Recording vinyl LPs on Mac Mini

[toMACsh]

I'm looking for software that to record my record albums onto my Mini so I can transfer it to other media. I want to be able to easily edit out the "dead spaces" at the beginning, middle (flipping the album over) and end.

I have the Griffin iMic, and was using the app that came with it many years ago called Final Vinyl, for the first time in awhile, and certainly the first time with Mojave as my OS. Well, FV crashed several times after successfully recording an album, and after reinstalling it (same version, no update available) can't get it to open because I did not download it from the App Store. It's not in the App Store. The developer did not answer my e-mail about it. I think it's dead.

I tried Vector 2 Express today, but while editing is possible, it's not easy. I'm not sure about paying $20 for Vector 3 without knowing how well it works.

The developer of Easy Audio responded to an e-mail saying it does not have editing capabilities. There are other apps in the App Store that I can try, and I'd be willing to pay a small amount to do so, but not more than $10. I'm just not sure which one to turn to next. Any guidance would be appreciated.

 

[RadDave]

Hello - there is a Recent Thread on this topic - the poster recommended Vinyl Studio for this purpose - take a look at the links to see if the comments there are helpful. Now, I've not used this software so no experience (in late 1984, I purchased my first CD player and went 'cold turkey' on LPs - sold my turntable to my BIL and gave him all of my records). Dave

 

[pm-r]

I'm just not sure which one to turn to next. Any guidance would be appreciated.

Try doing a search and check out the user comments on some of the options available at:
https://www.macupdate.com/



- Patrick
======

 

[Slydude]

In hat recent thread I mentioned that QuickTime Player X could be used to do this job. I should have mentioned GarageBand as well. Both are already on the Mac and thus "free". GB has a little ability to alter a sound as needed. Audacity is also free but I don't often recommend it because IMHO the interface is awful.

I did a similar task several years ago with some cassette tapes. I found Amadeus Pro very useful but it's not free.

As Patrick mentioned there are lots of options even if the audio needs a little cleaning up.

 

[MacInWin]

Well, FV crashed several times after successfully recording an album, and after reinstalling it (same version, no update available) can't get it to open because I did not download it from the App Store. It's not in the App Store.

Was the issue that Gatekeeper blocked it from opening? If so, that's easy to fix. Instead of just opening it with double-click, right click, then in the resulting menu, pick Open. Gatekeeper will then ask if you are sure you want to open it. Respond that you do and it should open. Once done once, you won't need to do that again and it should just run.

 

[toMACsh]

Thanks, Jake. That worked. Now to use it without the crashing problem...

That trick should help me if I need to try one of the other suggestions that doesn't come from the App Store.

QTP does not seem to have the ability to edit out the "dead time" that I want.

GB seems complicated, and more useful for recording your voice or instrument. I guess I need to find a tutorial specifically about recording albums.

 

[Slydude]

QTP does not seem to have the ability to edit out the "dead time" that I want.

QTP can do some very basic editing of "dead time" but they don't exactly make it obvious how to do it. See here for some ideas. The techniques talk about movies but QTP treats audio and video the same way.

 

[toMACsh]

Thanks Sly. What I don't see is time markers. It would be a guessing game that I don't want to play.

 

[Slydude]

Thanks Sly. What I don't see is time markers. It would be a guessing game that I don't want to play.

OK. I assume that by time markers what you would like to do is open the file for an album and insert markers to delineate individual tracks correct? If that's what you're shooting for QuickTime Player X is probably not the best choice. Amadeus Pro has the ability to insert markers and I think Audacity does as well. I'll let you know if the markers can be used the way you like.

There used to be a program included with Toast to do this but I found it a pain in the but to use. If that program s still included with the deluxe version of Toast I certainly don't like it enough to recommend buying Toast.

Here's what I did with the cassettes that I captured. I used Amadeus Pro (not free) but I think Audacity (free) has the same features, These commands are for Amadeus Pro but should be the same/similar in Audacity.
!, Import the audio file for the album in question.
2. When the waveform for the sound file appears on screen you may need to magnify the on-screen view a bit. What you want to be able to do is get a good enough view of the wave to find the dead space between tracks. Trim any dead space from the beginning and end of the file. The dead space basically appears as an almost flat line.
3. Move the cursor to the dead space at the end of the first track and click there to place the insertion point there.
4. Press Command and Left arrow to select everything back to the beginning of the track. Cut the selected area to a new file, give it the name of the track and save the file somewhere convenient.

When these tracks are pulled into iTunes and tagged properly they are treated as a single album.

 

[chscag]

Hey Sly:

How about cassettes? Can Amadeus Pro do the same thing with them? I've used Audacity before and the interface confuses me so I would rather have a pay program that's easy to use rather than a free one that is difficult.

I have got lots of cassettes that I would like to convert over to CDs. My newer autos no longer have a cassette player nor a CD player in them. They have what is called "Car Play". And it takes an electronic engineer to figure out how to make it work.

 

[Slydude]

You but it can. You just have to get the cassette player connected to the Mac. I've been using it for that very purpose since the Blue and White G3 days for just that purpose. You may need to go into the preferences and tell it which sound input to pull information from. I've never used it with LPs but it can be done.

For most recordings, you can adjust the gain on the recording. I generally do this by finding the loudest part of whatever I want to record and adjust the gain to just below where clipping would occur. It also has a denoise feature that I like to usw with tapes that have picked up more hiss than you might like. You apply that function by selecting part of the file with just that hiss and selecting "sample noise". Then select the entirety of the file and apply the denoise function.

There are probably better ways to do that but I'm not a genius with audio filtering.

I reported a potential bug to the author several years ago and had a response complete with a patched program in less than 48 hours IIRC. Turns out it was a conflict with Norton AntiVirus which I was still using at the time.

The Amadeus Pro manual can be found here

 

[toMACsh]

Sly, regarding #2 above, Final Vinyl allowed me to listen to the recording and note the times where I wanted to begin and end a cut out of the waveform, then go back and click near the beginning until I found the time I had noted, then drag the cursor until the time showed the precise second where I wanted to end the part to be cut out. There was no guess work or reliance on the shape of the wave. It was based on the time displayed. I have not found another app with that feature.

 

[Slydude]

I

I thought it might help a bit if you saw what the screen looks like so I attached a screenshot. At this point, I haven't magnified the sound wave yet. All I have done is to expand the window so that it takes up the entire screen. Initially, the red and blue lines are in the same place but can be moved as needed. One is the play head (think needle position on an LP). The other line is basically a selection cursor.

As you can see there is a time code at the bottom of the screen. I've used Preview to mark that location with a small star. It's not normally there of course. At the moment the screenshot shows the entirety of a 40+ minute recording. The colors of the various interface elements can be customized.