Re: Audio Recording Software

From: Bill Gee (billgee_at_sxbxcxglobal.net)
Date: 01/25/04 

Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 22:38:36 GMT

Update: I've been kinda unhappy with the way Gramofile finds track
boundaries, so today I went looking to see what else is out there. I found
a program called Gnome Wave Cleaner (gwc). Looks like it does a much
better job at cleaning up clicks than Gramofile, but it has no ability to
split tracks.

However, I found that WAV files cleaned up with gwc split much cleaner in
Gramofile, probably because a lot of the inter-track noise is gone.

Go to Google and do a search on "linux declick". There are links to gwc on
the first page of hits. There are a couple of libraries that must be
downloaded and compiled. On Fedora Core 1 I found that gwc would not
compile until after I compiled and installed the libraries, then (critical
point) updated /etc/ld.so.conf and ran ldconfig. After that gwc compiled
and installed cleanly.

CWO4 Dave Mann wrote:

> This report is a keeper ... printing if off for the big notebook right
> now.
>
> Bill, thank you very much for the research, then writing cogently about
> your successes.
>
> I am working on a similar project involving very old 16-2/3rpm
> transcription disks from the mid-1930's and your information will not only
> be very helpful but credited in the final report.
>
> Very sincerely,
>
> Dave
>
>
>
> "Bill Gee" <billgee@sxbxcxglobal.net> wrote in message
> news:2FHOb.9828$Pp1.5415@newssvr23.news.prodigy.com...
>> GregM wrote:
>>
>> > First: This isn't really a question... I'm looking for some
>> > suggestions. I have a couple o' hundred records (Remember them big ol'
>> > plastic things???) and I wanna record them direct to the HDD. If
>> > anybody out there has any experience at this and can recommend some
>> > good
> software,
>> > I'd appreciate it greatly.
>>
>>
>> I am in a similar situation, but the goals I have are different and so my
>> solution my not work for you.
>>
>> My goal is to convert my record collection to CD. This is partly to help
>> preserve the originals and partly so I can play them in my truck. I have
>> no interest in MP3 formats or large libraries of music stored on the
>> computer. Sound quality is the most important thing to me.
>>
>> The sound recording software I got is called Gramofile. It can be had
> from
>> http://freshmeat.net. It has not been updated in several years but still
>> works pretty well. It will capture the digitized sound, split it into
>> tracks, and run processing on it to remove pops/clicks/static. If anyone
>> has better suggestions, I'll be glad to try them.
>>
>> I found that running the output of my phono preamp (Rotel RQ-970) through
>> the cheesy sound card in my computer produces results that were ...
>> well,
>> Cheesy! It sounded really, really bad. Part of the problem was the
>> added noise from having analog signals inside the computer and part was
>> the really awful analog-to-digital circuit.
>>
>> High-end sound cards can be had for several hundred dollars. While they
> may
>> address the ADC problem, they cannot completely solve the noise problem.
>>
>> My solution is rather expensive, though not much more than a top-notch
>> audiophile sound card. I bought a Denon CDR-W1500 CD recording deck. I
>> use the deck to record albums onto a CD-RW media, then take that disk
>> into
>> the computer and rip it to a WAV file. On the computer I use Gramofile
>> to split the tracks and declick it, then I burn the results onto a CD-R
>> media
>> for permanent use. The CD-RW media is blanked and used again.
>>
>> The Denon deck has top-notch analog-to-digital circuits and it operates
> well
>> away from my computer. No additional noise from any source and extremely
>> accurate encoding. Once in digital form, running it through the computer
>> will not add any more noise.
>>
>> On my old computer (P2-350, 512 meg RAM, 4x4x16 drive) the whole process
>> takes about 2.3 times the album length. That is the WHOLE process -
>> recording the LP, ripping, processing and burning.
>>
>> My new computer is a Celeron 2.4, 1 gig of ram and 8x4x24 CD drive. It
>> takes less than 15 minutes to rip, process and burn 50 minutes of music.
>>
>> The only real problem I've run into with this is the click removal
>> algorithms. Gramofile has a darn good one, but it does not do well on
> some
>> kinds of music. In particular it does not like trombones. Get a copy of
>> "A Cut Above" by the New Dave Brubek Quartet. There are some really
>> powerful trombone solos which are mangled beyond belief by the declicking
>> algorithm. Fortunately Gramofile can be run without the declicking
>> function and music which triggers it is rare.
>>
>> There are cheaper CD-R audio decks out there and they would probably do a
>> good job. I didn't want a cheap plastic deck from Best Buy. 

-- 
Bill Gee
There are no 'X' chars in my email address.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Converting albums to MP3
    ... gwc gets rid of things that gramofile won't even notice. ... load the recording into snd and locate the track locations ... wrote a little scheme thing for snd that spits out the cursor location, ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)
  • Re: Converting albums to MP3
    ... >> quality will not be the best when recording LP's, ... Gramofile has worked well for me. ... The quality or sound depends on your ... vinyl player, ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)