Automated Tape/LP Processing

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mainemoose77
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Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2005 11:03 am

Automated Tape/LP Processing

Post by mainemoose77 »

Automated tape/LP processing:
I am thrilled with the features and functionality of GoldwaveTM, but I find myself repeating the same instructions. It would be useful for tape and LP recording if there were a wizard or control window for this process which would:
Place ½ second of silence at beginning of session, then waits for sound to begin recording to Untitled.wav file.
Stops recording when silence or tick-tick (end of LP), places 1 second of silence between end of first side and second side, continues recording automatically when sound resumes even if operator is indisposed at time of side change.
Stops recording at end of second side.
Automatically processes file for Silence Reduction, Maximize (Normalize), adds a cue point at beginning of file and then runs Autocue.
At this point a window would appear which allows the user to name the cue points (Song Titles), and fill in ID3v1 Data for tape/LP (I would hope the Tab and Enter keys would be used to move from cue point to cue point, and though the fill in blanks in the window). The opportunity to change all information, add and delete cue points and make changes in the wav file would be needed.
Finally when all is correct clicking on FINISH would save the split files to disk under the proper default directory with cue names as song titles using the album name as the directory name, all songs saved in MP3 format.

All of these features exist in GoldwaveTM, and only need to be aggregated into one functional block. AudiograbberTM has similar features in it’s “Line in Sampling Mode”, but it splits the files on-the-fly (often in the wrong place with no option to repair the mistake). AudiograbberTM is still my favorite MP3 ripper and Nero TM is still my favorite burner, and I highly recommend them. AudiograbberTM is FREE (but worth good money), and Nero TM is worth their asking price just as a burner. GoldwaveTM, is my choice to convert tape/LPs to MP3 and to edit/modify files. Even manually GoldwaveTM, is worth paying for, as I have (and I am stingy).
DewDude420
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Post by DewDude420 »

I hope you're doing this for personal consumption, because if you want to automate a restoration process, then i feel sorry for anyone who listens to your recordings.

goldwave has been my audio editor of choice for many years, however, the one area i will say it lacks on is pop/click repair. it's..acceptable to a point, if you have a lot of clicks close to gether or some rather large wide clicks the interpolation method can leave some subtle strange "tape crinkle" like effects. for my serious work restoration i use JD Klien's ClickFix plugin for Audition, it's a more costly route but avoids the tape crinkle effect.

I do use goldwave's pop/click for noise reduction. I generally do a noise reduction step in Goldwave and one in Audition and see which one did better, because it each one does various types of noise better.

But see, I also back off on processing at times and allow a little noise if it means keeping the original feel. I also do everything in 96/24 (Audigy 2 ZS card....$99...plays 192/24 and records 96/24)

But anwyay, each vinyl and album is different, so, i always go the slow route when doing my work.

But...if you really wanted to, you could probably knock out a few steps. Provided the input from your preamp is clean and produces nearly 0 noise and your phonograph has good grounding, you can use the automated level record feature to tell it to record as soon as the level jumps a bit and to stop recording so many seconds after it stops. Since there will always be some noise of the needle rubbing the groove, the gap between tracks shouldn't cause it to stop recording, unless you have it set to some insanely high level, start low and play around.

And i'm sure you could possibly do some of the other stuff in batch processing perhaps?

just a suggestion.

-jay
greenlead
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Joined: Tue Sep 21, 2004 11:48 am

Post by greenlead »

I need this as well. My church has thousands of cassettes that I want to add to a data library, and I don't want to have to edit them all by hand.

Automation would make me very, very happy. :D

(would the PlusDeck help with this at all?)
Sterterdickderup10
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Post by Sterterdickderup10 »

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[spam link deleted]
Stiiv
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Joined: Sat May 15, 2004 7:29 pm
Location: Fallentown, PA

Post by Stiiv »

Now THAT'S helpful. :roll: Though I hear there's a scene in the movie where Shakira digitizes her record collection. :wink:

One thing I've noticed when digitizing lp's & tapes is that no one pop/click setting (or any noise reduction setting) works well with more than 1 track or album. When I was encoding my old punk/new wave singles, I found that a setting that worked well with one tune sounded awful on another. I bit the bullet & painstakingly adjusted settings for each 45, & I'm glad I did.
Stiiv
michal
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Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2008 6:54 am

Post by michal »

You can write the plugin.
Then you will see that FULLY automation process is not possible. BUT if someone spend lot of time to tune up whole thing it can work fine with little handy postprocessing. :)
DewDude420
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Post by DewDude420 »

the problem is not with automation, but the fact that automation can only do so much...it might not be able to compensate for various factors. FFT is complex (or simple), either way, if you're trying to automatically do a lot of things, you have to tell FFT what to look for...and not everything looks the same. No two clicks are the same, no two instances of noise are the same..so you REALLY have to do a lot of manual tweaking.

The closest I've come to automation is using the "mastering rack" (VST stacker) in Audition. I still had to run click-fix seperately, however, i was able to utilize a couple of NR plugins and adjusted them the best i could...then was able to do restoration and mastering in one step...the results didn't come out that well..which is why i stated a while back that you really don't want to do things automatically.

This is why you get different requirements for various tracks. Each type of recording is different, the types of noise aren't always the same. You gotta understand that two of the same type of noise might look differnet to an FFT filter depending on the audio that's mixed with it. Most auto-plugins generally look for silence, then noise in that silence to pick it as a "valid" repsentation...

but no, there's no one-click solution and untill we have star-trek level technology...restoration is still going to be a slow pain-staking task...that's why it takes people willing to go through the repative actions AND someone with a good enough ear to know what to listen for and some general idea of how to attack the noise.
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