Recording Quality

[dhudson07]

Hi All,

I am new to Audacity and am currently trying to rip good quality wav files from vinyl.

I have spent the best part of 6 or 7 hours reading through various posts on the subject and haven't found anything (to date) that covers the problem I am experiencing but apologies if I have overlooked a thread / post.

I am using the following hardware: -

1 x Technics SL1200mk2 with Ortofon OM PRO S Cartridge and stylus (stylus is brand new)
A Traktor Audio 6 Sound Card
A Sony Vaio VPCEB3JOE Laptop running Windows 7

As I mentioned I have read through various posts (still a bit of a mine field for me though) and have all of my input levels both on my laptop and in Audacity pushed up to the max. I have the sampling rate on the Traktor Audio 6 set to 16 bit 44,100 hz (cd quality) and have Audacity set to the following: -

Audacity Quality Settings.png (31.42 KiB) Viewed 2236 times

Beyond that I haven't really messed with any settings. Below is a picture of my recording levels whilst ripping: -

Whilst Recording.jpg (153.89 KiB) Viewed 2236 times

When I have finished recording I have saved a raw version as a wav which I exported as a 16 bit PCM.

I have them played around with the equalizer standard options, amplified, and used the click removal tool before exporting again and listening to how each different equalizer setting sounds. An example of how it then looks is below: -

amplified.png (101.31 KiB) Viewed 2236 times

When I play this back through my stereo it doesn't sound too bad but when I try putting it on an Ipod for example it lacks any depth and doesn't sound anywhere near the quality of the WAV files I buy nowadays. This is also apparent when I play around mixing using the ripped WAV file and new ones I have purchased and recording in Audacity. Also, using Traktor scratch duo the wav form of anything I rip is virtually flat where as a purchased WAV form has lots of depth.

Now I figure I must be doing something wrong as I have heard other peoples ripped WAV files and they sound so much better than mine. I started to therefore looking at purchased WAV's in Audacity and you can see the difference straight away. I will post a screen shot after this post due to the limit on attachments in posts.

Sorry this is a little lengthy and also if this has been covered elsewhere, any help anyone could give me in terms of pointing me in the direction of a thread covering this or helping to explain where I am going wrong would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks

Dave

[dhudson07]

This is a screen shot of a WAV I have purchased as mentioned above: -

Purchased.png (85.95 KiB) Viewed 2233 times

[Trebor]

This is a screen shot of a WAV I have purchased as mentioned above: -

The purchased WAV has extreme dynamic range compression: all the waveform envelope is close to maximum volume,
see ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_r ... #Marketing

If you want to produce maximum loudness tracks like that you'll need a (dynamic range) compressor, e.g.
Audacity's native compressor, or Chris's compressor , then you could apply Steve's limiter to max it out good and proper.

[steve]

Your method and pictures look fine.
What file format are you using for your iPod?

As Trebor wrote, the most obvious difference between the appearance of the bought track and your home recorded track is the dynamic range compression.
You may find this an interesting read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

[dhudson07]

Thanks Trebor, I will read up on the Compressor then. I have just downloaded Steve's limiter but my laptop doesn't recognise the file type so won't open it. Are there any instructions on how to install it anywhere?

Thanks too Steve, I am just opening my exported WAV file in ITunes and then dragging it into my device. I will read the article on loudness too.

Thank you both for responding so quickly to my post.

Dave

[steve]

I have just downloaded Steve's limiter but my laptop doesn't recognise the file type so won't open it. Are there any instructions on how to install it anywhere?

Nyquist plug-ins are plain text files (if you want to see exactly what is in the file you can open it in NotePad).
Nyquist plug-ins are installed the same way as other plug-ins. All you need to do is to put it into the Audacity plug-ins folder and restart Audacity. As it says here:

To install new plug-ins, place them in the Plug-Ins folder inside the Audacity installation folder. On Windows computers, this is usually under "Program Files"...[snip]... Restart Audacity, then the Plug-ins will appear underneath the divider in the "Effect", "Generate" or "Analyze" menus.

[dhudson07]

Thanks Steve, as you can tell I am not that technical but all downloaded and installed now. Going to have a read and play around now but thanks again for your help and quick reply.

Dave

[waxcylinder]

Thanks too Steve, I am just opening my exported WAV file in ITunes and then dragging it into my device.

Unless you have a small music collection you are likely to run out of space on your iPod if you keep WAVs on it. I load my WAV files into my iTunes but then use iTunes to convert them to AAC (Apple's compreesion format) at 256 VBR. At 256 I cannot readily detect the difference betwwen the WAV and the AAC listening on Sennheiser studio headphones and on QUAD electrostatic speakers. 256 should give you a compression ratio of about 7:1

My son is more purist and insists on using 320 AAC - he has run out of space on his (160gB) iPod ...

WC

[waxcylinder]

You might find this workflow tutorial, that I wrote for the 1.3 manual a while back, useful: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Samp ... _to_iTunes

WC