Wayne Stallwood wrote:

On 06/08/11 11:04, Anthony Anson wrote:

...

Something which (strangely) I've never tried, as my business, such as is remaining, is in audio, but I don't rate the quality of CDs...

Last week I bought an interesting and scarce 45 rpm record - a university rag record - and several Sheddi (denizens of uk.rec.sheds) would like a copy and scan of the label.

Scan's no problem, but what program (under Squeeze) would people suggest for writing the best quality audio files to CD (or DVD)?

Even though it means importing half a ton of KDE bits I tend to use k3b (when I want a gui)

Just tell it you want to make an audio CD, import the audio files and it will convert them to cda on the fly.

If you want to do it the commandline way then look at cdrdao or cdrecord (wodim) (in the cdrkit package) but both will need your audio tracks to be straight pcm or wav before you start.

Thanks. I'll look into it further. To connect to the audio bit on the flaptop I've got to make-up the cables (phono to midi-jackplug) before I do anything else - most of my audio equipment is probably older than most people on the list...¾

¾ Garrard 401 but with a Hadcock Unipivot SE arm with van den Hul wiring, and MusicMaker II pickup; Ferrograh amp; and not immediately impinging on this topic, a pair of Leak Sandwich Speakers.

Damn! Returned to sender *AGAIN*!

Wayne Stallwood wrote:

On 06/08/11 17:13, Anthony Anson wrote:

...

¾ Garrard 401 but with a Hadcock Unipivot SE arm with van den Hul wiring, and MusicMaker II pickup; Ferrograh amp; and not immediately impinging on this topic, a pair of Leak Sandwich Speakers.

Don't worry I am sure whatever method you employ will faithfully capture the idler wheel rumble from your Garrard :-P

It won't.

http://www.girolle.co.uk/index-2.html

The rumblewheel and swishingmachine motor are separated from the stylus by rubber washers (Garrard) an inch-thick lump of glass, sorbothane pad, silver steel cup and spike, heavy lump of stainless steel, sorbothane pad, sheet of float glass, sorbothane pad, another sheet of float glass, sorbothane pad, stainless steel block, silver steel spike and cup, sorbothane pad, another inch-thick lump of glass, arm and pickup.

There is *no* trace of rumble...

So there!

I suppose you're after one of the CDs

D&RFC

Adam Bower wrote:

Your post seems a bit... odd, let me elaborate....

On Sat, Aug 06, 2011 at 11:04:09AM +0100, Anthony Anson wrote:

...

Something which (strangely) I've never tried, as my business, such as is remaining, is in audio, but I don't rate the quality of CDs...

So why are you turning this into a CD?

...

Last week I bought an interesting and scarce 45 rpm record - a university rag record - and several Sheddi (denizens of uk.rec.sheds) would like a copy and scan of the label.

So, these people are all on a newsgroup, this would suggest that they have internet access.

...

Scan's no problem, but what program (under Squeeze) would people suggest for writing the best quality audio files to CD (or DVD)?

Why would you create a CD if these people can download the files, why not sample the music as 24bit WAV or similar (I'm not an expert on audio codecs) and then clean up the audio and then compress it with something like flac then put the files up for download?

Through a mobile internet dongle with only GPRS access?

Adam Bower wrote:

On Sat, Aug 06, 2011 at 08:45:51PM +0100, Anthony Anson wrote:

...

Through a mobile internet dongle with only GPRS access?

Now you're just being awkward, copy the flac files onto some media like a USB memory stick, SD card, DVD-R or whatever takes your fancy and distribute that way, I'm sure one of the people wanting this has some bandwidth/hosting available.

I *could* find wireless points in Norwich, (and often do) but I'd then have to purchase more webspace to put it on, as my webspace allocation is bulging at the seams already.

If I'm going to put it on a portable medium it might as well go on CD.

Adam Bower wrote:

On Sat, Aug 06, 2011 at 10:02:52PM +0100, Anthony Anson wrote:

...

If I'm going to put it on a portable medium it might as well go on CD.

So why use a format you deem unsuitable when you could just put it on the CD using it as a filesystem instead of audio and shove on a proper master of it?

Who said I wasn't going to? There's room on a CD for a choice of files...

I'm investigating possibilities ATM, but BJ seems to have grasped what I was looking for - a program which will burn a commercial-quality CD from analogue audio input, doing the conversion 'on the fly'.

My reservations about the quality of the audio from the average CD is purely professional, and really only concerns high-end recordings listened to by people with A1 hearing - the latter attribute I suspect I'm somewhat past

Since I have most of a cake of suitable CDs, and IIRC the interested parties nominated the medium, that is how I shall proceed.

Bah! Done it *again*! I'm getting forgetfuller as well as old.

Adam Bower wrote:

On Sun, Aug 07, 2011 at 10:49:37AM +0100, Anthony Anson wrote:

...

I'm investigating possibilities ATM, but BJ seems to have grasped what I was looking for - a program which will burn a commercial-quality CD from analogue audio input, doing the conversion 'on the fly'.

Not really, you claimed CD had problems with quality

Well, it does - to get the information on a CD readable by domestic equipment - even high-end - the bottom and the top of the audio spectrum is chopped off. While the actual frequencies are either inaudible to the human ear, or getting that way, the interference patterns they cause tend to make the sound from a CD seem dry and brittle.

My CD player tries to compensate for this with an optional valve stage, but really, all it does is to mellow the sharp edges.

and then asked for the way to get highest quality audio onto a disc. How did my answer not give you the highest quality that you wanted? :)

True, andbuthowever, there's no guaranteeing that everyone who might have an interest in the record has either the equipment or the knowledge to make use of the files.

And before you come back with 'these days, *everybody*...', I made that mistake recently, having just sent someone a CD of jpegs with long filenames - and his OS won't play with them...

'Aim for the lowest common denominatrix and - - - - <no carrier>' is my motto.

I'll report back when I've hooked everything up.

On Sun, Aug 07, 2011 at 02:45:21PM +0100, Adam Bower wrote:

In fact, by saying that... surely you should be sending out wax cylinders or something similar?

Bleh, didn't mean to send that straight away without the further addendum of saying that playing a CD isn't really straight forward for me anymore as I only have a dedicated CD player in the car. I have optical drives available on a couple of machines but in all likelihood I'd end up ripping any CD that I purchased or was sent.

adam

Adam Bower wrote:

On Sun, Aug 07, 2011 at 02:45:21PM +0100, Adam Bower wrote:

...

In fact, by saying that... surely you should be sending out wax cylinders or something similar?

Bleh, didn't mean to send that straight away without the further addendum of saying that playing a CD isn't really straight forward for me anymore as I only have a dedicated CD player in the car. I have optical drives available on a couple of machines but in all likelihood I'd end up ripping any CD that I purchased or was sent.

I find them even more difficult to rip than telephone directories.

On Sun, Aug 07, 2011 at 03:10:12PM +0100, Anthony Anson wrote:

It is hard to find something to play wax cylinders on these days, even in rural Norfolk.

Naah, you can just digitise them with a photo and then analyse the picture with software. But in all honesty if you're dealing with people who can't deal with long file names I'd have thought they'd have been up for a new pressing of the original record :)

Adam

On 07/08/11 14:13, Anthony Anson wrote:

Well, it does - to get the information on a CD readable by domestic equipment - even high-end - the bottom and the top of the audio spectrum is chopped off. While the actual frequencies are either inaudible to the human ear, or getting that way, the interference patterns they cause tend to make the sound from a CD seem dry and brittle.

Sorry going off topic a little here......

Interesting that you would choose frequency response as an argument for vinyl......

Don't get me wrong...I own and enjoy an extensive vinyl collection and a very nice turntable.

Nothing against the format but choosing frequency response as a counter argument against CD's when in fact any vinyl cut to RIAA spec will be incapable of exceeding 20k even on first play (and due to the nature of record wear hitting the highpoints of the cut first the frequency response actually decreases with wear) strikes me as a little odd.

If someone has cut a record with more headroom than 20k then I would be interested to hear about it and even more interested to hear how many plays that extended headroom lasts for and what pickup and phono stage is capable of reproducing it. RIAA figures for frequency response vs number of plays are scary but I presume are assuming a fairly low standard of playback equipment as they talk about something like 13khz after 30 plays ! I am sure with well set up and good quality equipment this can be more than slightly bettered.

Then at the other end there isn't much room for improvement either...the Red Book I believe says 20hz for CD's....if you let much below 20hz through a phono stage it will be dominated by tracking noise,surface noise and warp to the extent that it will be useless and/or detrimental to the listening experience. Unless of course you are willing to go to the trouble of playing your records wet :)

If *I* was to go on a pro vinyl debate I wouldn't be using frequency response as a bullet point :)

The hardness you hear is more likely to be down to quantization in the digital stream or more likely some really bad choices being made when mixing the thing for a digital format...some stuff on CD gets the hell compressed out of it so that it sounds good in a car and "louder" than it really is. I have a couple of albums both on CD and Vinyl and the CD counterpart sounds terrible (when I know my CD player can do better). Transvision Vamp "Velveteen" is a really good example of this...but put it on a scope and you'll see why.

Nothing to do with the format, just the numpty that mastered it for the digital format.

On 07/08/11 18:56, Anthony Anson wrote:

My information is that on tests, LPs were played continuously - well, allowing for autoreturn of stylus, continually - for a year, and little wear was evident, and there was no detectable difference in frequency range.

I'd love to read about this, do you have any links or article references or something you can scan in for me ?

...

If someone has cut a record with more headroom than 20k then I would be interested to hear about it and even more interested to hear how many plays that extended headroom lasts for and what pickup and phono stage is capable of reproducing it. RIAA figures for frequency response vs number of plays are scary but I presume are assuming a fairly low standard of playback equipment as they talk about something like 13khz after 30 plays ! I am sure with well set up and good quality equipment this can be more than slightly bettered.

ITYF that CDs' frequencies are considerably below vinyl's at the high end, and above at the low.

Well I am reading this straight from the Red Book which a player and the media needs to adhere to in order to display the "Compact Disc, Digital audio" logo.

So if you think I am wrong then please provide some references. Either ones that show that no player adheres to the red book or that vinyl is somehow reliably capable of greater than 20khz (there is no theoretical limit to the bottom end at the media level on a CD naturally although naturally there may be one imposed by the analogue side of a specific player or when mastering a specific disc) 20hz seems common.

The technical limit at the top end of CD Audio is naturally the folding frequency of the sample rate which is fixed by the standard at 44.1khz. Now many players quote 20khz I think due to a bit of analogue filtering to hide quantisation and jitter and of course depending on the source material there may be further limits at the mastering stage..but this is common to all formats, if the 24track that recorded it was only capable of 16khz then that's what you will get regardless of the format in which it is presented.

I think in order to preserve the sanity of the rest of the list any further conversation should be done offlist.

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 12:18:26AM +0100, Anthony Anson wrote:

Oh, I don't know - they ^may* find it instructive. I'll have to look at some old newsgroups so I can get a date to set the pooter to - or the newsitems will die if I haven't unflagged autoexpire on them.

Aye, even though this has gone a bit offtopic for the list I think a couple of replies with sources so list members can make their own minds up could be interesting. If it looked likely to descend into single posts pointing out something wrong with the previous posters then yes, take it offlist please.

Adam