Bulk Recording...

[Lenny]

Going to backup my entire record collection.
Just looking for suggestions as to what would be the best/easiest/fastest way to get everything recorded and on my hard drive??

Thanks!

[dj_soo]

there is no fastest way. You just record all of your records real-time into soundforge or something, put it through a decent limiter/maximizer and save it as a wav or mp3.

[Lenny]

no fastest way to record yes, but the after part may be easier in certain programs i guess is more what i was getting at... I'm on a mac as well...

[mux]

if you're saving as an MP3, make *certain* that you're using the LAME encoder.

There are other encoders that do a decent job, but LAME does the best job, and if you're making archival backups it's worth doing the best job possible.

I suggest at least 192k, stereo, no VBR.

[dj_soo]

well, i suppose you can do some batch processing depending on which programs you have, but ideally you'd probably want to check all the tunes yourself to make sure the levels are more or less consistent anyway.

read somewhere that jazzy jeff took 6 months straight to transfer all his vinyl into digital format :o.

[Lenny]

ha! if I had a collection like his i'd be hiring someone to do it! it's still a rather large undertaking though.

i'll saving everything as WAV btw.

[matéo]

you're saving as wav? how big is your hard drive?

ps after you back them up on hard drive do the same on dvds.

[Lenny]

250 gig external + another hundy on my g5. should cover it. and dvd backup is definitley part of the plan.

[matéo]

Bueno!

yeah man i've been meaning to do the same thing but I can't dedicate myself to it. Good luck man!

are you going digital?

[deliverance]

I just started the same process....gonna take forever. I'm using protools and bouncing as wav's...

have fun!

[Lenny]

yeah going digital. kinda gettin off the dj wagon again but still want to punt around at home a little more economically i guess you could say.

[mux]

Y'know, I have to say...

I do not have "golden ears", tho I had my hearing tested last year and didn't show any signs of loss, despite being in loud places a fair amount over the years (now I always wear earplugs).

However, I've done blind tests in my studio (Mackie HR824 monitors, Tannoy sub, carefully tuned room), and I cannot tell the difference between a LAME-encoded 192k MP3 and a 44.1k/16bit WAV.

I can tell between 44.1khz/16bit WAV and 160k MP3, but even that's hard, you have to listen really closely to the high and low end, it shows in the "air" after a cymbal hit, or the tail of a deep bassline. 192k and higher, no perceptable difference for me. Well, except, y'know, the insane difference in filesize.

I'm not saying to avoid WAV, but I'd love to hear some folks personal test results. If I were trying to make an archival copy of my record collection (if I had a record collection, heh), I'd either say encode at 256k or 320k mp3 and screw WAV, or record at 24bit/48khz WAV. Recording at 16bit/44.1khz, IMHO you're not gaining anything over 256k MP3 except a lot more money on hard drive space and blank DVDs.

[Akeel]

^
yeah what he said.