Needle drops...Are we fading to "black" between songs?

Up to now, when I've recorded an LP to CD-R I've left the levels up between songs.

On my tiny Cambridge SoundWorks computer speakers and in my '92 Ford Explorer, the two places I mostly listen to my CD-Rs, I never really notice the noise between tracks. BUT, the other day I decided to listen to the recent Die Beatles CD-R I recorded, on my regular system so I could hear everything, warts and all. I found the nosie of the needle on the vinyl, between songs very distracting. I checked the Chris D. ATMP and MMT CD-Rs as well as Todd's red vinyl White Album needle drop. I could hear the noise as well.

Then, I grabbed some commercial grey market Beatles discs to see what the big guys, such as Fabulous Sound Labs are doing. Turns out they're fading to black between tracks.

What are you folks doing? What do you prefer?

Thanks.

 

I never fade to black. I like the vinyl experience. Rarely do I ever even notice vinyl noise between tracks.

 

I fade it out. I admit it.

 

I don't. I just record each side as a big file and then put track markers on it. I like for the CD to play straight thru as if you were listening to the LP.

I do fade in and out (very short fades) at the start and end of each side, in so whatever noise is there doesn't 'hit' you when you press play and out so that I get to 0 just before the thump from the auto-return kicks in.

 

I fade with a gain change or a noise gate, unless the fadeout I get is naturally quiet, or quiet using light NR, I don't need to. There's nothing wrong with blacking the ends as long as it's done well, and doesn't intrude on the musical signal or distract from the music. Sometimes, leaving a bit of hiss before or after the track makes it all sound natural. Other times I may use a head-butt muting. But, I will zoom in extremly close on the end of the wave to make sure that all I butt out is non-musical sound.

Besides, if I blacken/fade the ends, I can play around with the gaps.

I use headphones to do my fades, but regular speakers to get the perspective on adjusting my gap lengths.

 

I fade out. I use a bit of NR to get rid of the low frequency noise, and that of course creates weird artifact noises at the tail end of fades and during silence.

But I do take great care to ensure the the gaps between tracks match the LP

 

You really shouldn't be getting the artifacts. If you're using CEP 2.1 or Audition 1.0, you can use the spectral decay in the NR to tweak your work. I don't know if it's the cart, soundcard i'm using, or have just been lucky with vinyl with consistient noise properties, but I can NR a whole side of an LP using only one noise profile without any artifacts.

I usually do leave the LP or tape's original gap times intact, but sometimes you do have to make some judgment calls.

 

I fade out with the music. I use no noise reduction other than removing a pop or click here and there.

 

David, maybe you have a better turntable, cartridge, amp, sound card, etc., than I do. I suspect that might have something to do how much noise we're hearing between songs.

I have a Rega Planer 3 turntable, Hitachi HTA-7000 receiver, M-Audio 24-bit sound card.

Think I'll try a fade to black on my next vinyl rip.

 

Wow, Grant. You're way ahead of me there. I'm still an amateur when it comes to CEP/Adobe whatever it's called now.

I usually record the LP side, then break up each song in CEP. At the end of the album sides, I usually try and follow the natural fade using the Effects/Amplitude/Amplify/Fadeout option. There, I leave a couple of seconds of black, even more sometimes. Steve has mentioned before, when he works on a remaster, he usually leaves a couple of extra seconds at the end of the last song on Side 1 and the beginning of what would have been the first song on Side 2 of the LP.

Grant, why are you playing around with the gaps? Would you not try and match the original LP gap, as Graham mentioned? Then again, you/we may want to shorten the gap between songs. I know on the early Beatles LPs and I'm sure other 1960s albums, there is sometimes up to 5 seconds of dead air between songs. That can be a bit much, especially when I'm driving. Not that I want a continuous flow of music, but maybe a 2 to 3 second gap is more appropriate.

 

I record each side separately, then clean up each side at a time.

I'll do a light NR for just the noisy record rumble - usually concentrating on the range from 100 Hz and below. I use the space between the 1st and 2nd song usually (if there is enough silence) as the basis for NR. CEP's "spectral decay" feature helps tons in not touching the music's bass frequencies in that range.

I'll do a little bit of fading out between songs now, but not a complete fade to black, and only after the song has gone out completely. Side changes do get faded to black, but again, only after all of the original music is faded out first. Then I do a two second curving fade to black. I do the same at the start of a side - a curving fade to the start of the first song.

What I do when I'm done is use Feurio CD Burning/Managing software to burn the CDR. It's shareware, but I load the two wave files for each side, and use the CD manager to insert the track marks where I want (it's there I name the tracks). I also put in an Index 0 mark at the start of the side 2 file to give the 2 second backward count before the next track. Just a little thing I do.

Joel

 

I dunno. I guess i'm a fast learner when it comes to this DAW stuff. I enjoy working with audio. I can sit here for hours doing this stuff! I never get tired of it.

My methods vary, depending on the project at hand, and I don't always follow a strict routine or order. Depends on my mood too.

I basically do what Steve does, I put some space between the "sides" to imitate that having to get up and turn over the LP experience. But, it also has to be conducive to the flow of the album and music. That's what I meant when I said I sometimes play around with the gaps. Also, I don't always agree with how it was on the original LP or tape, so I adjust it. Some do that standard three second gap thing. UGGGH! I did an Emotions LP that had an 11-second gap between the second to last and last track. I preserved it just the way it was because I liked it. I gave a copy to my sister and she hated it. Some folks like to cut out ALL silence between songs. I hate that! I also leave two seconds at the very beginning of a CD-R, and about five at the very end. I hate it when people cut off all the ends on a CD. It's like they have no patience.

I have been known to rearrange the song sequence on a few of my CD-Rs. Not all albums are so carefully thought out, you know.

 

BTW, most comedy albums are the most haphazardly put together things I ever heard! I won't think twice about the idea of crossfading the audience, tweaking the levels, using a bit of compression, whatever it takes. Right now I am working on Eddie Murphy's first LP, and it contains both stand-up comedy and multitracked songs. The comedy parts are of extremely low levels, while the music track "Boogie In Your Butt" was grossly too loud, very out of proportion. It jolted you out of your seat. I boosted all of the comedy tracks by two decibels and then brought up all of the album by two more, having to use a small amount of limiting on the very dynamic musical tracks. I used a parametric EQ to reduce some vinyl hum.

 

I leave the gaps between songs as-is. I allow for 2-3 seconds between sides 1 & 2 and I leave another 2-3 seconds at the end of the last song. If I include bonus tracks, I'll leave a full 10 seconds between those and the main album.

My fade outs last about 2/3 of a second and begin as soon as the music ends in most cases.

 

I never, ever fade to black between songs. I spend a lot more time declicking between tracks (both automatically with much more aggressive settings that would destroy music signals, and manually declicking each click). The between songs space ends up click/pop free, but still sounds more natural than total silence. To me, even CD's that fade to black in between songs are not "right" sounding. The hiss level fades, then comes back. I hate it. It's just a personal preference, though. Others may disagree.

Of course, it's impossible to remove ALL of the noise, but I try to get rid of as much as possible.

 

I do believe Todd Fredericks has it right. First off, he makes incredible transfers. Then he manually de-clicks the records (quite a slow process). And then he lowers the level between songs slightly. The noise is still there but it's not intrusive and it gives you the feeling that you're listening to vinyl.

 

I fade the vinyl surface noise AFTER the song has completely faded out, regardless of the amount of surface noise. I insert one second of silence, then fade in to the next song. My fades NEVER encroach upon the music. I just add a nice transition from silence to surface noise. 1/2 second for fade-in and 1 to 3 seconds for fade-out (depending on the nature of the fade out for the music).

I spend a lot of time declicking but I rarely use any noise reduction. I reserve noise reduction for only the most hopeless of cases, and even then I use a very light hand.

 

But, what if you DON'T want the "vinyl experience"? My restoration sounds like the vinyl it vcame from without the noise. Of course, I never deaden the noise so it sounds like a Peter Mew or Jon Astley. And, on classical and jazz recordings, I leave all the surface noise in. But, I still de-click. I also use automatic de-clickers, but I am very careful not to dull the transients while doing so. Obviously, I do a lot of trial and error first in the preview mode. I also spend hours de-clicking manually, running through every second of music.

I suggest that if declickers are dulling your sound, you may not be using good settings, or you are using less than good programs for it.

 

There are always artifacts, just less obvious than with previous versions of CE. Unless you go for the 100% NR suck-the-life-out-of-it "Abbey Road" sound, which I don't fancy.

Spectral decay allows you to use lower FFT sizes, thus reducing the transient smearing that occured on previous versions (a pet hate of mine). But I still find that any setting that completely eliminates the noise between tracks is too high. Furthermore, many of the crappy regrind vinyl LPs that I have do not have consistent noise, so I have to work around this. I usually take a profile from the cleanest section possible, to reduce NR-itis. But that will still leave portions elsewhere and sounding ugly.

While I can appreciate those who want their transfers to sound like vinyl, if I want the vinyl experience... I'll play the vinyl.

 

Which noise reduction settings are the best to use? The -15db is the default setting, and, to me, that much sucks the life out of the recording. I have cut it down to 5db, but then it leaves in too much hiss. I have some bootleg tracks that are very hissy, and I'd love to repair them, but they sound better to me with the hiss than without, simply because it sounds like a blanket got put over the speakers. Any tips for NR in Cool Edit Pro 2.1?

 

I don't fade to black between songs, though if the record is fairly noisy I'll sometimes use some very light NR (Sound Forge) until the next song kicks in. I don't usually play with the gaps since I want the timing to feel like that of the LP's. I do use quick (.3-.5 second or so) fade ins and outs for each side.

 

Sorry man, but I don't get the artifacts, at least 80% of the time. You know, it just might have something to do with the soundcard. When I used a Creative card long ago, I would consistiently get artifacts no matter what I did. When I switched to Turtle beach, things started getting better. Cart too! When I used a Grado, life was horrible for cleaning up noise. Since my Sure cart just died, I am forced to use a cheap AT until I buy a new Shure cart. And I was getting very close to that until my front tire had a blowout a couple of days ago on the way to work. But, I found that the cart makes a difference along with the soundcard and everything else in the playback chain.

I agree 100%!

 

Not sure if this ? requires a new thread so I'll post it here first. I have connected my Rega P3 to my iMac DV SE via a Rotel phono stage to convert my vinyl to cd-r. I have only very basic recording software, (freeware "Coaster"). I can only use the input gain in auto mode, because in manual mode it clips constantly even at the minimum setting. However when using auto gain the meter's are still slamming the 0db point although no longer clipping. Will reducing the input impedance of the Rotel phonostage to MM be a viable solution, or do I lose resolution from the cart?

 

First, there just ain't no one setting for all! All vinyl and many tapes vary in their noise properties, sometimes even within the same track! There is no easy way out except not to use it at all.

We have to distinguish between hiss reduction and noise reduction. They are the same thing but they do different types of removal. NEVER use defaults or presets!

ALWAYS take noise prints/profiles of the noise first, then use that as your BASIS for removing noise. If you have a powerful enough processor and enough memory, you should use the preview first.

Hiss reduction can act more like a single-ended DNR reducer we had on some cassette decks in the 70s and early 80s, but here, you can still take a profile of the hiss and use that as your basis for adjusting the action. Here, using the preview will help you to hear what you are doing and allows you to make adjustments as you are previewing. Don't forget to switch the bypass in and out while previewing to see what you are doing. I don't really use the hiss reduction much, just for those tearing sounds you get with scuffed up records. I rarely use it on tapes. In fact, I can only remember ONE toime I did, last week! I was very gentle, and left some hiss in, and had NO artifacts.

If you aren't using a fast computer, you can't use the preview functions and your using NR will become almost impossible! You can do much trial and error runs, but then you are playing an endless, fruitless guessing game. Cool Edit Pro/Audition sucks up tons of CPU and memory! The programs run quite smooth on my P4 chip with 512 MB RAM. But, when I had that old Pentium I with 40 MB RAM? Forget about preview! I had to guess and spend hours experimenting with settings pecause I couldn't use preview.

Guys, I don't try to get things dead quiet. I always leave some noise in to keep the sound as smooth as it is on the vinyl. I just don't want the obvious surface noise, and I want NO clicks if I can help it!

 

Are you using Noise Reduction or Hiss Reduction? The latter is not very useful (although I do pull it out once in a while).

The tricks are:
- Take a HUGE number of snapshots... over 10,000
- Adjust the NR level across the frequency spectrum so that more is taken from the low end and less from the top (this is because after RIAA EQ, the noise is greater at the low end)
- pick the cleanest part of the noise to sample. There should be no pops, thuds, or any other odd noises in there... just noise.