Converting Vinyl into Digital Recordings pt2 - cleaning

Taking on the ‘crap in, crap out’ homily, it follows that cleaning the record properly before recording it means a considerable reduction in crackle and pop.

In fact, the manufacturing process for vinyl leaves a fair amount of chemical residue in the grooves in any case, so there is an argument for properly cleaning a record before it is ever played. The traditional methods of cleaning, bristle brush or anti static pad, do remove a fair amount of dirt - the rest, they redistribute, deep into the grooves, where the needle grinds it into the playing surface…

The professional cleaning system is essentially a two phase process. A cleaning fluid is applied and worked into the grooves by firm application of a brush, while the record rotates - this spreads the cleaning fluid across the whole surface. The nature of the fluid is a question for debate - some favour distilled water, others a chemical mixture which is supposed to work on a similar principal to shampoo - ever noticed how clean your fingernails are after washing your hair?

The VPI system I use, supplies a chemical mix and the bristle brush required to work it into the grooves. The machine rotates the record on a turntable powered by a very powerful motor - the power is converted into torque, not speed - the record is rotated at a constant low speed,  the brush held firmly enough to  slightly bend the bristles against the record. A few drops of the solution across the record are enough to spread a film over the whole playing surface -  avoid getting the solution onto the label.

The second phase employs a vacuum cleaner to lift the solution, dirt and all off the playing surface. The VPI deploys a hollow cylinder, padded with velvet to prevent scratching the surface of the record. The residue is sucked off the record and deposited into a steel tank inside the device - this can be emptied periodically.

Once the solution has been spread across the record, move the vacuum arm above the record and flick the vacuum switch - a noise like a jumbo jet will terrify small animals, but the record will be spotless. Allow the record to rotate twice, any more than this will cause static to build up and any dust in the vicinity of the record will immediately attach itself to the surface…. be aware that if the record was visibly dirty then some dust will be present inside the inner sleeve. Many people replace the inner sleeve - use one with a clear polythene lining, the paper ones scratch….

Converting Vinyl into Digital recordings pt 1

After many false starts, blind alleys etc, I think I’ve more or less got this sorted so - this post and several more will attempt to document the exact process, hardware and software used to create high quality digital audio files from vinyl.

The Hardware

• VP1 Record Cleaner
• Technics SL 1210 MkII Turntable
• ART Accessories USB Phono plus
• 1 Nikkai USB A to USB B Cable
• 1 Nikkai Stereo 3.5mm Jack to Twin Phono Lead
• 1 Soundblaster Live! Sound Card
• Dell Dimension PC 256mb Memory
• Altec Lansing Multimedia Speakers

Software

• Vinyl Studio (www.alpinesoft.co.uk)
• dbPowerAmp Music Converter

Most of the hardware I already owned - but I heed the words of a wise old sound engineer from my DJ’ing days - ‘Garbage in, Garbage out’ he would mutter, as I insisted on soundchecking the newest Alien Sex Fiend 12 inch… he had a point, though it took me quite a while to appreciate it.

The VP1 record cleaner is therefore first on the list. You might think £450 is a lot to pay for a record cleaner, but this device is the closest thing to magic I’ve come across - the secret is in the vacuuming, using conventional bristle or cloth cleaners on a recored simply moves the dust around or worse, pushes it deep into the grooves. Unless a record is actually scratched, this device will pretty much restore vinyl to its original condition. As an ex DJ, much of my vinyl is severely manhandled, nightclubs are not the most vinyl friendly environment, so this device is worth it’s considerable weight in gold.

The Technics SL1210 is similarly a souvenir of the DJ’ing days - still the turntable of choice in the DJ’ing trade due to extreme robustness and simplicity - you simply can’t go wrong with a deck of this quality.

Art Accessories USB Phono+ is the pre-amp that the record player requires to amplify the signal enough to make it usable. This handy device is very straightforward to set up - connect the deck to the inputs, the outputs to your sound card using the Nikkai Stereo 3.5mm Jack to Twin Phono Lead, which takes stereo output from the Technics into a single stereo input for your soundcard. The Device can be powered from the USB port of the PC.

The Art Accessories product comes with a music editing package called Audacity. This I found to be effective, but tedious to use. I elected to use Vinyl Studio instead, for the simple reason that Vinyl Studio will estimate the track breaks, edit out the ‘thump’ of the needle dropping and download the track listing from amazon if it’s available. The reason this is important is that recording the vinyl gives you two humongous .wav files - one for each side. These need to be split into individual tracks before converting to the format of your choice. Vinyl Studio outputs to .wav and .mp3 only. This is where dbPowerAmp Music converter earns it’s crust.

That explains the components - next post will start detailing the process.

Noise Cancelling Headphones

Carefully balancing the danger of resembling a North London pikey against the desirability of actually being able to hear my music above the roar of the aeroplanes I spend so much time in, I tentatively took the plunge on my way to Orlando last week and shelled out for a pair of Sony MDR NC60 Noise Cancelling Headphones.

The difference between these and the ‘bud’ phones I’m used to using is extraordinary. The stats boast 85% noise reduction - I’d happily concur and add to that crisp, clean bass reproduction, comfort and a range of plug adapters designed to allow use in aeroplanes, with domestic hi-fi and I-Pod and the £100 price tag begins to look reasonable.

From the users perspective, with noise cancelling switched on, background noise is almost entirely screened out. Powered by a single AAA battery, this is a feature worth its weight in gold. I tested these phones on a transatlantic flight, with a Sony Network Walkman playing a mixture of rock, country, blues and jazz - no complaints at all. Listening to the in flight movie  only highlighted the paucity of the visual arrangements - wide sound stage, great clarity.

In summary, I’m a convert - I fly at least twice a week and these headphones will substantially add to the quality of my life in airports and aeroplane.

Whats Hot - Slim Devices Transporter

What’s Hot

Slim Devices (taken over by Logitech) Transporter

This is the most radical advance in Hi Fi technology since Sony came up with the Walkman. The Transporter is a wireless enabled receiver armed with a DAC (digital audio converter) capable of delivering streamed music to a high end hi fi with no audible (to these 50 year old ears) penalty whatsoever. Stylish in brushed aluminium orblack finishes, this device has transformed the way I listen to music.

The server side is free software called slimserver which provides the stream for one or more of these boxes to pick up (there is a smaller, budget version called Squeezebox). Slimserver will serve a number of formats including MP3, but more significantly the lossless format FLAC.

There are a number of free software applications out there which help rip the music from CD’s or converters which convert downloaded formats into the one you prefer to use - this only works one way - you could convert MP3 to FLAC, but you wouldn’t gain anything in quality.

The server scans your music library and then allows searching via Artist, Album, Song or random plays. It is random playing which is the CD killer - I have collected music for over forty years - my first purchase was ‘Well Respected Kinks’ back in 1964 and have accumulated over 1000 CD’s alone - however as my career focus moved from music to IT, my listening habits narrowed until I found myself with a stack of maybe ten or fifteen CD’s - always the latest purchases on top of the Hi Fi, a small rack to one side and a room upstairs for all the rest - result was 95% of the collection was rarely utilised. So paying a willing teenager to feed rip CD’s at weekends I enabled my collection in under 12 months and using the randomiser provided in the slimserver program, I am now listening to a much wider range of music than I have for years.

Upgrading RAIDiator on ReadyNAS

So this was a nail biting exercise - over 20,000 music tracks stored and only 50% backed up. The instructions on the NetGear site promised seamless execution, so taking a deep breath I selected ‘Remote Update’ from the admin console and then decided to browse the support pages while the 500mb download took place. Big mistake - tales of woe and wipeout - the phrase ‘expensive brick’ cropping up - in short everything I didn’t want to hear.

No way to back out of the process, so cross fingers and wait - a couple of hours later, message flashes up to reboot the device. The upgrade delivered a new version of Slimserver, so several hours elapsed as it re-catalogued the collection. On completion, I looked at the playlist, surprised it had survived the upgrade and noticed that the song titles and artists were out of sync - generating a new playlist took care of that.

Both Transporter and Squeezebox then upgraded their firmware to match the new slimserver version - no human intervention required and on starting demonstrated that the old ’synch’ problem appeared to have been resolved - very impressive - I can only imagine the tales of woe on various message boards were the result of people panicking and rebooting before the process was completed. It took me about 7 hours, including the re-cataloguing of the music. Note to NetGear - some kind of progress meter or logging output would be nice…