Vinyl conversion using Audacity

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hello, everyone.

I am converting a number of vinyl discs to digital files. They are a series of radio broadcasts in Portuguese, recorded back in 1986-88.

I have a device which plays the discs and converts the sound to MP3, and then use Audacity to finalize the files. The records have lots of pops (even after cleaning), and I have been trying to supress them with Audacity. Obviously the audio quality drops and, after a few attempts, I would like to ask for your kind advice on how to improve it.

As an example, I have chosen the recording which I found to be the worst case so far. Two short files are attached to this message - one is the original and the other one has been cleaned up with Audacity.

I have used standard configurations for Audacity as follows:

First, I used click removal (threshold 200, max spike width 20). It has not been enough to suppress clicks satisfactorily, so I used then noise removal (noise reduction 24, sensitivity 0, frequency smoothing 150, attack/decay time 0.15). Finally, I amplified at 6.5 dB. Results are as attached.

I had tried to use the Pop Mute plugin, but the results were not as good as the attached file.

Could someone please send some advice on how to improve the audio quality of the attached file, keeping click removal?

If someone can please take a look, full MP3 files are available as follows:

Original recording: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/96724554/FILE_006.MP3
Cleaned up: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/96724554/Teste.mp3.

I use Windows 8 and Audacity 2.0.5. Sorry, I am not 100% sure, but I believe I have obtained the .exe installer.

Thank you very much in advance for all your support.

Best regards,
Valter - Brazil.

2

Is there any way you can talk your vinyl player into saving a WAV file rather than an MP3? MP3 files work by creating sound damage that you hopefully can’t hear. But it’s there and it gets in the way of further cleaning and production.

Less bad is tell the system to create a Really High Quality MP3.

I understand your player was designed to shovel music directly into a Personal Music Player, but that’s now how you’re using it.

Koz

3

Hi, Koz, many thanks for your reply.

No, unfortunately the player does not have an option to save WAV files. I just plug in the pendrive, start playing the vinyl and it saves MP3.

Valter.

4

You won’t get a “good” recording because the “original” (digital copy) is quite poor quality, so it’s a trade-off (compromise) between “some reduction” of clicks and pops and not doing too much damage to the audio that you want to keep. In my opinion, you’ve tried too hard to remove the pops and clicks and consequently ended up with quite a lot of damage to the audio that you want to keep.

My suggestion would be to use Click Removal with the default settings, then use Pop Mute on the worst clicks that remain.
If you wish you could use the “Repair” effect (http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/repair.html) to remove a few more clicks, but there are so many that it will take forever to tackle them all, and even if you get rid off all the clicks the quality of the actual sound is quite poor.

This is the result of just “Click Removal” and “Pop Mute” on the worst of the remaining pops: https://www.sendspace.com/file/89lc56
As expected, the sound quality is not great, but at least the voices sound reasonably natural.

5

Many thanks for your advice, Steve.

Since this is a weekend job, I will be looking at it next Sat/Sun and check your instructions then.

Thanks again,
Valter.

6

Steve, one more question, please: Would you believe any attempts to change from default configurations in Pop Mute in this case could be of help? For Click Removal, you have stated to use default configurations, so a try to change them would not be of help?

Many thanks again,
Valter.

7

Can we go back to basics here - can you tell us the make and model of the device you have.

It may well be possible to use Audacity to make the recording in high quality as well as using it for post-processing.

WC

8

For click removal when I transcribed my LPs I ended up using an app called ClickRepair (it costs a little but for me it was well worth it as it produced excellent results - the author grants you a 14-day free trial) - see this sticky thread: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/click-pop-removal-clickrepair-software/1933/1

WC

9

WC, I believe my device has been specifically designed for the Brazilian market. It can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xJJch2cAxo.

I have found out that it has an output jack on the back which could also be used for connection to the computer, for recording using Audacity. Specifications claim output power of 5W + 5W, I don’t know if it would be OK for that. I have not tried it as yet. I have just been using the USB slot, which outputs files as MP3.

Many thanks for the indication of ClickRepair. I have read the postings and you have talked wonders about that piece of software. I will surely give it a try over the weekend. If I can get the same results as you did, it will be more than satisfactory.

Thanks again,
Valter.

10

Your computer ideally needs a separate line-in (blue) to connect to an output of the conversion machine.

If the computer only has a mic in you will be worse off connecting to the computer - the recording into Audacity would distort.

If the computer has a “compatible” mic/line-in like many laptops do, you would have to see if you found the quality acceptable.


Gale

11

Hi, everybody!

I believe I have finished my tests with vinyl conversion. First of all, thank you very much for all your help. I will post my conclusions for your information and in the hope they will be of use for future inquiries.

Click Removal is indeed a very nice piece of software. It removes most, if not all, clicks and pops from vinyl recordings. Thank you very much for the indication.

However, it seemed for me that it leaves a kind of noise which is very barely audible in music recordings, but can be annoying in radio broadcasts (talk), as it is my case here (perhaps partly because of the high Declick settings I had to use).

The solution I found was as follows:

  1. First, use Click Removal.

  2. Then, import the click-removed file with Audacity and use Noise Removal. It removes the noise left by Click Removal with very acceptable loss of sound/voice quality, at least so far.

This is the best option I have found after various tests, and now the real work begins. I have some 50 vinyl LPs to work on, and will let you know if some better options arrive. Your inputs and suggestions will be very welcome.

Thanks again and regards,
Valter.