kurtster wrote:
I'm just guessing but isn't there software available to allow the removal of what makes it sound like vinyl? Besides the clicks and pops, i mean.
Edit: Thanks for the listen, btw. I'm on Thunderclap's 2nd tune. I love it.

 kurtster wrote: 
It is.
After listening to it better, I now realize it.

I have a CD of Hollywood Dream that has alternate takes and the single version of "Somethings in the Air".
Not near as crisp as your cleaned version... I still like the single version better.

 kurtster wrote: 
thanks buddy

i'm going to give this a whirl

 KurtfromLaQuinta wrote: 
It is the album version.  It is the MCA reissue, but all the tracks are the same as the original Track issue as far as I know.  It did come out nicely regardless.  The albums I have are cleaning up very nicely so far.  I rip each side at least twice, with the second one almost always sounding better than the first play just because lot's of stuff gets loosened up and gets brushed away the second time around.

I'm doing the MFSL Doors first album right now as I type.  I played side 1 four times.  Second rip had a weird glitch, so I played it a third time but forgot to hit record, so I did it a forth and even the wife said that it sounded noticeably better for some reason.  So I'm doing a third now on side 2.  Trying to get the best out of em, cuz they are soon to be for sale and I what I have will be be all that I have to work with when they are gone.

Here's what I have cataloged of my collection so far.   Got to get shipping supplies before I list them for sale.  That and I'm chugging away with the website trying to get it operational for selling the eyeglass / record cleaner.  Gotta get the ecommerce widget yet.  RPeeps will get special considerations, of course.  Have a look if you like.  A work in progress, criticism welcome.  We all know that I get too wordy.  quietvinyl.com  I will infact probably need some help finishing it up cuz there are some things that I just can't get to work out the way I want it and I've never done anything like this before at all.  So any kind of help is welcome.  PM's welcome.

that and my new NAS arrived yesterday and I've got lot's to figure out with that, too.  ASUSTOR AS6102T

 kurtster wrote:Sounds real nice and "clean" there!
The "Somethings in the Air" is the version I really like the best.
I'm pretty sure that's the "single version", not the album version.
The album version had an annoying guitar over the vocals I never liked much.
I remember the single version from the summer of '69 playing on the AM radio. Ahhhhhhhh. 

Its been awhile since I have had the time or interest to put up any tunes lately but it seems like its a good time to do it.  Been so busy with all kinds of chaos and organizing that working with music has taken a back seat for too long.  But now all the equipment is finalized and the experimenting is over.  Here it is, the ninth month of the year and the 2016 file for remasters only has about 12 songs, but their all from vinyl and I've upped the ante by ripping only in 16 bit 48khz wav instead of 44khz.  I may be crazy, but it seems that I can hear a difference with the higher frequency rips.  From here on in, its all about vinyl.  

Seen a wild defect for the first time.  For all of you who have worked with Audacity or similar you are used to seeing the wave form of a rip.  You all pretty much know what a scratch looks like, too.  This is a new one.  It looks like a scratch until you blow it up and see what is really going on.  Plays right through, no tracking problems.  

It almost looks like the signals switch sides of the groove and somehow recovers.  Its loud enough to be argh.  So far haven't been able make it go away or much of anything else.  Best I can do so far is just make it a muffled thud.  Just thought that I would share it and see if anyone else has encountered something like this before.  This is what I woke up to this morning getting back into the cleanup of the freaking track that now has about 8 hours into the first 9 1/2 minutes with 18 more to go.
 
The wide shot showing the frequency.  And looking ahead, more scratches to pull out with the pencil, one by one ...  Hope they don't do this stuff any more.  For now I'm gonna keep going and come back to these last.
 

The blow up showing what is really there.  Normally the lines are parallel. 

 

Its got me scratching my head.  Don't know how many more of these exist.  Haven't looked any further yet.  Yee haw !!

Taking a breather.  Sheesh, 3 hours on the first 2 minutes of this raga, which is 28 minutes long.  Using everything I know on this, some of which I just figured out in the past couple of months.  But I'm learning so much doing this.  Its bringing back memories, too.  At the age of 15, I saw Ravi and the crew from Monterey in the gym at UC Irvine.  The concert was 4 hours long and my dad was waiting outside in the parking lot with a whole bunch of other parents.  The man is a musical genius to know and play this kind of music, from memory on such a complex instrument.  Its like hearing the wind sing, so sweet and so powerful and so relaxing.  Yes, George is my favorite Beatle and this is part of why.  And why I guess I like long drawn out pieces that work riffs inside and out thoroughly.  

Yea, could buy the CD, but I already have this and I would be missing out on what I'm learning from this.

Edit:  Some say that the Allman Bros can sound like a cat fight at times, well I'm hearing a lot of cows mooing in the pasture.  Cows are sacred creatures over there, hmmmm.

I found out last week that my part time gig at the optical shop may be ending, sooner than I hoped or anticipated.

So, with the excuse and the distraction of the Cavs over until next year, I'm now going full tilt into the website / ecommerce thingy.  Thanks to Beaks, Scott and Dave's ideas and help I've done most of the legwork and figured out who is hosting and which platform to use.  WordPress is the apparent winner because it allows me to self host the business part with WooCommerce, which checks out pretty well, so far.  Anyone have any experience with either please feel free to advise.

With this part now in the works, I've got to write up another report / review of the cleaner and put a pitch together for the company prez.  The primary objection that I have heard so far from shop owners is that it does not reference record cleaning and needs a dedicated name and label for that purpose.  Although I've come up with a name and already did a trademark search, that's $600 and the quantity required for that is 15k.  So that ain't happening.  So I need to present the objections and explain how it can be sold through word of mouth and slowly build up a customer base of happy campers.  We all know the mythology of vinyl and I think I can work it to get people to bite.  It really is an audiophile grade cleaner and if they don't like it, its still a damn good eyeglass cleaner, so if they have vinyl and eyeglasses, there is little to lose taking a chance on buying it.  And I need to be allowed to buy it from the company and do it, which I think I can.  I don't want to share the name with them at this point and cut myself out of the equation in case they like it.

Way back at my first meeting with the prez we did touch base on personal musical interests and he is mostly into classical.  I've got nothing to offer him there, but being from India, I did mention that I saw Ravi Shankar as a kid right after he was at the Monterey Festival and liked that kind of music and threatened to find my record of Shankar at Monterey in 1967 and would give him a copy of the rip, when I found it.  I found it 3 days ago.  It was well played and has plenty of pops and crackles to get rid of to make it presentable.  That and I placed an order for a case of the cleaner to get things going to the next level.  So with all the legwork for the website underway and getting it down to pulling the trigger, I've got to finish the record, and write the stuff up, so I can present it when I pick up the cleaner at the office.  I've already got 4 hours into the music with at least that much more to go and prolly a couple of hours writing up the paper.  Giving myself a Wednesday deadline.

Fingers crossed ... 

 porphyrius wrote: 
Here's the page I found the pic at.  You need to translate it (Chrome has that option), its pretty weird.  It's about record cleaning.  From Vladivostok ...

 Clicky here.

 aflanigan wrote: 
sometimes i prefer my speakers to beef loud (band name?)
===================================
kurt that's an interesting chart

my software of choice, vlc, has presets

makes things easy (for boobs like me)

Personally, I sometimes like my vinyl loud.

Here's a nice chart that I stumbled onto over the weekend.  Kinda reinforces some assumptions I made in my and the last journal period about where the music is, and isn't.

All the EQ Information You’ll Ever Need in One Handy Chart

Note to self.  The final ripping process has been established.  The dust cover issue is dealt with, thanks Scott.  A key part of this has been using the eyeglass cleaner, thanks haresfur.  And away we go ...

Tonight I just figured out a whole new way to play the rips back.  Since I'm just ripping whole albums sides to deal with later, the keeper rip is already pretty damn good, so I'm just playing the wav rip like an LP in Soundforge.  I use Soundforge to do all the ripping so its always open anyway   I open it up in a separate window and the folder the rip is is and drag it over to SF and let it open within the program.  Both sides of an album or just the 'good side' if that's the case, since this is old stuff that was made as an album to be played through as a complete thought by the side or ...

After I got started and had played about 5 or 6 sides, I thought that this is just like actually playing the LP by the side just like on a TT and changing the record or flipping the side.  And there was a pile of records on the floor to put away so to speak afterwards cuz there were so many files and layers of open files.  I guess this is something like opening up an Audacity page for each file and cascading them on the desktop and clicking on the different windows to play a particular side using Audacity as a media player.

I can go to various tracks and cue them up while another track is playing, change the file playing with a mouse click and just hit the space bar to start playing.  Keeper !!!!  Not good for individual songs, but for album sides, he'll yeah and a big duh, who knew it would work like this.  Life just keeps getting better.

So after listening to dsotm for umpteen million times and all the fussing and futzing, I'm good to go.  The new cleaner has been tested, which meant ripping ds again, ugh, but its been rewarding.  Just got back from a 3 hour visit to my new bestest buddy at the shop I stopped by about a month ago and actually gave him some samples to work with and covered a lot of ground.  While I was there some tweaker fell through the front door with an armful of lp's he wanted to try and off.  Nothing that any body was interested in, he moved to the front, and wobbly poked around in the bins for about 5 or so minutes and so left.  About 45 minutes later he was back with a leopard print handbag of 70 or so 45's.  

It was obvious to us that he was in need of something to stop his sniffles and was trying to get some quick cash together.  Said he was cleaning out his sister's or somebody house and found the stuff. ok.  Anyway he plopped the 45's on the counter and Dave, the store owner sifted through a couple of times and ended up wanting 29 of them and offered him $30.  He was kinda disappointed but accepted it.

Dave is street smart.  He said that he needed to go to the ATM that was literally right across the street to get him the money.  He left me, another customer he knew and gonzo in the store and went over to the ATM.  You could actually see him out the front window.  He was back shortly, paid the guy and he was outta there muy rapido.  The guy never saw where the register is and what was in it.  Nicely done.

So we settle down and keep comparing thoughts and stuff about anything vinyl while he proceeded to use the original alcohol based spray to clean the 45's with a microfiber cloth spinning them around in his hand while looking up numbers on Discogs.  All done, clean as a whistle in 45 minutes.  They went from dirty dinner plates to shiny clean.  Effortlessly.  He was impressed.  I was impressed.  Learned that you can use Ajax on old 45's and it won't hurt them.  Showed me the Mr. Clean magic eraser piece that he uses to clean his stylus.  I had recently read about and he has been doing it for quite awhile, checking his needle under the microscope periodically.  Cool, no chemicals, have to get one.   Also learned that he knows my buddy who married me and Patty.  The world got lots smaller again.

So he's gonna give the alcohol free cleaner a spin on his VPI's to see how it works.  I'm impressed, its even better than the original.  It was just launched in May and I finally got my hands on it last week to try and pass out.  All the while, I had brought my unopened copy of Wildflowers and parked it, the quad ds and a 1/2 speed master of WYWH on the counter fishing for prices.  Now we're a couple of hours along and the store was empty and we finally starting talking $'s and how I want him to get my JVC V531 cassette deck working again an how I would be willing to trade my Fisher 404 for his time and parts.  He said he could do that, that way.  Cool.

So finally I got to how much he would be willing to give me after I cracked the shrink wrap on Wildflowers knowing it was sealed prior, clean it and rip it and bring it back.  After some back and forth we came to a good deal for both of us and a fair price on the two Floyd lp's.  Alrighty !

We talked about flea markets and how that he and a couple of other stores were going to get a record fair going in October at the Cleveland Agora for something like $20 a table.  I'm in.  Time to get busy and start cleaning and organizing what I have.  Also I'm thinking that my website better be up and running by then so I can pass out Cd's of my cleaning and restorative powers with before and after cuts of a few songs and my name and website on it.  Have to find out about copyright dangers though.  Not selling them, but we all know that things can get funny if you're not careful even if you give stuff away.

That was my day at the new old record store.  I'm in love with music again.  And the people you might see there are as interesting as ever.



 

 kurtster wrote: 
thx

i'll have a look when time allows

Well we're moving along with this vinyl cleaner project.  The samples of the new alcohol free cleaner just got here a half an hour ago !  This will keep me going and busy cleaning and ripping over the weekend.  So many albums to choose from and never enough time, but hey, it'll be good for the head.

If anyone wants to grab some quality wav rips of two desert island albums, see the link below.  I'll take it down after the Holiday is over. 

 

So I got the converter and its all good now.

Happy, very happy with the way things work and sound.  

Inspired by the Loudness Wars thread and the discussion of dynamic range, it just goes to illustrate that the primary difference between vinyl and Cd's is how they are mastered and little more.  My vinyl rips are so good (to me) that I find little compulsion to do anything to them except manually draw out the pops and clicks on the wav file form and then just listen.  I haven't yet done an A / B with vinyl to Cd yet, but I think I know how its going to work out already with most albums.

So here's two albums to try out for S & G's.  16 / 44.1 wav.   The 1st UK pressing of Disraeli Gears which I sent out to some of you earlier by mail and the 1st UK pressing of DSOTM in quad.  This version of DG is far better than the one mailed out and anyone with a surround system might find the DSOTM very interesting.  Its a different mix to begin with in plain stereo and sounds a little different from the stereo mixes I have heard over the years.  The SQ signal should be intact for processing.  My shibata cartridge is designed for the signal first off and secondly SQ is very similar to Dolby Pro Logic, one of the first surround modes found in early A / V receivers.  So I'd be really curious to find out what if any difference it makes in surround.  Again, nothing done to these rips but removing as many of the pops I could find and see.

clicky here

Please do not reply directly to this post so that I may delete the link.