No, not in that sense. I'd rather resurrect steam engines first.

Rather, I've started to save my various 33 1/3, 45, and 78 RPM analog disks digitally. One that went exceptionally well was this, which contains some of my favorite music:



But, in a few cases the non-signal "crud" sounds are pretty horrific. Well, that's analog for you.

However I wonder if there's some kind of optimal disk cleaning method that might help alleviate some of the artifacts that analog presents to the digital domain. I use the DiscWasher D4 record cleaning system and have already applied the appropriate "nick/pop/scratch" elimination apps.

Nevertheless it would be nice to play, as close as possible, a "clean" disk for my digital recorder. We're archiving here.

Any suggestions on how to get an analog disk really clean? Or is what I'm doing the best there is?

Nicolas?

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Lol.. -- analog for me are those VHS tapes , and cassete tapes.. not disks..

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Jean
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"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." - Albert Einsteiin

LOL, too!

But there's not much one can do with those tapes, other than transfer them and hope for the best.

But some of my 78s go back to around c. 1903 (even before I was born, BION) and I'd like to preserve their sound as accurately as possible.

Meanwhile, thank the gods for DVD, etc. Finally we got rid of that really annoying, downright obnoxious VHS head-switching low frequency hum during high frequency sounds.

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There are some softwares that let you input the background noise of the audio(from an empty portion of the disk) and it will automatically remove those noises from the entire record.

I don't know any names but some advanced audio manipulation softwares have this feature.

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And so it was, however late . . .

D4 has always been my cleaner of choice. Its getting hard to find stores that carry it; the only one around here is a used record shop.

I wonder how many of the youngin's around here have never played a record.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

They will, at some point in the near future.

For audio manipulation I use Sound Forge [Sony].

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

I thought this was about the pending mandatory change to digital television in the US.

Anybody have the details on that? I'm too cheap to get the expensive cable package or a digital adaptor. What's the point of this?

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

I don't know the details of the switch to digitized broadcasting, but would assume it allows more data to be packed into a given bandwith of the EM spectrum.

I have many pounds of vinyl myself. Just last week I put on Paul Simon's Graceland platter and thoroughly enjoyed it, hiss, pops and all (The Boy in the Bubble is one of my all-time favorite songs of his). I guess I really don't mind my records slowly following me into decrepitude. There is also some pleasure derived from the ritual of playing the record itself; looking at the microscopic print on the sleeve edge, sliding the disk out of the cardboard sleeve (admiring the ladies on the Abraxas cover in passing, but album cover art is another dying topic), looking at the liner notes to see just what Elton John claims to be singing, positioning the needle...

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

As Mike says, terrestrial analog TV broadcasting is being terminated so the bandwidth that's currently assigned to that can be reallocated -- to the highest bidder(s).

There is already bandwidth assigned to digital TV broadcasting, which was given to TV broadcasters free of charge. The FCC, under pressure from wireless service providers, wants to eliminate the dual allocation and recover the value of that digital TV band that was given away.

As for the OP, I remember (from the dim and misty past) that someone once produced an automatic washing machine for vinyl LPs. It did an excellent job but was very expensive. I don't remember a brand name. Maybe one could be found on eBay.

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

I have wondered about a machine that images
the groove of old records and knowing the
frequency responce of the original recording
equipment, establishes exactly what sound was
recorded. Easier with mono than stereo!

And this reminds me of my first sight of record
players almost fifty years ago. I was in a
friends house looking at their player. I saw
the arm move across the record as it played.
I looked underneath the pickup to see how it
worked. There was a small perspex window in
it. Ah...there must be a light that shines
onto the record I thought. I was remembering
a colourful how things work book from the
library that explained how sound was put on
films. Well that must be how record players
work as well. Only about 20-30 years ahead of
my time. A little while later I was in
another friends house across the road. They
had a player as well. I looked at it and this
time saw the needle. How does this work I
asked. When told I exclaimed "how crude".
My friends father advanced on me saying "How
dare you Peter, thats the pickup needle!"
He was grinning but I was quickly having to
rethink my careful ideas on how things work!.

Talk about wierd...

In 1963 (had to be) I would stay up Friday nights to watch Ghoulardi and his grade Z horror films. Then I would hang around for the Late Late Show, featuring even worse movies. The intro music was something I had never heard before but was really, really cool, mellow sax and accompanyment. I would hang around just to hear the music.

It was years later when I ran into it again: Take Five, Dave Brubeck Quartet.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Been there, done that. Got a lot of money?

http://www.laser-turntable.com/Turnt...rTurntable.htm

By the way, the page above includes a link to a record washing machine that may be the one I referred to in my last post.

The main problem with laser turntables, other than high cost, is that they are just as susceptible to ticks, pops, etc. (from contamination or disc manufacturing problems) as are direct-contact phono cartridges. Also, earlier attempts had a lot of trouble with warped discs. I don't know if this ELP product has the same weaknesses.

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Many many kudos to Linkin Park and Rob Zombie for keeping album covers interesting.

Hi Mak

Some things to consider:

-getting records as clean as possible: a cheap solution that involves a lot of hand work is the Knosti cleaner, optionally with 3rd party fluid such as "l'art du son" (if available where you live). More expensive are motorised cleaners such as the nitti gritty, VPI and the like. If you find your records still accumulate noticeable amounts of dust between cleaning and archiving, you can play them with a dust bug, or clean them with a dust brush beforehand. Use a grounded dust bug, and any dust bug or brush should have carbon hairs (against static electricity).

-playing records with the least amount of unwanted sound: you can go different ways here. Using a very fine needle on your cartridge, you will go deep into the groove, where in some cases less wear is present (if you didn't use very fine needles in the past, that is ). Using more vertical tracking force than you usually do CAN result in cleaner playback, for example with slightly warped records. But it's not necessarily the case. And the sound can sound wrong (too dull, too bright, too anything). So that's trial and error, when you aren't happy with the sound of a particular record under normal VTF. Final option: using a somewhat more "DJ" cartridge can seriously reduce the amount of unwanted sounds/noise in your recording. However, it can also massively reduce detail, image, dynamics, and overall quality. So you'll have to see whether the pros are more important than the cons on that one. Use a good cable between the record player and the preamp, especially when using a low output MC cartridge. Make sure the turntable and cartridge setup is as good as possible; the better the way the cartridge senses the groove, the less unwanted things you'll hear. Make sure grounding of the table is OK (50Hz, or 60Hz depending on where you live, is an unwanted drone sound ).

Do use a good phono preamp with proper RIAA correction.

As for PC software that removes unwanted things afterwards, whatever suits you. I'm not too familiar with any of these programs, so you'll just have to try. Using no program at all can be the best option in some cases .

Final hint: if your collection is large, try to live long .

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Do not go for the laser turntable. Why? A real needle pushes away small dustparticles without you hearing anything. The laser turntable (which is an analog table by the way) will make ANY dust audible as a tick. Not what you want...and way too expensive.

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