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Topic: From Vinyl to Naim via Apple TV..... (Read 7035 times) previous topic - next topic
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From Vinyl to Naim via Apple TV.....

I have been thinking about how to both digitise some of my prized LPs and also to play them through my Naim stereo - without connecting the deck to my Naim NVi.  Currently I stream to the NVi from my MacMini (and other Apple Devices) via Apple TV which seems to work very well.  Next step is to re-rip my music from the CDs in a lossless format

Back to the vinyl - my plot is to connect my Rega deck to the MacMini via a Rega Phono preamp using USB input.  In theory I can then play LPs 'live' using Apple TV or of course rip them to digital and play them digitally thereafter.  I'm thinking of using something like Audacity to both play and rip LPs

Does that all sound sensible?  Or are there better options that I might not have thought of?

Thanks

From Vinyl to Naim via Apple TV.....

Reply #1 –
Audacity works well for LP digitizing, but can be labor-intensive as you need to manually separate the various tracks and at some point add track info by hand. I seem to recall some commercial software which automated a lot of the grunt work, even applied the RIAA equalization in the digital domain if needed, so you didn't actually need a phono preamp; a mic preamp would suffice.

From Vinyl to Naim via Apple TV.....

Reply #2 –
Your plan sounds fine.

Quote
I'm thinking of using something like Audacity to both play and rip LPs
Your choice of recording & basic editing software is not critical.  The recording software simply has to "capture" the digital audio stream and get it to your hard drive as a normal audio file.

I'm not a Mac user, but for directly playing the records through USB, you probably don't need any special software at all.  In any case, Audacity isn't the tool for that although you can listen to what you are recording, etc., it's not a practical way to do it.

Quote
in a lossless format
Since you're a Mac user, I recommend ALAC (lossless compression).  The big advantage of a compressed format (besides smaller files) is that tags (embedded title, album, artist info, etc.) is not well supported with uncompressed WAV or AIFF files.

The basic editing...  Splitting up the songs, normalizing the levels, muting the "silence", isn't that time consuming once you get the hang of it...    I could be done editing side 1 before side 2 is done recording, if I wanted to do it that way.    But in general, I like to combine both sides into one long track for cleaning-up & adjusting the overall sound before making the individual song files.

What can be really time consuming is cleaning-up the digitized recording (removing the vinyl "snap", crackle", and "pop").  I use a Windows program called Wave Repair..  It does a "perfect" job on most vinyl defects, and in the manual mode it only "touches" the audio where you identify a defect.  But, it usually takes me a full-weekend to clean-up an LP!

There are other more-automated applications for this, but I'm not sure what's available for the Mac.  This page has lots of information about cleaning-up LP recordings, including software recommendations.  And, tons of other information about digitizing LPs.

But my real advice is always, Buy the CD, or download the MP3/AAC!  (if it's available digitally.)

From Vinyl to Naim via Apple TV.....

Reply #3 –
Don't use a computer's microphone input to digitise vinyl unless you know the input is of unusually high quality. Most of them are hopeless, and mono.

From Vinyl to Naim via Apple TV.....

Reply #4 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Don't use a computer's microphone input to digitise vinyl unless you know the input is of unusually high quality. Most of them are hopeless, and mono.

Not only that but the load impedance and capacitance won't be matched to the cartridge.

From Vinyl to Naim via Apple TV.....

Reply #5 –
Quote from: DVDdoug on
What can be really time consuming is cleaning-up the digitized recording (removing the vinyl "snap", crackle", and "pop").  I use a Windows program called Wave Repair..  It does a "perfect" job on most vinyl defects, and in the manual mode it only "touches" the audio where you identify a defect.  But, it usually takes me a full-weekend to clean-up an LP!

There are other more-automated applications for this, but I'm not sure what's available for the Mac.

As the author of Wave Repair, I should point out that it is a Windows program and I don't know whether it will run on a Mac (under a Windows emulator). Several people have reported that it does work on Linux running in WINE. And since Linux and MacOS are both basically Unix-based, it could well be that it will work. (If anyone knows for sure, I'd be interested to hear about it).

Regarding automated tools that are known to run on Mac: Click Repair and Vinyl Studio both have a good reputation.

From Vinyl to Naim via Apple TV.....

Reply #6 –
Thanks for all the comments and advice - I seem to be on the right track.  My Rega deck is now wired to the Mac USB port via a reg a preamp and playing back my old LPs just fine by monitoring and recording.  What I haven't worked out is whether I can playback without recording, and how to get the sound to stream via Apple TV to my main sound system.  Suspect I might have to record the albums first, clean them up into tracks, import to iTunes and then play them back.
But sometimes its just nice to put an album on the deck and play it that way!