Random Audio Rant...

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Re: Random Audio Rant...

Post by myglaren »

wurlycorner wrote:I love vinyl for DJing (can't beat the feel of using it compared to CD decks or Controllers, plus there is no 'cheating - it requires actual genuine skill) but way prefer CD's for general listening. Still an avid CD purchaser rather than downloading.
I do a lot of internet radio streaming though (in the car as well as the barn/home)
I far prefer to have an actual CD.

The only downloaded stuff I have is material otherwise unavailable - i.e. not published on any albums or CDs. I have a cheeky little program that rips YouTube audio in seconds and downloads it. Mostly Samantha Fish and Jackie Evancho live performances.

I quite like the Amazon Autorip though. Bought the last Cohen CD and autoripped straight away. The CD didn't come until a month later - odd for Amazon but they dropped the postage :)
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Re: Random Audio Rant...

Post by CitroJim »

white exec wrote:I have some audio cleaning software here that will take a CD (or any other digital recording) and add hiss, rumble, clicks, surface noise, wow and flutter, in any quantity you fancy. Probably heresy in the vinyl community!
Lovely! Is there anything software can't do nowadays?
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Re: Random Audio Rant...

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

CitroJim wrote:
white exec wrote:I have some audio cleaning software here that will take a CD (or any other digital recording) and add hiss, rumble, clicks, surface noise, wow and flutter, in any quantity you fancy. Probably heresy in the vinyl community!
Lovely! Is there anything software can't do nowadays?
Work properly (especially if the software house is Microsoft!)?
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Re: Random Audio Rant...

Post by CitroJim »

Hell Razor5543 wrote:
CitroJim wrote:
white exec wrote:I have some audio cleaning software here that will take a CD (or any other digital recording) and add hiss, rumble, clicks, surface noise, wow and flutter, in any quantity you fancy. Probably heresy in the vinyl community!
Lovely! Is there anything software can't do nowadays?
Work properly (especially if the software house is Microsoft!)?
:rofl2: Spot-on James :roll:
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Re: Random Audio Rant...

Post by GiveMeABreak »

I've got a Samsung Soundbar in my room wall mounted the Smart TV. I've also got the PC connected via optical connection and the sound is surprisingly immersive - especially for atmospheric gaming tracks. I use a Sony Home Theatre System in the lounge which is uber loud. The problems I find with some Blu-ray films is the sound recording is crap and the sound recording engineers should be shot. The films where you have to turn it up to hear people speak, then without warning a cut scene to a train station and you get blown into the next room! I hate that with a vengeance, as it means you have to glue the remote to your hand, finger ever on the volume button. Forget watching anything really creepy with sudden music shocks - or it's A&E with heart failure.

Vinyl is back on the increase according to the news today - so hang on to your decks! I think it was a bout 3M sales last year, but certainly on the rise as they make more new Vinyl available.
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Re: Random Audio Rant...

Post by Zelandeth »

It's astonishing how little surface noise there actually is on vinyl so long as it's not badly scratched, and most importantly is clean. Most of it is pretty old these days, and the majority - especially from the usual charity shops and such has never been cleaned in its life, so has 30+ years of fingerprints and dust on board, and often mould and mildew if it's been stored in the damp.

Lost count of how many albums I've taken from "unplayable" to "near perfect" just with a good clean!
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Re: Random Audio Rant...

Post by GiveMeABreak »

I think on the news report they showed a specialist vinyl shop and there was a Beatles album on vinyl there for about £900! .... as I was saying, CDs are great....
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Re: Random Audio Rant...

Post by white exec »

:roll:
The transcription program I have is called Audio Cleaning Lab, by the German firm Magix.
Have used it under Windows for a few years now, to transfer and clean up around 150 LPs to CD. It works really well, and is based on professional studio editing programs.

You first line-in record the LP to the PC, resulting in a WAV file.
Then the fun begins.
Choice of "Auto" (bit like I Feel Lucky), where the program will quickly scan the recording to detect clicks, hiss and other artefacts, making a copy of the recording, with the noise subtracted from it.
Or, much more fun and more thorough, do the job manually.
Sampling a few seconds of the "run-in" of the LP (bit before the first track, or a gap between tracks), the system logs the background hiss and disc/turntable rumble. One push of a key, and this is gone, leaving gaps between tracks as silence.
Playing the recording through, it is displayed as a waveform (Jim would like that). This can be vastly expanded time-wise, to inspect and cut out a click (or worse), either automatically, or manually (cut, cut, join), thus removing a few milliseconds - nothing the ear would detect.
If you really want it, there's control over tempo, without affecting pitch.
After cleaning, album and track titles can be written in, and will appear on a text-enabled CD player.
All done at the quality you choose. I normally leave it at iirc 44.1k (CD quality).
Extra fx include mono, vinyl (!), transistor radio, telephone, concert hall . . . All the usual.

Great fun. Can be used for speech editing, too. Digital equivalent of razor blade, edit block and sticky tape.

Latest version here:
http://www.magix.com/int/audio-cleaning-lab/detail/

Good headphones essential. :monkee:
Last edited by white exec on 04 Jan 2017, 07:53, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Random Audio Rant...

Post by Zelandeth »

Yep, I'd never pay silly money for an LP. Think the most expensive mainsteam one I've ever bought were something around £30 for Pink Floyd's Endless River - because I'm a Floyd fan and because I wanted it on vinyl - Didn't seem that unreasonable either for a 4-disc 180g vinyl set with a fair amount of artwork with it.

Most expensive by a long shot was a couple of years back which I think was €75 or thereabouts for Come Find Me, from an artist who goes by the name Fox Amoore, but that was a very limited pressing, and more because I wanted to personally support the artist than because I had to have it (I already had the album digitally anyway!). He's got a Soundcloud page over here, which is well worth a listen if you like orchestral stuff. He I reckon is a really gifted composer, and is currently over in Europe working on a project involving the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, and recently had a recording session at Abbey Road, so very much going up in the world from when we first crossed paths in Inverness a few years ago! Out of all his work, Story Time - Soundcloud link here is I still think my favourite track, though definitely needs to be played loud for the best effect.

In terms of my own collection, probably the most "valuable" album I've got here is a 1966 pressing of Revolver (which is actually in decent nick, even if the sleeve is a bit shabby), at least that's my guess!

Edit: After a brief round of battle with my local network (our Sky badged piece of trash router is dying and slowly driving me insane...) I've managed to upload my catalogue of what I have on vinyl as of about a month ago. There's an Excel (97/2003 format) spreadsheet over here - especially for you Jim as you're welcome to borrow any of it!
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Re: Random Audio Rant...

Post by CitroJim »

GiveMeABreak wrote:. as I was saying, CDs are great....
They are but I want to get back into vinyl to be in keeping with my vintage audio... My CD player is 32 years old but still a mere youngster against my tuner and amp/speakers...
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Re: Random Audio Rant...

Post by Pug_XUD_KeenAmateur »

Zelandeth wrote:Is it just me, or has almost the entire world lost any trace of an idea of what constitutes acceptable audio quality?
maybe I'm turning into a grumpy old man too, but it really does seem to me that fashion comes before simple considerations these days, even such basic ones as 'suitability for purpose'

I've found myself thinking something very similar when one of my partner's 20-something children is listening to or watching something on a small 'device' (eg, phone / laptop); which due to its obvious size constraints can't possibly hope to provide any sort of reasonable sound quality.

Those men in marketing that have our young people parting with their hard earned cash for such rubbish must be very clever.

And am I a luddite, or do these various modern devices all duplicate one another. I'm not the last person on the planet who doesn't own a Tablet, Laptop, Iphone, Ipad or similar; am I ?

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Re: Random Audio Rant...

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I've got a laptop - its purpose when it was bought was 50% for work use (because trying to get software there I needed to actually do my job was never going to happen...got to love the public sector), and 50% because I was on the move pretty much every weekend visiting my folks. It's actually proved a godsend this last couple of years because thanks to an Excess of Real Life getting in the way, I'm only just at a point where I'm actually looking at getting my proper workstation set up again after moving house. In December 2013. I also tend to find myself as the default Tech Support choice whenever anything stops working anywhere, so having a portable machine I can grab and take with me tends to be useful - especially with it being Linux based which makes things easier when sorting network issues as it tends to actually show me what's wrong rather than just saying "We're sorry, and error occurred." as Windows machines seem to these days...

Very much looking forward to getting back to my proper workstation though...Dual 24" displays, proper mouse and IBM Model M keyboard are all things I've greatly missed! Plus the Amiga will be slightly to the left, and will see active use once again - especially once I track down a replacement network adaptor.

I've also got a plethora of portable machines from around 1990 onwards, especially Toshiba's early 90s luggables...but that's because I have an unhealthy obsession with tech from that era...

I have a smartphone - that happened through rather than being a specific choice. My provider rang me up out of the blue one afternoon and offered it to me (and reduced my monthly contract price at the same time), likewise each upgrade since - now on smartphone number 3, the predecessors usually being cascaded down into the family, all through the same source. Only one that's not been directly adopted is the most recently displaced as it's got a well documented, but seemingly unresolvable software issue. Have to admit that I've been far, far more impressed with the latest one (Huawei P9) than I ever was by the previous Samsungs (S2 and S4 Mini).

Could I go back to life without a smartphone? Sure. Would I miss it? Yes, I reckon I would actually, especially since the arrival of 4G internet access. While it's not essential, having essentially the entire world at your fingertips can be very useful at times. Especially thinking back to a few months back when we found ourselves picking up something on the outskirts of London and suddenly discovered that the box and passengers would not both fit in the car as calculated. It was the work of seconds on the phone to plot out an alternate route home for two of us via Tube and Train, and as it was we actually beat the car home! We could have done it the old fashioned way, but it would have involved a lot more stress.

iPod, yes I do have one - albeit a gift from family, and over ten years old. It stays set to "shuffle" and is generally used in the car on long journeys and that's about it. Or occasionally plugged into a speaker (...or the line in socket on the Hammond Organ) for background music when I'm doing housework.
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Re: Random Audio Rant...

Post by elma »

There's a proper music shop in town, I'll have a dig through for you Jim. Good excuse actually, I fancied a root but have nothing to play anything on.
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Re: Random Audio Rant...

Post by CitroJim »

I'm no Luddite but I can't get on with dealing with websites or email on a phone or tablet unless circumstances dictate I must. I much prefer either a decent laptop or a proper PC with a decent monitor...

I guess it's what we've been brought up with. My kids do everything on smartphones.
elma wrote:There's a proper music shop in town, I'll have a dig through for you Jim. Good excuse actually, I fancied a root but have nothing to play anything on.
James, that would be good. Anything by Barclay James Harvest ;)
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Re: Random Audio Rant...

Post by myglaren »

I find stuff like that so fiddly on my phone so that although it is more than capable I limit myself to texts and the very occasional call - twice a year is about average.
Even texting is a pain with the touch screen, was a lot simpler with the Blackberryesque keypad on the old one.
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