Audacity Forum

I have been converting my vinyl collection for the past two years. Though I have had a few LP's that were slightly warped, any wow associated with them was undetectable. Yesterday, that run of good luck ended. I have an LP that is warped in a strange way so that the wow is very noticeable on the inner tracks. After unsuccessfully searching the Internet for a plug-in to help with removing this wow, I am at a loss.

The warp causes all tracks except the first and last on both sides to have considerable wow. I had to increase my tracking force from 1.5 to 3 grams just to keep my tonearm in the groove. The warp is of very short duration, and there is a steep slope on both sides of the warp.

If I use the Waveform(db) view, the wow is clearly visible, but I do not know how to attempt removal of it. Does anyone have any suggestions for methods/plug-ins I can try?

The short answer is no. Trying to do it manually will drive you nuts and that's only to correct any volume changes. You can do that with the outline tool in the upper left tool box.

Correcting the actual wow requires fading the pitch change tool in and out at the right times. I'm going with you can't do it, certainly not automatically.

Let's see if anybody posts to correct me.

Have you thought about correcting the record? There used to be a lot of tricks like heating up the vinyl and parking it between four Encyclopedia Britannica volumes for a day or two.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:I'm going with you can't do it, certainly not automatically

I'll go along with you on that koz.

kozikowski wrote:Have you thought about correcting the record? There used to be a lot of tricks like heating up the vinyl and parking it between four Encyclopedia Britannica volumes for a day or two.

I've heard of such tricks. Of course there is a danger that if it is too warm, or too many volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica that you could irreparably damage the record, but on the other hand it sounds like it is already badly damaged so there may not be much to loose. There are probably write-ups on the internet that will suggest optimum temperatures and which volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica to use.

Thanks Koz and Steve. I would have been amazed if there were an automated way to do this.

I am currently trying to flatten the warped section of the LP by using heavy books. I'm not sure how long I should wait, but I can probably get some advice from an Internet search. I'm not brave enough at this point to try any solution involving heat.

An interesting note on this affair is that the record in question is an RCA Dynaflex pressing. Now I have many LP's predating the Dynaflex introduction, and none are warped (at least not enough to affect the tonality). Most of my warped LP's are Dynaflex. This thin technology must have been particularly susceptible to warping.

I have always stored my LP's vertically and closely packed. Maybe that did not help the Dynaflex pressings. Fortunately, this particular LP is available on CD. I hate to resort to buying a CD, because one never knows what may have been done during any remastering. If the attempts to flatten the warp do not work, I may buy the CD.

Such is life.