Subject:right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Posted by: wynton

Date:11/13/2006 6:36:43 AM

I'm wondering whether I was sold the best Sony for my limited needs, which is merely to record my vinyl, clean it up and convert it to digital.

More specifically, I assumed I just needed one program to: (1) record/capture the vinyl; (2) split up the tracks; and (3) do these tasks, while using a plugin - such as Sound Soap - to perform the clean up process. For these purposes, I was persuaded to purchase Acid Music Studio.

But after purchasing, I realized that most of Acid Music Studio is directed to recording instruments or doing other tasks. Moreover, I have struggled to find simple instructions for the limited tasks I want to perform.

Was there more appropriate Sony software I should have been sold instead? And if Music Studio really does make sense, can someone point me in a general direction for real simple instructions for my needs?

Thank you.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: vespesian

Date:11/13/2006 7:26:28 AM

Try Sound Forge instead.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:11/13/2006 9:13:15 AM

As vespesian mentioned, Sound Forge and its digital audio editing ability may be more up your alley. (You can also use Sound Forge in conjunction with ACID.)

Iacobus

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: jumbuk

Date:11/13/2006 8:29:34 PM

Definitely Sound Forge, preferably with the Sony Noise Reduction plugin bundled, if you can get a package.

Sound Forge will enable you to record and break up your tracks. It includes some basic crackle removing plugins. Sony Noise Reduction is a very good plugin for removing noise based on sampling a bit of noise during the "silence" between tracks.

Acid Music Studio is definitely not what you should have been sold, although you could do it - just doesn't make a lot of sense, as you have noticed.

PS Sound Forge 8 includes CD Architect 5.0, which is ideal for burning your vinyl tracks onto CD once you have them recorded and cleaned up.

If the SF8 package is too expensive, you might look at the cheaper Sound Forge Studio.

Edit: Just checked out SF Audio Studio - it's only $69.95, and it includes the Express FX™ Vinyl Restoration tool. You might take back Music Stduio and ask for an exchange.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: JohnnyRoy

Date:11/14/2006 4:53:47 AM

Sound Forge is the correct tool for that job. As jumbuk pointed out, even the $69 Sound Forge Studio version can handle this with ease.

~jr

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: BradlyMusic

Date:11/14/2006 10:22:12 AM

Acid Music Studio will do everything you need. Most people just prefer to do this type of work in Sound Forge, as you probably noticed from the replies. Acid Music Studio might even be a better recommendation for the price compared to Sound Forge Studio which is at the same price point. The reason is because Acid Music supports Disc-at-Once CD burning. Which means you can put CD track IDs at the beginning of each song and have the songs broken up according to the Vinyl. With Sound Forge, it only supports "Track-at-once" CD burning. Which means, that for each file you capture it only burns that file to the CD without track IDs. So to overcome the track-at-once burning limitation, you would additionally need to break the recording up into several smaller files. Track-at-once also puts 2 seconds of silence between each track when you burn the files to CD, which means it would sound unnatural if you where playing the entire album back in it's entirity, because you would hear Vinyl noise followed by complete silence at the end and beginning of each song.

So going against what everyone else is recommending, Acid is actually the more simpler tool to get the job done. It just has a lot of other features that are not relevant to what you are trying to acomplish, where Sound Forge is more specialized in this type of task.

Here's what you should do in Acid.
1. Plug your output from the turn table into your sound cards input.
2. Select your sound cards input to record from in Acid.
3. Record the audio, which will then be placed on to an audio track in Acid.
4. Place "Sound Soap" into that audio tracks insert, and make adjustments to remove unwanted noise.
5. Place CD tracks IDs, by hitting the "N" button on your keyboard at the beginning of each song.
6. Burn a "Disc-at-once" audio CD.

Acid actually requires less steps, so it is a good recommendation for doing this more quickly and keeping it "simple" as you metioned. Sound Forge just gives you more sergical precision tools to work on the audio once you have it recorded and requires more steps to get it onto CD.

If you have any questions, about doing any of the above steps that I outlined then just ask and we can point you in the right direction. Sound Forge is not necessarily the right tool, for this job. It's the more complex tool for this job. Acid is actually more right for this job in my opinion, because you don't need additional tools to get the Disc-at-once feature support, and you don't need to do a lot of additional work to get it onto CD and you don't have to worry about playback problems where the original recording would sound very unnatural. There are ways to overcome those items in Sound Forge, but it requires a lot of extra steps. So whoever sold you the Acid Studio, knew what they where talking about.

The items 1&3 that you mentioned are pretty much done the same in Acid and Sound Forge. It's Item #2, that you will have a lot more work to accomplish in Sound Forge compared to doing it in Acid for the reasons I listed above.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: wynton

Date:11/14/2006 12:13:03 PM

Thanks for the replies.

I just returned from the vendor, who explained some things to me (after it became apparent the store did not have Sound Forge on stock, and also had some return issues).

Now, I feel I have somewhat of a concept how to accomplish my task. At this early point, I still have the feeling that Music Studio may be more complicated in the simplest of tasks.

If I understood the merchant correctly, the process of cutting up tracks from a vinyl album involves using the paint tool to eliminate everything but the single track I want, and then rendering it. That process sounds a lot slower to me than simply inserting break points and labeling each section a different track.

My end game here is to get everything onto my ipod, rather than to burn CDs. So I'm not sure whether the disc-at-once option is important for my purposes. Still, I've decided to give this a try for a while, meaning that I'll probably be posting again with more questions soon.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: wynton

Date:11/14/2006 12:34:49 PM

I just reread what you wrote, Bradly, and think I missed something important.

You're saying that,, in order to indicate new tracks (for each song), I merely have to hit "n" on the keyboard when the new songs appear? That definitely simplifies things, if I understand correctly. Now I just need to figure out the exact process for labeling tracks/albums.

Time to start scouring the manual again.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: jumbuk

Date:11/14/2006 3:26:06 PM

Thanks BradlyMusic,

Well, I can't argue with that. I would personally use SF8 to record the tracks, and CD Architect to burn to CD.

Do you think the answer is different given that Wynton wants to create tracks for his iPod? I would prefer to use SF and use the "split into files" option. I have used it before to get tracks off vinyl.

Anyway, good to see that Wynton is getting expert advice from this forum.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: feign

Date:11/14/2006 4:32:15 PM

And don't forget that in Acid Music Studio you can record the tracks from the LP, and then add your own music loops on top of it. So you can seamlessly enhance a Mozart Violin Concerto with a looping hip hop percussion beat.

Sorry, I just had to throw that in!

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: BradlyMusic

Date:11/14/2006 6:47:42 PM

"Do you think the answer is different given that Wynton wants to create tracks for his iPod? I would prefer to use SF and use the "split into files" option. I have used it before to get tracks off vinyl."

Actually No. It could also be done in Acid pretty simply. If he took the time to makes splits in Acid for each song, then he could double click on each song he created events for and Acid would select it as a loop region. Then he could select "Render as" and choose to "Render loop region only" in the render dialog box.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: BradlyMusic

Date:11/14/2006 6:56:28 PM

"Thanks for the replies.

I just returned from the vendor, who explained some things to me (after it became apparent the store did not have Sound Forge on stock, and also had some return issues).

Now, I feel I have somewhat of a concept how to accomplish my task. At this early point, I still have the feeling that Music Studio may be more complicated in the simplest of tasks.

If I understood the merchant correctly, the process of cutting up tracks from a vinyl album involves using the paint tool to eliminate everything but the single track I want, and then rendering it. That process sounds a lot slower to me than simply inserting break points and labeling each section a different track.

My end game here is to get everything onto my ipod, rather than to burn CDs. So I'm not sure whether the disc-at-once option is important for my purposes. Still, I've decided to give this a try for a while, meaning that I'll probably be posting again with more questions soon."

Here's the simplest way to do it in Acid.
1. Record the entire Vinyl as a single recording, so that it is on one track as mentioned above.
2. Locate the cursor to the end of each song.
3. Hit the "S" key, once you are located at the end of each song, which stands for "Split"....this is also located under the Edit menu.
4. At this point you should have all the songs broken up into seperate "Events"
5. Double Click on a song you want to save as an MP3
6. Goto FILE>RENDER AS, chose the format you wish to render as. Probably .MP3
7. goto the Render options and enable the check box labeled "Render Loop region only."

This is still simpler than the Sound Forge method in my opinion.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: BradlyMusic

Date:11/14/2006 7:01:09 PM

"I just reread what you wrote, Bradly, and think I missed something important.

You're saying that,, in order to indicate new tracks (for each song), I merely have to hit "n" on the keyboard when the new songs appear? That definitely simplifies things, if I understand correctly. Now I just need to figure out the exact process for labeling tracks/albums.

Time to start scouring the manual again."

If you're not going to CD, then the "N" key is unimportant for what you want to do. The "N" key adds a CD track marker when it is burned to CD. Use the "S" key to split the songs up into seperate "events".

Do the steps I mentioned above. To save Song title information. When you're in the "Render as" dialog box, click on the "Custom" button. Within there you will see tab labeled "ID3 setting". Under that tab is where you enter the Song information and it gets saved within the header information of the .MP3 file.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: wynton

Date:11/14/2006 7:17:53 PM

Bradly,

I can't begin to thank you enough for this guidance; I am sure you have saved me hours of trying to figure out this stuff myself.

Now, I made one quick recording and immediately developed one problem. (I'm reluctant to ask for more advice so quickly, but I can't resist.)

I was recording one side of vinyl, when I noticed about 2/3 through one side the recording process simply stopped. In other words, no more sound was being recorded. While in the record dialogue, the monitor bars appeared steady suddenly. And the time indicators on the main screen stopped altogether. WHen I went back to listen, the recording indeed had stopped at one point.

Is this a common problem with a quick fix? I'll understand if someone just tells me it's time to read the manual from beginning to end.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: BradlyMusic

Date:11/14/2006 7:44:24 PM

No that is not a common problem. I'm not sure what happens when you run out of hard drive space, but here's how to set a record folder, just in case. There is a chance that your hard drive is getting full during the recording process.

So here's what to do.

Goto FILE>PROPERTIES. Then click on the "Audio" Tab. At the bottom you should see a place where Recorded files go to. Make sure you have plenty of hard drive space available. It's possible you have it assigned to the default "My documents" folder and that Hard Drive space is filling up when you are recording. Create a new folder on a hard drive with more space available.

Also goto OPTIONS>PREFERENCES...then click on the "Folders" tab. Check the "Temporary Files Folder" and make sure you have plenty of Hard drive space there also.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: wynton

Date:11/14/2006 8:06:43 PM

I don't think I ran out of hard drive space. First of all, I checked my properties of my c drive, and it indicates I still have 21 GB of free space. (I also have an external drive I'm prepared to use, if necessary.)

I also looked under options/preferences/folders/temporary files folder. 22,103.3 megabytes is listed as available under that folder (which is the default, under documents and settings/my name/application data). Is that a sufficient size? Perhaps I'll make another temporary folder just in case.

But I am having trouble locating the default file where the recorded files go. When I looked under file/properties/audio, I did not see any indicartion where recorded files go. Rather, I merely see the sample rate and bit depth boxes, for project properties.

On the other hand,, I looked back into the preferences window, under audio. In that box, there are a series of folders listed for projects and various types of media saves.

It's getting late here, but tomorrow I will try another recording. Perhaps something flukey happened.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: BradlyMusic

Date:11/14/2006 8:27:25 PM

22 Gig should be enough for what you are doing, although more would be better. You could be right on the FILE>PROPERTIES audio tab. I'm using Acid Pro 6, where things could be a tad different between Acid Studio version you're using. It's probably the temporary files folder assignment listed under the "Folders tab" called Recorded files folder. I'm not sure if this was the problem or not, but it's definately a possibility to check.

How are you recording onto your PC?. Are you pluging into an analog input or some how using a digital input? Do you know what model/brand of Sound Card you have? I'm just fishing for other possibilities. Maybe it was some kind of fluke. Another thing to do is to turn off all anti-virs software when you are recording. They can sometimes do things to interupt the recording process.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: wynton

Date:11/15/2006 6:05:45 PM

With my second try, I did not have the same problem. But I did have a different major problem, which I will make the subject of a separate thread, rather than clutter this one up.

Subject:RE: right Sony product for converting vinyl?

Reply by: rfalcon

Date:11/21/2006 7:31:27 PM

Dear BradlyMusic:

I found your information very informative and I think it will help me once I get started. I have a Tascan US 144 Audio/MIDI Interface. The connection seem to be correct ( I am getting signal trough the system). Can you lead me step by step on how to start recording vinyl unto Acid and then burn a cd. I tried your steps, but it didn't work. I think that Acid is not seeing the Tascan or more probable is that I don't know how to initialyze the Tanscan from Acid. I have a Sony DA90ESG receiver (Digital Signal Processor) and a Technics Turntable. I hook up the Tanscan to the input and output jacks of the Sony Tape jacks and the Tanscan USB port to my labtop. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks-Roland