Unfortunately, the biggest step you can take to improve the quality of your vinyl rips is also the most expensive: an external ADC.The best consumer ADC I know about is the Ayre QA-9; however, the price might make you (It's close to USD 4K).I use a Lynx Hilo, which I consider to be one of the great bargains in headphone-land. You get a high-quality DAC, a high-quality ADC, and a better-than-decent headphone amp, all in one reasonably small box.I use PureVinyl instead of Audacity to rip, principally because it can rip at 192/24, which Audacity apparently can't. I've tried Amarra Vinyl, but I've never gotten good results. I get AIFF files as my output.Historically, I've been using Audacity both for cleanup and to insert track breaks and metadata. I downloaded an evaluation copy of Izotope Rx3 a couple of days ago; it's much more powerful than Audacity for cleanup, but I haven't decided yet whether it's worth $349 to me.The final steps in my workflow, after cleanup and insertion of track breaks, are (1) conversion of files from AIFF to Apple Lossless (using Max) and (2) creation of a downsampled (48/24) copy for use on iOS devices, for which I use Korg AudioGate.HTH.
Every single time someone mentions vinyl rips or any other analog-to-digital conversion, I think I look like this...I've been doing these types of transfers for well almost 14 years now. What's my method?THERE IS NO METHOD!You must treat each recording on it's very own. There is no guaranteed workflow that will work for every record. burnspbesq is right...the best thing for the job is a good ADC. Then you have to make sure a whole host of other things are right and that they all work flawlessly at the same time. Assuming the very best audio is captured (NEVER the case), then you have to clean it up PROPERLY. This means do NO harm to the music. Noise reduction is a no-no. Moreover, there isn't a single tool that will de-click, de-clip, de-ess, de-noise, de(whatever) anything properly. In the past 14 years I think I have used and still use a combination of tools. I think I use 7 de-clickers regularly when doing restorations and I only use some based upon the results I get. There is no one-plug-in-to-rule-them-all. Now...let's say you have a kick-ass plug-in like ReNOVAtor and a proper workstation that can actually run it properly....big whoop. You need to know how to properly dial in the parameters to use it correctly. You can have the best equipment and plug-in's available but if you don't know how to properly use them and what to listen for, you might as well be called Bob Norberg. Your tools are amazing...your results sound like .That said, given enough patience and practice, you would be amazed at what results you can sometimes get... I did this restoration back around 2008 IIRC. Fixing that piano note at the beginning was a real bitch.
Ya seriously. Amazing work there LFF. I listened to it through my phone with the re-400 and the dynamic range still shines through. Are all the pops,clicks, artifacts etc. the result of the AD conversion? I am assuming that they are not audible if you listen to it in analog or else it seems like there is very little point in vinyl.
