How do you digitalize your music?

- ask away
User avatar
upekah
mnml maxi
mnml maxi
Posts: 1693
Joined: Mon Oct 27, 2008 12:59 pm

How do you digitalize your music?

Post by upekah »

cheers,

I am constantly getting more vinyl from discogs and do have vinyl which I am not going to buy on beatport as well so I am thinking about digitalizing it but I actually have no idea how to do that right.

simple question:

What's the best way to do it? What are common mistakes and how do you achieve a decent quality..
plaster wrote:you can't be a leader if are a follower.
SA-
mnml newbie
mnml newbie
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 2:51 pm

Post by SA- »

http://www.stantonmagnetics.com/v2/prod_t90.asp

alternatively you can get a USB mixer like one of these
http://www.yamaha.com/yamahavgn/CDA/Con ... TID=207900

maybe your best option, u can use ur own turntables and connect them to ur USB mixer. The mixer digitalizes your vinyl so u can record it on ur PC through USB.
Right now i'm using the yamaha MW10C and happy with it.
ekwipt
mnml mmbr
mnml mmbr
Posts: 124
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2007 6:25 am

Post by ekwipt »

Good quality cart, good quality turntables, good quality preamp, good quality soundcard/AD/DA converters.

24 bit 48Khz should be plenty 16bit 44 khz is probably enough

Don't clip the tracks

Maybe auto gain in another software

Serato and Traktor can do this on import though

that's about it

The problem though is if you plan on using traktor or ableton to beatmatch for you it will have problems because of the turntables wow and flutter

especially if you use traktor scratch pro or serato and then you have the recordings wow and flutter plus the control records, it will be harder to keep everything in sync
cecil
mnml newbie
mnml newbie
Posts: 15
Joined: Mon Dec 07, 2009 12:24 pm

Post by cecil »

what's your purpose?

playing it with Traktor? Use phrases in your own music??
ekwipt
mnml mmbr
mnml mmbr
Posts: 124
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2007 6:25 am

Post by ekwipt »

Native Instruments soundcards are good for the purpose, but of course there's always better
cecil
mnml newbie
mnml newbie
Posts: 15
Joined: Mon Dec 07, 2009 12:24 pm

Post by cecil »

- use decent styli and elements on the turntable!
- use a good mixer (preferably Allen & Heath, Eccler etc)
- perfect your gain structure (max gain, without red leds)
- Neutral Eq's (of course), NO Autogain
- Good soundcard (I use Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 - good s/n, 'natural feel')
- for most electronic music: 44100/16 bit is way enough:
44100, because most vinyl-engineers cut everything above 17 kHz
16 bit, because electronic tracks mostly have a small dynamic range
- don't normalize, don't compress (if you like the tracks)

Of course, these recommendations are always subject for debate (yeah, purists and audiophiles) but the above gives me very decent results...
User avatar
tone-def
mnml maxi
mnml maxi
Posts: 3822
Joined: Sun May 27, 2007 12:05 am
Location: Hertfordshire

Post by tone-def »

you need any audio interface
record into any DAW
record at 24bit
leave plenty of headroom -12dB to -6dB

most AD converts need this much headroom otherwise it distorts a little.
prussell
mnml mmbr
mnml mmbr
Posts: 444
Joined: Mon Nov 19, 2007 4:55 pm
Location: detroit
Contact:

Post by prussell »

cecil wrote:- use decent styli and elements on the turntable!
- use a good mixer (preferably Allen & Heath, Eccler etc)
- perfect your gain structure (max gain, without red leds)
- Neutral Eq's (of course), NO Autogain
- Good soundcard (I use Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 - good s/n, 'natural feel')
- don't normalize, don't compress (if you like the tracks)

Of course, these recommendations are always subject for debate (yeah, purists and audiophiles) but the above gives me very decent results...
All of this, except Normalizing actually just raises the overall volume/gain on quiet recordings to a certain point...so it's actually not harmful, it's desired.
Different than compression.
Just make sure you normalize only to 100%, not above.
Oh, and also clean the sh¡t out of your records before recording.
ekwipt wrote:Good quality cart, good quality turntables, good quality preamp, good quality soundcard/AD/DA converters.

24 bit 48Khz should be plenty 16bit 44 khz is probably enough

Don't clip the tracks
More good advice, same as above.
The problem though is if you plan on using traktor or ableton to beatmatch for you it will have problems because of the turntables wow and flutter

especially if you use traktor scratch pro or serato and then you have the recordings wow and flutter plus the control records, it will be harder to keep everything in sync
This I don't understand; I don't have that issue whatsoever with my recordings, and I record using a 1200 with pitch (typically) locked at zero.
Using a belt-drive turntable or any turntable with bad/wobbly pitch will increase the likelihood of these problems though....
Post Reply