One of xavyer's posts in our remarkably flame-free discussion on so-called music piracy(1) made me think about the problem of digitizing old LPs, tapes and other sources not available already digitized on CDs. In principle it should be simple, but please do share your experience (good/poor soundcards, perhaps external ADCs, phono preamps, chopping recording into tracks....)

(1) I always thought pirates are guys who attack a merchant ship, hang the captain, strand crew and passangers on a deserted island if they feel like it and slaughter them if not, take cargo and burn the ship. Not paying royalties for listening to a recording is, IMHO, a slightly lesser crime.

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

I have used Dart Pro to convert vinyl albums to digital. In general, it has been pretty successful, but - incredibly time consuming.

The package itself has got a lot of recording and audio processing features that make it easy to capture, split, de-click, compress/decompress etc. your recorded music. You do need a lot of space to capture individual albums. As I said though, the biggest problem has been the amount of time it takes to "RIP" the music - it is usually a whole evening of pretty hard work (at the start) just to do one album. Although I started out this way, I am beginning to consider simply re-purchasing the albums on CD (where they are available, of course).

As for the hardware - I have just taken the Line-out from a Yamaha phono amp (nothing special) and a Dual turntable. This goes directly into the Line-in input of my sound card, a 16-bit ESS on-board system. I have found that there is a slight level problem that means I have to boost the input level a bit. Otherwise, it's OK. I usually spend some time cleaning the disk to get the worst rubbish out and reducing static before playing.

I have found that by sampling at 22 kHz instead of 44.1, I can get better sounding results by using the sound processing tools of Dart Pro, but this is only my experience - no doubt people here will have different opinions and results . It also saves a lot of disk space.

So, on balance, only reasonable results (so far) for a lot of effort. My 500-strong LP collection is beginning to look like a mountain, and not a molehill after all. To make things worse, my Dad caught wind of what I was doing and asked if I could do his collection - around 2,500 Jazz and classical records dating back to the 20's...

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

Not paying royalties for listening to a recording is, IMHO, a slightly lesser crime.

Ah, but Dragi, it isn't the listening that's the problem. It's the owning (and particularly the distributing) of the music without paying royalties that is the crime.

In principle it should be simple, but please do share your experience

Not having any mechanism that can even play vinyl LPs, much less turn them into MP3 files, I can only relate an experience that is marginally relevant. I have had excellent results pulling music from a VHS videotape, simply by running the audio outputs from my VCR (a fairly high-end Samsung unit) into the line-in of my PC's sound card, a 32-bit Sound Blaster Live. And Tony Fabris is doing an experiment for me to try and extract the audio from a DVD movie (I purchased on DVD the same movie that I took the audio from the VHS version just for this experiment) to see if there is any change or improvement in starting with a digital source instead of analog. This is apparently a lot more complicated than doing an analog extraction from the VHS tape -- it took him quite a while to find software that would read the digital audio from the DVD and write it to a .wav file, and apparently dealing with the sampling rates (48 kilo-somethings vs 44 kilo-somethings) is problematical. We'll keep you informed.

tanstaafl.



"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

I am beginning to consider simply re-purchasing the albums on CD

From a sound quality point of view, how could you consider anything else? The frequency response and dynamic range of a CD remastered from the original recording tapes is so superior to the original vinyl, not to mention the static, hisses and pops inherent in the vinyl playback... I would never even consider ripping vinyl if there were any way to get the same music already on CD.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

I'm pretty much in agreement with you on what you say here; however -

- Dart Pro allows you to post-process out a lot of the clicks, pops and so forth. It's pretty amazing listening to the result.

- I am not that bothered about the sound quality on most occasions; I have already accepted that by trying this out in the first place! You must bear in mind though, that a lot of the music I have is not available on CD (Angletrax? Agony Column? Ever seen these bands on CD? You can't even buy any of the Clash's stuff on CD, and think how influential they were!) so you're pretty much stuck with your original vinyl.

- There is a lot of sentimental value attached to the old albums I own where both a musical sound or a period in time is irrevocably attached to some important event in my life. The album's physical presence brings that back; a tiddly-piss CD jewel case just doesn't do that for me the second time I buy it. (As an aside, that it the one thing about CDs that I really hate, big-time - those lousy, stupid, idiotic, dumb, irritating, crappy, revolting, soulless, badly-designed "Jewel cases" {Eh? which moron though that one up?}. The damn things break all the b***** time and they are costing me a fortune to replace

- I resent paying for something twice!

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

Ah, but Dragi, it isn't the listening that's the problem. It's the owning (and particularly the distributing) of the music without paying royalties that is the crime.

Yes, yes, I know, I was exagerating because use of so strong a term as piracy really irritates me.

...it took him [Tony] quite a while to find software that would read the digital audio from the DVD and write it to a .wav file, and apparently dealing with the sampling rates (48 kilo-somethings vs 44 kilo-somethings) is problematical. We'll keep you informed.

Please do. I didn't even know there is software to do that. So, the sound is not encrypted like video? What about different encodings (AFAIK most new DVDs use Dolby AC-3, a 320kbps 5+1 channel scheme, but there is also older Dolby surround, Prologic, dts etc).

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Although I started out this way, I am beginning to consider simply re-purchasing the albums on CD (where they are available, of course).

I don't even consider, I always buy those I can (part out of lazyness, part because of higher quality - some of my LPs are quite damaged). I confess, though, to considering this in order to rip some of LPs my friends own and I cannot find on CD (like some live recordings by Pete Seeger published in 70s in Checkoslovakia and containing several songs my friends and I used in amateur theatre productions but cannot find anywhere else, some Croatian bands from my youth - extremely high sentimental value :) Do you think I could exchange with RIAA brownie points earned for those albums bought twice for this piracy?

To make things worse, my Dad caught wind of what I was doing and asked if I could do his collection - around 2,500 Jazz and classical records dating back to the 20's...

Hmm, this could really turn a man into a pirate!

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

The frequency response and dynamic range of a CD remastered from the original recording tapes is so superior to the original vinyl, not to mention the static, hisses and pops inherent in the vinyl playback... I would never even consider ripping vinyl if there were any way to get the same music already on CD.

Luckily, on this BBS we are, presumably, safe from flame wars on inherent superiority on analogue formats and $30k turntables, tube amps and oxigen-free cables...

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Please do. I didn't even know there is software to do that.

Well, there isn't a single specific piece of software that does it. You need to combine different pieces of software to get the job done. And since they all involve DeCSS to some extent, you have to poke around a bit to find them.

So, the sound is not encrypted like video?

No, it's encrypted right along with everything else. The first step of the process requires that you have many gigabytes of free hard disk space to decrypt/rip the entire DVD onto the hard disk. Ick. This alone requires two different pieces of software (a front-end to control the command-line decrypter). Then you have to use a completely different piece of software as a front-end to yet another piece of software to extract the individual elements from the decrypted .VOB files.

What about different encodings (AFAIK most new DVDs use Dolby AC-3, a 320kbps 5+1 channel scheme, but there is also older Dolby surround, Prologic, dts etc)

Those are different audio tracks encoded within the .VOB files that make up the movie. One of the tracks is normal stereo with encoded 4-channel Dolby surround, so that's usually the one you want to snag. You have to poke around a bit in the software find which audio track you want to rip. Of course, some of those tracks contain bursts of director's commentary, etc., so you have to listen carefully before committing.

Most of the software is concerned with ripping the DVD into some other compressed motion-video format, either for pirating onto video-CDs for resale or for distributing on the internet for Divx-encoded downloads. So if you wanna grab just the audio tracks, you have to find the options in the software that save only the .WAV files.

Then there's the problem that the audio .WAV files are 48khz sampled (DVD's standard) instead of 44khz. If you play them on a regular sound card at the default rate, everything sounds like it's in slow-motion. So you need to pull them into Cool Edit and re-save them before encoding.

Phew! That's a lot of work, and a lot of disk space.

___________
Tony Fabris

This site has a lot of useful stuff related to DVD.
I'm sure everyone knows about this site too, they also have some useful stuff.






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Donato
MkII/Blue/40GB/080000565