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Topic: Record & encode vinyl & tape (Read 5074 times) previous topic - next topic
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Record & encode vinyl & tape

After processing all our discs, I'm ready to tackle the tough job...recording and encoding all our albums and cassettes.  I figured I better ask here and learn from others mistakes before a waste a bunch of time stumbling over known issues un-necessarily. 

My plan is to use Sound Forge to record the playback, and then EAC to batch encode to FLAC, OGG and MP4 (iTunes) like I did on the discs.

Questions:

Are there any signal processing considerations I need to address specific to recording from vinyl or tape?

EAC can handle the batch encoding of pre-existing WAVs, but is there something better than EAC for this since the ripping is already done?

What's the best way to handle all the tagging that won't be there (probably no getting around manually entering it all, right?)?  EAC only allows editing of a small set of tags (no track # at the very least...or am I missing something?), what should I use for tag entry that includes all available tags?

Record & encode vinyl & tape

Reply #1 –
topic moved.
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Record & encode vinyl & tape

Reply #2 –
new EAC can convert wavs on HD to other formats ?

I'd consider foobar2000 as converter/tagger etc.
Maybe encode wavs to a Lossless format like flac or wavpack,
tag them, and then you could transcode the Lossless to a lossy format like lame-mp3. Everything via foobar2000.

btw., if you record good stuff, maybe take care to record via a good soundcard.
terratec ewx 2496 or M-Audiophile2496,
very cheap or onboard soundcards/chips save money in the analogue circuits, ie. recording is analogue!

Maybe it might be interesting to record in 48 kHz/24 bit (any higher resolution like 96 kHz is overkill), and you can make DVDs (-V or even -A) easily. And you would have headroom to downsample to 44.1/16 for CD if you need/want CD,

Also it isn't a problem to make lossy (mp3/Lame) from the 24/48, as there isn't often very much sense in keeping CD format 44.1/16.

Record & encode vinyl & tape

Reply #3 –
smok3 - sorry, had also thought of starting it there and obviously chose incorrectly

user - yes, EAC can compress existing WAV files (Tools menu, Compress WAVs)

The problem I'm running into with encoding to FLAC (EAC, FLAC frontend) is that without any tags in the source WAVs, FLAC pukes.  I need to do all the tagging into the source WAV so that it carries over to the compressed versions automatically, but I haven't found a good piece of software for doing the WAV tagging.

Edit:  Just read an important factoid...WAVs have no tags.  How can I create FLACs from WAVs without tags, if the process of compressing the WAV to build the FLAC requires tags?

Record & encode vinyl & tape

Reply #4 –
A wav file has a name. When the file name is the track name it is retain through all conversions to other formats.
 

Record & encode vinyl & tape

Reply #5 –
AndyH-ha - Thanks

I thought the FLAC files I'd created with the FLAC frontend were no good, but it turns out their OK.  At least I can get the tagging done in FLAC.  It would sure be nice if you could manually fill-in what EAC pulls from the discs it rips before passing those tags to the external encoders you use.  I can see this is going to be a VERY laborious process.

Record & encode vinyl & tape

Reply #6 –
I am not sure what you mean by "fill-in what EAC pulls from the discs" but If you have tracks without names in EAC, such as a commercial CD from which you are about to extract tracks, you can, from the Database drop-down menu
Edit CD information,
  and
Edit Extended Track Information.
If you enter track names, artists, etc through this, the information will be applied to the extracted tracks in the same manner as if it were pulled off the on-line data base. I haven't tried this will files that are already on hard drive, but it may work the same way.

Record & encode vinyl & tape

Reply #7 –
Quote
How can I create FLACs from WAVs without tags, if the process of compressing the WAV to build the FLAC requires tags?
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I arrange the WAV files into this directory structure:
  ...\<artist>\<album>\<trackno><tracktitle>.wav
then enqueue the directory into Foobar 2000. If you wanted to add other things like date/genre/etc, you could have extra levels of directories (or perhaps partition the names of directories) to hold them.

I then use a Foobar masstagger script to extract the artist/album/trackno/title from the directory & file names. Of course, Foobar complains that it can't actually update the WAV files to add the tags, but this doesn't stop Foobar's internal database storing the tags, and when you then convert to FLAC, the tags are transferred across to the FLAC output files.

Record & encode vinyl & tape

Reply #8 –
AndyH-ha - You've got it.  I'll have to revisit the EAC options to see if I can't get it to do what I want after all.

cliveb - Thanks for the info/advice on Foobar.  I'd downloaded and installed it, but hadn't really looked into what it can do.

Edit:  I just checked in EAC and unfortunately you can't load the WAVs from the HDD they way you can files on a CD, so the CD information editing isn't available.  Too bad, that would be a useful feature.

Record & encode vinyl & tape

Reply #9 –
Why don't you use foobar like advised in my 1st post here ?