Messed Up Vinyl

[GBleaney]

I have been ripping some of my fathers old Vinyl's using a usb turntable. I was using the included software, which I have realized is very poorly coded. Firstly, it only allows importing to iTunes, as m3p's, raw files nowhere to be found. Secondly, the volume controls seem to have been messed up, so what I thought was adjusting the volume of the recording was only adjusting the right ear track and constantly maintaining it at one level, resulting in nasty static sometimes.

So I now have a few requests.
1) Is there any way to edit these files en mass to delete the right ear channel and essentially make it mono but using only the left ear channel? I know how to do this one file at a time, but I don't feel like going through over 24h of files one at a time...
2) Is there any way to clean up the recording? (Keeping in mind all I have is the mp3's). Again I would like to do this en mass
3) Is there a better program I can use to import the further recordings I make (the one thing the program I use has going for it is that it splits each side of the record up into the individual songs)

Help with any or all is greatly appreciated,
Thanks.

[waxcylinder]

3) Is there a better program I can use to import the further recordings I make (the one thing the program I use has going for it is that it splits each side of the record up into the individual songs)

Yes ... Audacity.

See:

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Tuto ... iscs_to_CD

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Reco ... turntables

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Samp ... gitization

And for cleaning up clicks and pops Audacity is ok - but IMHO ClickRepair works much better. See this sticky thread: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1994

WC

[GBleaney]

Thanks for the response. Any advice for the mass editing?

[billw58]

Thanks for the response. Any advice for the mass editing?

Start over. You've said that the ones you've recorded are messed up, and only the left channel was captured properly.

However, if you don't care that you'll be missing half the recording (the right channel), go ahead with your plan. But I can't think of any way to automate the process.

-- Bill

[GBleaney]

I don't particularly want to start over. I've tested this out with a song, and it doesn't sound bad at all.

[DVDdoug]

I've never done it, but you can try batch processing.

...The reason I've never tried it is because audio editing usually takes some human judgemet & interaction. I usually spend about a full-weekend fixing-up a digitized LP!!!! But, something like copying one channel to the other does seem like something can be automated.

I have been ripping some of my fathers old Vinyl's...

...Is there any way to edit these files en mass to delete the right ear channel and essentially make it mono but using only the left ear channel?

... I've tested this out with a song, and it doesn't sound bad at all.

If these are mono records, there is no harm. But, if they are stereo the channels are different. You are loosing the stereo image/illusion and you might completely loose some instruments!

If you are doing this for yourself, go ahead and do what you want. But, if you are making CDs or MP3s for your father you are cheating him by converting his stereo recordings to mono!

[GBleaney]

I have been looking into batch encoding, but there seems to be nothing that even lets you edit channels separately.

I'm still looking for help, but thank you to everyone who has posted so far.

[steve]

Is there any way to edit these files en mass to delete the right ear channel and essentially make it mono but using only the left ear channel?

You can do that with SoX http://sox.sourceforge.net/

SoX is a command line program and does not include a batch processing function, but you can use almost any scripting language to run SoX as a batch process. For example on Windows you could write a .BAT file, on Linux you could write a Bash script, on any platform you could write a Python script.

If all of the files are exactly the same format, then that simplifies the task considerably.
To convert from a stereo track to a mono track using the left (first) channel only, the command is:

Code: Select all

sox "stereo.wav" -c 1 "mono.wav" mixer -1

where "stereo.wav" is the name of the input file and "mono.wav" is the name of the output file.

There's some examples of writing batch scripts here: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 28&t=53669
You may want to look on Google to find some examples for your operating system.

[waxcylinder]

Start over. You've said that the ones you've recorded are messed up, and only the left channel was captured properly...

I'm 100% with Bill on this.

The key is to get the sound good (as best as you can get) right at the capture stage. Much better than trying to "fix" it in editing later ...

WC

[steve]

I'm with Bill on that too, but I quite understand if GBleaney wants to avoid having to re-record 24 hours worth of vinyl. If the recording are "not too bad" I'd also be tempted to try and hack together a quick fix rather than spend the next three days of my life redoing something that I'd already done - but on the other hand, if it's going to take days to hack together a solution....