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[old records]

I downloaded MJ 7.2 to do some recording of my old records, however their is no line-in option.  Is their a plug-in, or a different configuration to use.

[gvag]

Tools/Record/Options - should get you started.

There are three tabs here where you can select Recorder, Encoding & file location.  For ripping from LP I use uncompressed wave and use the auto level testing function to set the record level.

I don't use track detection but record the entire LP and then use a wave editor to split off the tracks.

Hope this helps.

[Shumi]

You're right about track detection, it's cute at first but it really doesn't do the work it's designed to. No matter how you try to set it, you end up having the fading in and out of tracks being extricated most of the time. A highly undesirable tool.

[JohnT]

Shumi-

If you've got the time, I'd like your assistance on improving the track splitting feature in MJ's recorder. A few questions:

1. Is the problem you're having that the beginning parts of tracks are not getting picked up?
2. What are you recording from, LP, cassette?
3. What are your settings for "maximum gap between tracks", "maximum gap level", "minimum track length".

Thanks,
John T.
JRiver, Inc.

[Shumi]

John T,

I am glad you ask, let's see if you able to come out with an improvement.

When we do LP recording, we always make sure we capture the entire song; including the slightest fade-ins and outs. But the trouble with LPs is that there is always the inherent crackles and pops that get mixed up with the song. And they are especially audible during the softest portion which are usually also the fade-ins and outs.

I guess one way of solving this is to come out with the optional logic of including the previous 5-7 seconds of the start of the song upon immediate detection of audible sound (which can be set). And the similar opposite should apply to the end of the song as well.

What do you think? This would save us a whole lotta manhours instead of having to trim the tracks manually after recording the entire side of the LP.


Live concert recording; that's a different ball game altogether. But I reckon it should be in the same vein as that mentioned above.

[TJZJ]

I'd be the first vinyl junkie in line to hand J River my $25.00 if they can improve on the track detection feature as mentioned. This is an extremely important tool in making analogue LPs to digital conversion more convenient. At the moment, it seems lacking in that area.

Would greatly appreciate if someone could recommend a software that would do the trick. And if you like psychedelic, doo-wop or african, there are still many obscure tracks not released on CD that I would gladly share.

[JohnT]

How about if the gap between tracks would be split down the middle. The first half of what MJ detects as a "silent" gap gets added on to the end of the previous track, and the last half gets prefixed to the next track?

[TJZJ]

That would definitely be much better than what we have right now. At least we could still use "do not play extended portions of silence" to salvage the situation somewhat.

Do kindly include it in your next build for a start and we'll see if it works.

[JohnT]

Well, the "do not play extended portions of silence" wouldn't work since that only cuts out pure zeroes in the data, the background hiss on an LP always produces non-zero data.

[toni]

Whuy don't introduce a new button "next track" so we can cut tracks while hearing them?
Automatic splits is very difficult to achieve and highly dependant on material being recorded.

[Ton-Up]

I know i've said this before but I think a system similar to MP3 Trackmaker is the way to go. I've never come across an automatic trackmaker that worked properly or didn't require a lot of trial and error setting up. Maybe a different approach could produce dividends.

[Toad]

Well I am using a diff program 4 live concert recordings so far.  I have not tried MJ for this yet.  What would be nice for me for this is an "on-the-fly" wave ditor that would aloow me adjust the sound, filtering out as much crowd noise and boosting the sound quality without applying it to the whole piece and the listening to it back an redoing it until i get it right.  Thanks again to TJZJ for help with my timer question before and if anyone else has any ideas, please feel free to respond to my question on timed recordings.  As far as the gap goes, I don't know if its ok to say on here, but I have been using Cakewalk Pyro to split my tracks on live recordings.  It is very easy to use and to put the split right where you want it to go and then you can adjust the length of time for the split when you record using their program, but like I said, I have only tried to use MJ for the timer so far.

[gvag]

I've evaluated a number of wave editors that have a track splitting option and have obtained only moderate success with any of them.  As others have pointed out ripping LPs is not like ripping CDs there is never true silence between tracks so the process of splitting off tracks is somewhat problematical and time consuming no matter which way you cut it.  No matter how you adjust the parameters there's always going to be material that doesn't fit the profile, thats why I don't use track splitting when I record.  I've tried entering track times in advance and even this method is subject to false tracks being recorded.

FWIW I think that what is really needed is a dedicated track splitter that you use post record.  Load albumn.wav into it and ask the app to guess at where the tracks are then be able to do a quick que and revue process where you can either accept the track boundaries or nudge them forward or back a bit.  Once that's done it would be nice to be able to do a CDDB lookup or an AMG browse for the track titles.

It just occurred to me that there is an even better way to do this post editing.  How about an option in Record to create an index file of where the Recorder thinks it found tracks and have the splitter app use the index file as a starting point.

What makes the whole process of post editing a file just to split off the tracks is that the programs we are using to do this are wave editors and the way they process the wave file makes the splitting process quite tedious: zoom-in zoom-out, find the possible track, select a little bit of the wave on either side, audit it.  Ok, so now you've got the track nailed down:  select from the start of track to the end of the track (somehow) and save selection as (in some programs) or identify the track points and save them as generic track01, 02, 03...  And all this is done manually, a real pain.  A dedicated program could automate most of these tasks and make the whole process a simple 5-10 minute task.  Lets face it, if you're into ripping tapes or LPs your prepared to spend some major time to begin with I just want the process to be computer-aided as much as possible.

Sorry for the length of this post.

[TJZJ]

>>the "do not play extended portions of silence" wouldn't work since that only cuts out pure zeroes in the data, the background hiss on an LP always produces non-zero data.

That's where you could be wrong, John T.

This is because I always run Cooledit Noise Reduction to all my recorded LP tracks to eliminate all inherent hiss and pops. Although it may not always produce a "pure zero data", it usually does clean perfectly. Thus, "do not play extended portions of silence" may work out fine during playback.

Moreover, since the gap between tracks would usually last only about 4-6 seconds on the average, having a mere 2-3 seconds silence before (and after) each song is not too bad at all. I could always use "cross-fade" duration setting of 4-7 seconds to resolve this.

Let's stick to your original proposal of splitting down the middle the gap between tracks, this should do the trick for the moment. And forget about live recording for the moment; that may have to be done manually until such time when Spielberg's "A.I." becomes reality.

[Toad]

Cooledit noise reduction sounds cool.  Where did you get it?  Thanks.

[old records]

My problem is under record/options there is no line-in option, only mixer and microphone.  The documentation states to use the line-in option for recording source.

[TJZJ]

Toad,

You may download Cooledit here; http://www.syntrillium.com/download/download.html?1

[TJZJ]

old records,

Your problem seems similar to another thread "Can't record from LINE-IN" which JohnT had replied:

Go into your control panel/sound and multimedia dialog. On the "Audio" tag under recording, see if there are multiple recording devices. Until version 8, MJ would not let you choose the recording device, but would just grab the first one that could handle 44100hz, stereo 16 bit recording. It may be recording from a device you can't see or control in the windows mixer.

If this isn't the case, check out the "line-in recording tips" on the help menu on this web page. Try the tips in the section that begins "If you are having trouble getting anything to record ...".

[Mr. John]

old records
My MJ version 7.2.280 recently downloaded, has in Tools-Record Sound-Options-Record Source- four choices: Line-in, Microphone, CD Audio, and Mixer. Do you have a Line-in Jack on the rear of your computer? If so, you should have the Line-in choice. The directions given to me by John T. worked for me. I use the ESS Audio Drive as the preferred device to record & playback in Multimedia Properties on the Control Panel. If you have no Line-in Jack on your computer, maybe you could use the the Microphone Jack for your input, but I would only do that using an Isolation Transformer ( Radio Shack #270-054)between your Microphone Jack and your record player, and making sure all volume controls were set at minimum. Then carefully increase the volume of your record player as you monitor the recording levels after clicking the start button to record.

[Mr.|PLS|John]

old records
My previous message describes a way to record from the Microphone Jack on a computer. DISREGARD! I just tried it, and although it will record, the sound is poor. It is probably due to the isolation transformer having limited frequency response. It also requires such low volume that there is a possibility of accidently leaving the volume too high on the record player and blowing out the sound card.

[JohnT]

Another tip for using microphone input for a non-microphone device (if you absolutely have to). There's usually a way to turn off the sound card's "microphone boost" feature if you go into windows mixer, go to recording properties (not playback), then click the "Advanced" tab for the microphone recording source and uncheck "use boost" or whatever it says. This may vastly improve the sound quality.

[Mr. John]

John T
How and where do you go into windows mixer?

[Mr. John]

John T
Sorry, I forgot to say in Windows 98 in the previous message.

[TJZJ]

JohnT,

Could you kindly let us know if you're going to look into improving the track detection tool or not in the next coupla builds.

[JohnT]

Mr. John-
This is copied from the "Line-in recording tips" which is under the help menu on this web page:

- double click on the speaker icon in the system tray
- from the Volume Control menu, choose "options" and then "properties"
- in the "Adjust volume for.." section, choose "Recording"
- in the lower area where it says "Show the following volume controls:", check all the controls

TJZJ-
8.0.237 has two line-in changes. One is a "Track Split" button on the main dialog. This is a way to do manual track splitting. Just click this whenever you want it to stop recording the current track and start recording the next track.
The second change is a new option in "Recorder Settings" called "Trim silence from gaps". If you leave this unchecked, the auto track splitting will work like before except it will not trim any "silence" from either side of the spot where the track split occurred. Hopefully this will eliminate the problem of quiet endings (or beginnings) of songs getting sliced off.
Please try it out and see if it works for you. I'm open to suggestions for improvements.

- John T.

[TJZJ]

John T,

Thanks for the changes, it's a good effort.

I have tried manual track split but it seems that this would require many hours of constant monitoring the LPs being recorded. A laborious task indeed and it may not be too useful for me.

By clicking auto track split, it seems that the location of the split would depend on the gap settings. And it sometimes doesn't split where it's supposed to be; ie, down the middle of a gap. I get this sinking feeling it's not gonna be easy getting it to work in auto real time but more possibly in media editor.

I'll try messing around with the gap settings again to see if it will work for other LPs.

[Ton-Up]

TJZJ,
I agree with you that the manual split button is a step in the right direction and also agree that it means we are going to have to spend a lot of time monitoring.

John T,
Now that there is a manual split button is it possible that it could either
a) Be intergrated into media editor with the ability to split MP3s directly instead of decoding

or

b) Somehow be intergrated into playback so we could split MP3s directly from there.
b)

[rar2667]

This thread is very interesting to me...here's my 2-cents worth.

I tried recording whole LP sides in a single WAV, then used DiamondCutPro to clean clicks and split.  It's method is to scan for gaps and mark them, but then you can drag the split markers around to adjust...that worked pretty well, but my trial ran out and I'm still looking for other candidates before spending more money.

I am currently letting MJ8 split as it records, but am having the problems referred to in this post, so I'm anxious to try the new build options. If MJ gets fixed to accomplish a good track split that will be another feather in it's cap. Keep up the innovation level.

[udo_1]

rar2667 wrote:This thread is very interesting to me...here's my 2-cents worth.

Try DartPro. To me, it has excellent functions for cleaning tracks. If you like more infos on this, feel free to contact me at udo.siegmund@foni.net

Udo