Having grown up in the BCD era — Before Compact Discs — I have a fairly healthy collection of vinyl records. Some of you may have heard of them, or you may have actually seen some at some point in your life. They come in cardboard envelopes about 12 inches square…usually with pictures or fancy artwork on the outside.
You need a phonograph/turntable (yeah, kinda like those things the rappers use, but theirs are ‘special’…) to play the music that is etched on these archaic pieces of plastic, and today you might have trouble even finding a stereo receiver/amplifier with a phono input — nowadays, ‘receivers’ aren’t much more than audio/video switching devices, and have connections for more speakers than a football stadium. But I digress…
At any rate, I got to thinking a bit ago that it might be nice to get copies of some of my favorites on CD. I’m not planning on replacing ALL of my vinyl with CDs, but I’d hate it if something would happen to the vinyl copies of some of these favorites, and I didn’t have some sort of backup copy. However, as luck would have it, I’m the last to find out that some of my favorites were indeed available on CD — but only for a short time, a few years back, and now they’re out of print on CD. And it’s not like these are real rarities — I guess it’s just a matter of them not necessarily being the biggest stars of the 70’s (like the Zeppelins and the Floyds were), so record companies just didn’t go all out to make sure that later generations were able to get their stuff on CD. Oh sure, some of my stuff I can find on sites like the Amazon used/new section, and can get still-sealed, brand new CDs for under 10 bucks shipped. That I can handle. But some of these other albums? I was pretty surprised — and disappointed — to find out that we’re talking 60, 70, or even 100 bucks for a single CD on the used market. Yeah right. Not in this lifetime. Maybe they weren’t considered rare or valuable then, but they’re pretty rare now.
So, thus was born the BMB vinyl restoration project. Why not just digitize the vinyl I already have and put it on CD? Sure, the little crackles and pops are annoying, but then at least my vinyl would be preserved. But in this digital/computer age we can go a step further, and once that analog signal has been digitized, it can be processed and altered via computer…
Enter Wave Corrector software. Just one of a number of digital audio processing programs available out there, but it was designed specifically for the purpose of helping the home user digitize and restore their vinyl records and cassette tapes. Unlike many of the other pop/click processing programs, it lets you modify the results and even add your own corrections if you so choose, giving the user pretty much total control over the end result. And it doesn’t mess around with any of that lossy MP3 stuff — it records and processes lossless WAV files, which can then be burned directly to audio CD format by your favorite burner program.
So next time you wonder why BMB hasn’t posted anything in a while, just imagine he might be in the ‘studio’ with his headphones on, staring at a couple of squiggly red and green lines on the screen, trying to track down that elusive click — that one he’s just certain is there (he’s pretty sure he can hear it clearly at 1/4 speed!), but darn it all, it’s a tough one to pin down because it’s jammed in there right on top of that last kick-drum ‘thump’…
His idea of ‘fun’ has always been a bit different than that of a lot of other people.
Update: If you can get your hands on a good sound card or USB interface to do your A/D conversion, do it. Your digitized recordings will be much better than if you use an el-cheapo sound card. I lucked out and picked up an old ESI Waveterminal U24 USB interface (no longer in production – replaced by the U24XL) on eBay at a very good price — it does a wonderful job. The difference is most noticeable on the bottom end — recordings produced by a cheap sound card were much ‘thinner’ by comparison.
Update: I thought it might be useful to post some audio samples. For file size considerations, these are MP3 (compressed) samples, but all file processing and CD burning is done with lossless WAV files.
The clips are the from the guitar intro to “Raging Fire”, on the ‘A Place In The Sun’ album by Pablo Cruise, circa 1977.
Original vinyl recording:
Audio ‘restored’ with Wave Corrector software:
A Bit More Bull 
I’m glad you posted this, BMB. Not only is it a cool diversion from the market-related stuff, it’s also helpful in that I can recommend the Wave Corrector program to a friend of mine who would definitely use this (not long ago, he actually paid someone to convert some old tapes to CD).
Speaking of obsolete formats, just came back from a drive to the lake listening to a cassette of The Clash’s second LP. I came of age during the great vinyl & tape-conversion-to-digital period, so I was kind of smiling at the fact that I still have a few tapes sitting in my car.
I always marvel at the fact that vinyl came back into fashion, but cassettes never did. Still just fodder for garage sales & bargain bins. I realize that the sound quality of a cassette gets eaten away over time, but hey, I grew up listening to these things 😉
To me, cassettes were just for portability. The vinyl was still the ‘real’ thing. I never bought a pre-recorded cassette. If I wanted the music, I bought the LP. Then if I wanted it on tape for the car, I’d record it myself.
On the software, I would strongly recommend spending the extra bucks for the ‘pro’ edition. You don’t get the ability to add/modify corrections with the standard one. I have found that to be invaluable.
Ha ha, you guys are showing your age 😉
He must be talking about you, David. 🙂
Definitely 🙂
I forgot to add that I still have most of my old records that I bought from garage sales & record stores (or rescued from my dad’s collection) as a teenager. Cream, Zeppelin, Sly, The Clash, Blind Faith, Fleetwood Mac, etc.