sure it's as loud as it can be as the click removal might have taken out some nasty peaks so there's now a bit more room to make it louder again.

Hope this helps mate.
 
Thanks mate, I was just using the normalise function in the effects section which worked fine.

Yeah can use that as well it's just that's set to bring the recording up to -1db by default where as amplify takes it right up to zero, but both's fine.
 
do you use elliptical needles when ripping? apparently they are far superior for doing it.

I didn't know audacity had a click removal feature? is it just one of the effect options like normalize?
 
Yeah can use that as well it's just that's set to bring the recording up to -1db by default where as amplify takes it right up to zero, but both's fine.

Thanks mate, definitely noticed an improvement in sound quality. Much appreciate your assistance

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do you use elliptical needles when ripping? apparently they are far superior for doing it.

I didn't know audacity had a click removal feature? is it just one of the effect options like normalize?

I just use ortofon scratch which are more or less brand new. Very good sound quality

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do you use elliptical needles when ripping? apparently they are far superior for doing it.

I didn't know audacity had a click removal feature? is it just one of the effect options like normalize?

I just use ortofon scratch which are more or less brand new. Very good sound quality
 
do you use elliptical needles when ripping? apparently they are far superior for doing it.

I didn't know audacity had a click removal feature? is it just one of the effect options like normalize?

Yeah man I'm not sure if it was there in some of the older versions but it's definitely there in the latest update and works a treat, don't even have to fiddle with any settings.

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Thanks mate, definitely noticed an improvement in sound quality. Much appreciate your assistance

No worries mate happy ripping.
 
Back to ripping more vinyl! Any other practices not me tioned above to get the best possible quality rips? Not fussed about loudness but want them sounding clean
 
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