Subject:Noise Reduction for LP to Reel-Reel compilation, now to CD

Posted by: Rareburto

Date:8/7/2004 8:43:07 PM

In the 80's and 90's I made compilation reel to reel tapes from LPs (huge amount -about 60 tapes). Now I want to put the reels to CD or DVD. I am concerned if using the Noise Reduction 2.0 plugin would result in more degradation than improvement?

Is Noise Reducton 2.0 a form of DSP (digital signal processing)? I heard that DSP always degrades some of the original sound - I do not know how much? I guess I could try it and judge for myself, but my ears are 55 years old, and I might miss losses that others hear.

When Noise Reduction does its DSP, does it upsample first, then process, then return to original sample, in order to reduce negative effects?

The reels are 4-track 1/4" Maxel tape recorded at 7.5 ips so the sound is pretty good. I think the hiss is roughly -55 db (I am not sure about this number). The LPs varied from below average to very good - typically good, like B+. The LPs were 1980s quality. The LPs would be the weakest link, as the taping was consistently high quality. Do you think Noise Reduction 2.0 is worth doing for a B+ grade LP?

Should I use 16 bit 44.1 kHz if I use Noise Reduction? Thanks in advance for any answers, and for taking the time.

Subject:RE: LP to Reel to Reel to CD

Reply by: RiRo

Date:8/7/2004 10:59:20 PM

yup, noise reduction is worth it. I am familiar with old reel stuff. 7.5 ips is not the best... 15 is better and 30 is wonderful. I think Barry Gudreau (Boston Guitar Player) went solo and mastered an lp 30ips no dolby. Anyway, tapes at 7.5 ips in their best day couldn't do -55 noise floor... and any LP less than pristine will need help.

The NR will take the tape hiss out of the picture pretty well transparent. It also has features to help clean up the LP clicks... and that alone is worth ten times the price of the package.

I have done hundreds of LPs and dozens and dozens of tapes... never done lps that were on a reel... but I've done both sides of the equation, and I wouldn't even start one without NR 2.

The DSP sound degredation you are speaking of is so minimal compared to the old tapes, 7.5 ips, less than pristine vinyl, and who knows what TurnTable and Cartridge...

Get them in at good levels, work your tail off with the NR, and it could sound good. It would be hard to make it sound worse than it sounds now.

and yes, 16/44.1.

RiRo

Subject:RE: LP to Reel to Reel to CD

Reply by: rraud

Date:8/8/2004 10:49:57 AM

In addition to RiRo's solid advice.
On the R-R: If possible do an electronic and head alighnment (by experienced personnel) and of course de-mag and clean the heads often as old tapes shed lots of oxide and binder.
NR- Get a good noise print before processing each reel or alblum.

Subject:RE: LP to Reel to Reel to CD

Reply by: Rareburto

Date:8/8/2004 3:40:19 PM

Great answer. Thank you very much. I was very happy, and somewhat awed to get a reply. This is fantastic.

So you made it clear that the benefits of Noise Reduction 2.0 far far outweigh any degradation in my case. It sounds like you might recommend NR even on a grade "A" LP going direct to CD (even without the tape and its noise).

I am thinking I would first do a tape noise sample and reduction, and it would apply to the whole tape. ¿ Since I use the same tape brand model and speed, would it apply to the whole 60 reel tape collection? (The Spanish put a question mark on both ends of questions. That way when you read it in your mind, you make it a high pitched questionny voice from the start. :-)

But for LPs recorded on the tape may be 10 times more tedious, since I only recorded about 3 songs per LP, therefore about 10 LPs one one tape. ¿To use vinyl NR, would I have to do a new noise sample for each time the LP changed (roughly 10 times per tape)?

I am guessing the answer is yes. So now I'm faced with spending a huge amount of time for each tape. No pain, no gain. Maybe I'll try one or two tapes and see how much time it takes.

The step I am doing now, transfer from reel to computer, is not too time consuming since the reel runs on its own for 90 minutes and I can do other things. But the effort to do noise reduction, beyond tape hiss, sounds almost as time consuming as when I copied the LPs to the reels, which in my young days was fun, but very time consuming.

You said tapes at 7.5 ips could not do -55db noise floor. ¿Do you think it is just typical advertising garbage that the printed specs on my Akai GX-635D says "Signal to noise Ratio: Better than 62 DB DIN 45500" ? I will pay more attention to the wave graphic on Soundforge -- I think it will give me an idea of the noise level. Thanks again.

I asked President Bush what is the difference between Engineers and Architects. He said Engineers make weapons, and Architects make ..... targets.

Subject:RE: LP to Reel to Reel to CD

Reply by: colinu

Date:8/9/2004 5:52:53 AM

You might be best served by just doing the transfers, normalize 'em, then copy them to CD (or data DVD). If something happens to your hard drive, you don't have to redo the transferring. You also have something that you can pop in your CD player and listen to. Come back to them as you have time, and do the NR, etc. Oh, leave the gaps between the tracks intact, you will probably want to sample them later to get your noiseprint.

Subject:RE: LP to Reel to Reel to CD

Reply by: Chaim

Date:8/9/2004 10:05:49 AM

Hi Rareburto,

Don't have near the experience or skill of a lot of folks in this room, having restored only about a 100 or so LP's. But, here's a suggestion. Using Sound Forge's "regions" capability, accurately mark the begginning and end of each song. "Extract regions" will create the individual wav files you'll need to burn your CDs. I find this the most tedious aspect of restoration work. Once done, save the file, which is non-destructive since SF saves the region list as meta data in a separate file. Make a copy (i.e. "save as"), and work on the copy. If you ever want to revert to the original, a lot of work is already done and won't have to be repeated. One more tip: there's a bug in SF that won't let you save the file unless you do an actual edit to the file (marking regions doesn't modify the source file). Simply "cut" a few samples from the begginning or end of the file, then it will save just fine.

Chaim

Subject:RE: LP to Reel to Reel to CD

Reply by: rraud

Date:8/9/2004 11:11:08 AM

since I only recorded about 3 songs per LP, therefore about 10 LPs one one tape. ¿To use vinyl NR, would I have to do a new noise sample for each time the LP changed (roughly 10 times per tape)?
- Probably not.

Subject:RE: LP to Reel to Reel to CD

Reply by: Rareburto

Date:8/9/2004 5:14:07 PM

Would you normalize it even though:
1) It is from LPs which were mastered and normalized
2) I recorded to tape at a decent high level.
3) I recorded to hard drive at a decent high level?

I admit I could probably increase them an average of roughly 3 db to 5 db, but is it worth it considering the losses due to additional processing? Other posts are implying the losses due to processing are negligible compared to the benefits, but maybe each different type of processing and different application makes for a different loss to benefit ratio. I saw some posts that led me to believe normalizing often degrades the sound. How do you feel about it?

Subject:RE: LP to Reel to Reel to CD

Reply by: rraud

Date:8/9/2004 5:54:28 PM

It sounds like you have done everything right so far, (good levels ect.), so any process degradation will be less audible. Well recorded, transfered / digitized files hold up much better than poorily done ones.
Would you normalize it even though.............?
Opinions may differ, however I would "Peak-Normalize" -.05 to -.00 dB as a final process by alblum blocks of songs.
Apparent loudness may still vary from alblum to alblum.

Subject:RE: Splitting tracks

Reply by: farss

Date:8/12/2004 8:27:42 AM

I recently had to do this and it's a most tedious process and nothing in SF or Vegas helps. However (please no laughing!) I found the answer, WaveBreaker from Blaze Audio, think it's about USD10, even comes with a fully functional 30 day trial. This little program saved me untold hours so the money was very well spent.
I know you all probably don't think much of Blaze but all this program is doing is splitting the .wav file, no data gets changed.

Bob.

Subject:RE: Splitting tracks

Reply by: Rareburto

Date:8/12/2004 11:29:56 PM

There is a post named "Creating CD tracks" just a few items down below this one, that explains how to do it in Sound Forge. It also is at
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=307021&Replies=3&Page=0
It explains how to break up the single wave file into many tracks. Is WaveBreaker better, easier, or automated more?