Recording LP's

[Squishman]

So far, I have 68 of my 450-some records recorded from my Thorens turntable with the Ortofon Black cart. There are about 100 I suppose I have no interest in recording. I don't tag individual tracks. That would make it a nightmarishly long project. I just make a long 320 kbps mp3 of one LP, because that's how I play records anyway (if double LP, then it's two mp3's). Then I tag them accordingly. When side one ends, I do not click pause on my laptop until the tonearm lifts with my awesome AT6006R tonearm lifter with a featherlight trigger. The reason is because I want that lift-pop sound on the tape. If I am listening to the recording in another room or the car, this helps me (as you can easily imagine) to relate the LP playing experience and to know when the record was flipped. Fun project that will take me many months to feel like it's done or close to done anyway. I use mono settings on the laptop and AVR when recording mono LP's.

 

[TLS Guy]

So far, I have 68 of my 450-some records recorded from my Thorens turntable with the Ortofon Black cart. There are about 100 I suppose I have no interest in recording. I don't tag individual tracks. That would make it a nightmarishly long project. I just make a long 320 kbps mp3 of one LP, because that's how I play records anyway (if double LP, then it's two mp3's). Then I tag them accordingly. When side one ends, I do not click pause on my laptop until the tonearm lifts with my awesome AT6006R tonearm lifter with a featherlight trigger. The reason is because I want that lift-pop sound on the tape. If I am listening to the recording in another room or the car, this helps me (as you can easily imagine) to relate the LP playing experience and to know when the record was flipped. Fun project that will take me many months to feel like it's done or close to done anyway. I use mono settings on the laptop and AVR when recording mono LP's.

Why are you so wedded to the mp3 codec? That is a poor quality, way out of date codec. AAC is much better and FLAC even better.

 

[Squishman]

Why are you so wedded to the mp3 codec? That is a poor quality, way out of date codec. AAC is much better and FLAC even better.

I knew someone would pipe in about that. Thought it'd be lovin though! He mentioned that once and Flac doesn't play on my USB reader on my Teac CD player. I tried that. AAC will only play from an Apple device on my Teac. I am using usb drives at the moment, although since the files are tagged, I will likely import them into my Ipod touch someday. I am pretty sure that the iPod software down-converts whatever you toss into the player, but I am just making an assumption. To compare, I just now put on an LP and a recording of the same album, Sam Phillip's "The Indescribable Wow" which is a very nicely recorded album. To me, the difference was very hard to detect if even at all switching from one to the other. I am leaning towards "no discernible difference". I use the highest bitrate possible, which I would think matters a lot. I remember when storage was more of a commodity and folks used 128 kbps. I can see how that bitrate would sound audibly worse than the original source. My recordings are pretty dang good at 320 kbps.
As I type, I am letting that album play from the USB drive and holy buckets, that is a beautiful recording!
Here's the album on youtube. Check it out! I did sound for her once back in the early 1980's, btw.

 

[Squishman]

Oh yeah... I recall bringing this LP to your place a while back.

 

[TLS Guy]

I knew someone would pipe in about that. Thought it'd be lovin though! He mentioned that once and Flac doesn't play on my USB reader on my Teac CD player. I tried that. AAC will only play from an Apple device on my Teac. I am using usb drives at the moment, although since the files are tagged, I will likely import them into my Ipod touch someday. I am pretty sure that the iPod software down-converts whatever you toss into the player, but I am just making an assumption. To compare, I just now put on an LP and a recording of the same album, Sam Phillip's "The Indescribable Wow" which is a very nicely recorded album. To me, the difference was very hard to detect if even at all switching from one to the other. I am leaning towards "no discernible difference". I use the highest bitrate possible, which I would think matters a lot. I remember when storage was more of a commodity and folks used 128 kbps. I can see how that bitrate would sound audibly worse than the original source. My recordings are pretty dang good at 320 kbps.
As I type, I am letting that album play from the USB drive and holy buckets, that is a beautiful recording!
Here's the album on youtube. Check it out! I did sound for her once back in the early 1980's, btw.

AAC codec is NOT limited to Apple. I use it and it and have nothing Apple in the rig.

 

[Squishman]

AAC codec is NOT limited to Apple. I use it and it and have nothing Apple in the rig.

My Teac apparently has limitations. The RZ50 I think has a USB in back. I could drag a cable to the front though. The two channel room has the same Teac player, so there's that.

 

[lovinthehd]

You can get really good quality from 320kbps with various mp3 codecs....even though I'm about to replace the head unit in my van, it only plays mp3 rather than flac unfortunately but on the road makes no difference really. Even at home playing those mp3 files I only need for the van, they work quite well. I'd rather have lossless and generally do that and my next head unit will accommodate that. I didn't do much with applish stuff, had a frustrating ipod for a while, tho.

 

[highfigh]

You can get really good quality from 320kbps with various mp3 codecs....even though I'm about to replace the head unit in my van, it only plays mp3 rather than flac unfortunately but on the road makes no difference really. Even at home playing those mp3 files I only need for the van, they work quite well. I'd rather have lossless and generally do that and my next head unit will accommodate that. I didn't do much with applish stuff, had a frustrating ipod for a while, tho.

Does that head unit work with Bluetooth? A newer version would sound much better than BT2.0 or something like that and it would benefit from recording at better bit rates. I use a BT transmitter in my van, which is pretty quiet and rattle free considering it's a cargo van (I added insulation to the roof, sides and doors) with only upgraded speakers. I don't worry about having the best sound in the van, but I really don't have any complaints, considering the fact that the system consists of an OEM head unit and a pair of Kicker door speakers.

 

[Eppie]

From a purist stand point, you want a lossless codec like FLAC as it yields an exact copy of the recording. MP3 is lossy, so if anything happens to the LP you can never get an exact copy going back. WIth FLAC encoded from a CD, for example, you can produce an exact copy of the original CD.

128kBps was common in the Napster days because bandwidth was limited and file size mattered. MP3 players had a lot less memory back then. Sound was not very good though. You could very easily hear the compression in symbols and violins (it affects the high frequencies the most). 256k tends to be the minimum for decent quality with good compression. There was a study years ago that showed that at 256k a lot of the general public can not discern the difference. On a good sound system with a good recording it is still noticeable to the trained ear.

At 320k it becomes near impossible to discern the difference. I have compared original WAV files to 320k MP3 files in Audacity, and there are slight differences in the wave form but they are small and pretty much inaudible. At 320k the file size is still significantly smaller than FLAC but remember that it is lossy. I tend to rip to both FLAC and 320k MP3. I use the FLAC files for preservation and to stream at home. I use the MP3 in the Jeep because it does not support FLAC. I also tend to use MP3 on my phone as it saves memory.

 

[m. zillch]

For car use worrying about what codec one uses is about the least of one's worries. Beside the speakers usually being rather lacking compared to home gear (even if you invest in deluxe, after-market ones), there's their rotten placement, and the listener's rotten placement in terms of being in stereo's "triangular sweet spot". Noise is usually an issue too although for $400K+ it seems there are a few exceptions appearing:

"If you’ve had the privilege of driving or riding in a Ghost or Phantom, you know they’re virtually silent inside. The Spectre is an order of magnitude quieter. At parking lot speeds, it’s eerily silent, so much so that it might bother some people enough to turn on the stereo. At 70 mph, with the stereo off and the fan set to soft, you can still hear yourself breathe. "

source: Motor Trend

I guess if price is no object there are a few oddball cars where you can sit/drive from the stereophonic triangle's sweet spot:

A McLaren F1 road car, for example, sold at auction for $23 Million last year.

 

[lovinthehd]

Does that head unit work with Bluetooth? A newer version would sound much better than BT2.0 or something like that and it would benefit from recording at better bit rates. I use a BT transmitter in my van, which is pretty quiet and rattle free considering it's a cargo van (I added insulation to the roof, sides and doors) with only upgraded speakers. I don't worry about having the best sound in the van, but I really don't have any complaints, considering the fact that the system consists of an OEM head unit and a pair of Kicker door speakers.

Nope, it's just old enough not to have BT altho did use a BT receiver/adapter with it for a while; it has a usb port so just use a thumb drive (there's no radio station I can get worth listening to). The van is pretty quiet, but is a passenger version. Next unit will have BT and flac etc....

 

[highfigh]

Nope, it's just old enough not to have BT altho did use a BT receiver/adapter with it for a while; it has a usb port so just use a thumb drive (there's no radio station I can get worth listening to). The van is pretty quiet, but is a passenger version. Next unit will have BT and flac etc....

If the USB is on the front of the head unit, why not just connect the phone directly?

 

[lovinthehd]

If the USB is on the front of the head unit, why not just connect the phone directly?

Why bother when I have more music on the thumb drive and no cable needed? I don't put a lot of music on my phone, more for when power is out.

 

[highfigh]

Why bother when I have more music on the thumb drive and no cable needed? I don't put a lot of music on my phone, more for when power is out.

Got it.

 

[Stanton]

I digitized a number of LP cuts (not entire LPs; sort of a "favorites" list) many years ago via the stereo analog outs of a decent sound-card. I saved them as WAV files, which I have converted to MP3 or FLAC over the years (depending on the application). I am still amazed at the quality of the digitized audio after all these years, given that there are now "high-end" USB DACs, etc. available.
Everything else (CD) I have converted to FLAC and play from a USB HD.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Let me summarize a few things said here and reiterate a few other points:
For the best possible long-term archival, LP -> lossless is the only way to go. You could then compress your lossless tracks to a lossy format for playback on your current players.

Lossless codecs (from most common to least common) are FLAC, ALAC, and APE. They produce the same result: a compressed, lossless copy of the original audio without any audible changes at all. WAV or PCM files will produce exactly the same audio, but with much larger files, due to the lack of any compression.


For Lossy codecs/formats: MP3 and AAC were mentioned, but I'd add one more, a newer one: OPUS.
You could achieve near-transparent results using mp3, but it generally requires a high bitrate - 320kbps and a good-quality encoder, like LAME (lame -b 320 -q 0 -ms input.wav output.mp3)

The important point is smaller the bitrate, the smaller the output file is. Also, in most cases 24 bit recording are wasted space, even for our audience of audioholics. 24-bit is worthwhile for recording master records, not for end-user playback.

That said, exactly the same audio quality can be achieved with AAC at 256 kbps or 192 kbps using OPUS.
320kbps AAC is 99.9999% the same as FLAC, or at 256kbps with OPUS.
So AAC is more efficient than mp3, but OPUS is more efficient than AAC.

Opus ≳ AAC > MP3

Bitrate	MP3	AAC	Opus
64 kbps	Poor–fair	Fair–good	Good–very good
96 kbps	Fair–good	Good	Very good
128 kbps	Good	Very good	Very good–excellent
160 kbps	Very good	Excellent	Excellent
192 kbps	Very good–excellent	Excellent	Usually transparent
256 kbps	Excellent	Usually transparent	Transparent
320 kbps	Usually transparent	Transparent	Overkill for most uses

 

[lovinthehd]

Let me summarize a few things said here and reiterate a few other points:
For the best possible long-term archival, LP -> lossless is the only way to go. You could then compress your lossless tracks to a lossy format for playback on your current players.

Lossless codecs (from most common to least common) are FLAC, ALAC, and APE. They produce the same result: a compressed, lossless copy of the original audio without any audible changes at all. WAV or PCM files will produce exactly the same audio, but with much larger files, due to the lack of any compression.


For Lossy codecs/formats: MP3 and AAC were mentioned, but I'd add one more, a newer one: OPUS.
You could achieve near-transparent results using mp3, but it generally requires a high bitrate - 320kbps and a good-quality encoder, like LAME (lame -b 320 -q 0 -ms input.wav output.mp3)

The important point is smaller the bitrate, the smaller the output file is. Also, in most cases 24 bit recording are wasted space, even for our audience of audioholics. 24-bit is worthwhile for recording master records, not for end-user playback.

That said, exactly the same audio quality can be achieved with AAC at 256 kbps or 192 kbps using OPUS.
320kbps AAC is 99.9999% the same as FLAC, or at 256kbps with OPUS.
So AAC is more efficient than mp3, but OPUS is more efficient than AAC.

Opus ≳ AAC > MP3

Bitrate	MP3	AAC	Opus
64 kbps	Poor–fair	Fair–good	Good–very good
96 kbps	Fair–good	Good	Very good
128 kbps	Good	Very good	Very good–excellent
160 kbps	Very good	Excellent	Excellent
192 kbps	Very good–excellent	Excellent	Usually transparent
256 kbps	Excellent	Usually transparent	Transparent
320 kbps	Usually transparent	Transparent	Overkill for most uses

What do you think about Ogg Vorbis (OGG)?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

What do you think about Ogg Vorbis (OGG)?

Between mp3 and aac. Opus > AAC > Vorbis > MP3