quote:

Originally posted by Matt_Moor I'd recommend the folowing: Prepare the vinyl first by cleaning it using the wood glue method. I then listen to the vinyl using a 500AL cart and listen for any clicks pops still present. If there is I will wood glue it again and check again. If it is an amazing tune I might consider sending it off for cleaning on a moth machine (service available on ebay). Setup your decks anti skating and weights correctly. ensure pitch at 0 is correct. Ensure height is correct. I clean out the connections on the tonearm with rubbing alcohol. Also buy a proper ADC with at least 48Khz 16bit recording (96Khz 24 bit if you can). This ensures you are using the RIAA curve when recording into your software. I use cool edit. Once I'm happy the medium is as clean as it can be I will wipe surface dust off with an anti static brush. I then put on my spare ortfon arkiv styli. I wipe this in the direction of the styli with the brush ortfon gave me. I then use the tonearm raise/lower bar thing to put the styli on the record with the platter stopped. I press start and stand totally still. I then record several seconds of hum with the needle on the record (but the platter stopped). I keep this for removal later. I then place the needle in the loudest part of the track and then take the record volume to around -6db absolute max. I will increase that later after I remove all the noise I can. Now I go for a full rip. I put my good styli in, I press start, close the lid and i leave the room. That way there is no chance of any noise being picked up by myself. I lift the needle off using the correct tonearm level thingy. I save this as the master wav. I create a copy to put into Izotope RX2. From here I take samples of the noise at the beginning of the track. So first I remove the electrical hum when the platter was not moving. This is removed 100%. I then sample the noise before the first few beats (but never two seconds before the first beat as some vinyls seem to have a real feint noise of the track here). I then live preview that using output noise only until I am happy that i'm losing very little music. Reality is you will lose something but not really noticable if done right. After that I remove click and pops using the output noise preview. What I look for here is clicks that make rhythms which is a sure sign the settings are too high. Izotope is real good at this part. I save that and put it into cool edit and run another click pop removal using my own custom settings. I then finally amplify as close to 0db as possible locking the left right channel so as not to disturb any deliberate volume / panning by the artist. After that I keep my eyes peeled for any digital / CD copies so I can be sure of cleanness

Damn! You'r hella serious! But that Izotope RX2 program is way over the top for me regarding the price.

aaaah, this old vex....

It was simply a case of clean vinyl, playing the track below red on the mixer and understanding the EQ of each track.
A slightly higher end than the same track on WAV would play or mix.

There have been a couple of records I converted with hiss, pops and clicks. Nobody really gave a fuck about this when the DJ played vinyl years ago.
If anything, It's a comforting reminder for me personally that when records did sound a bit rough, the music was a lot better.....

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