Question Ripping Vinyl

Monster900

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Slightly against my better judgement, I have decided to have one last go at trying to digitise our relatively modest vinyl record collection. Previous attempts have resulted in mixed results and I have mostly been buying replacement CDs, second hand, to duplicate the LPs and then ripping those to a media server. However, some CDs really don't sound as good as the original vinyl.

This time around I have bought a Rega Fono Mini A2D Mk2 to couple up to my wife's Dual CS505-2 and I intend to use Audacity as the capture software running on a HP I7 laptop with SSD (which should help avoid drop outs). I have also bought a record washing kit (Knosti) to try to get the records in as good a condition as possible at reasonable cost.

As this process is really time consuming I want to give myself the best chance of success, so here I am looking for any tips to help me get it right. Any advice to avoid time wasting blunders will be much appreciated. I intend to export to FLAC file format and if anyone has any ideas how the album / track metadata can be easily imported rather than manually entered file by file that would also be a great help.

Thanks in advance.

M
 
What you're contemplating sounds like a nightmare task and one I would never contemplate!

Still if it has to be done then its's vital to keep matters as simple as possible. Unless you want to create playlists of individual tracks I would be very tempted just to rip complete sides of your LPs as single FLAC files. You could at least do this as an initial phase and leave the complicated part of splitting out the individual tracks to do as and when you have the inclination. Audacity will let you do pretty much all that you want to do in terms of manipulating the rips but unfortunately it's all very time consuming.

When it comes to applying the metadata I would recommend the excellent free Mp3tag. For 'album side' files its probably easiest to enter the metadata manually and get the cover art (no greater than 600x600 pixels) from one of the providers built into the tool. However, If you want to go to the next stage of populating the metadata of each individual track on an album I suggest the following approach where the raw component (track) parts are arranged in a work folder which is then transformed in a two stage process :-
  1. Mass import of the relevant album tag data into the component files e.g populating the generic split track files (t1.flac, t2.flac, t3.flac... etc.) from one of the data sources provided in the editing tool (discogs, freedb etc)
  2. Replacement of the generic file names to match the metadata i.e. conversion to meaningful names to identify the actual track name and order
The above is a very high level view of the process and you would first need to spend some time gaining familiarity with Mp3tag (or equivalent). Not the easiest of things to get to grips with but there's a wealth of 'how to' / tutorial information online and its well worth persevering with.

Good Luck.
Mark
 
.. Sometimes I am a naughty boy.,and I have occasionally used Audicity to record full CDs via Deezer ... In my defense it is usually for music I once had actual CDs , but which are scraped beyond use or for LPs I own .The process involved playing them to audio and then digitising that.. Well imagine my surprise when Gracenotes actually identifies these unknown FLACs ,and provides the Artwork and titles!. If I still had a record deck, I might be tempted to try it directly from my few LPs.
 
I think Gracenote uses track lengths to work out album tags, not sure if it's clever enough to tag FLACs from vinyl rips.
 
I think Gracenote uses track lengths to work out album tags, not sure if it's clever enough to tag FLACs from vinyl rips.
Well I was very pleasantly surprised!!. My DAP is the Sony NWA 35 45 models. And I use the Sony Software ...and it automatically picked up the meta data!!!.
 

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