[doc eggfan]

I finally got around to dumping/ripping* (?) the tracks off my limited edition Dreamcast collection vinyl (Dunno what the correct term is for vinyl - scooping?). This was only available in Australian stores JB HiFi as a free gift with every Dreamcast_Collection_(game) purchase back in 2011

This is my first vinyl dump, so dunno if I did it right. The bastard needle kept skipping, so I put a wad of blu-tak on the end to weigh it down a bit. I chose a 192kHz dump frequency, but audacity tells me the best it could extract was 48kHz (dunno if I'm saying that right) - hopefully this is agreeable with any audiophiles out there. Comes in both .wav and .flac flavours.

Track List:

• A1. Open Your Heart (Sonic Adventure)
  
• A2. Option Remix 2002 (Space Channel 5 Part 2)
  
• B1. Radical Sabbatical (Crazy Taxi)
  
• B2. Flinch (Crazy Taxi)
  
• B3. Get Out (Crazy Taxi)

And there was no bonus track, despite the back cover proclaiming that there were "6 of your favourite tracks"

Dreamcast Collection Limited Edition Vinyl.zip (930.5MB)

[JaxTH]

Is there an album page on Sega Retro for this?

Also thanks.

EDIT: Neither this nor the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection have pages for their albums. Guess I'll try to make those later.

EDIT II: The Mega Drive Collection already had a page. But I made Dreamcast_Collection_(album) so provide scans please.

This post has been edited by JaxTH: 09 November 2014 - 06:52 PM

[doc eggfan]

Done.

Now you've got me wanting to track down a copy of the mega drive one. Does anyone know if it's been ripped yet?

This post has been edited by doc eggfan: 10 November 2014 - 02:21 AM

[GagaMan]

I have the Mega Drive one (picked it up for about £15 a short while after it came out) and my dad has a vinyl ripping thingy.

[JaxTH]

GagaMan, on 10 November 2014 - 04:02 AM, said:

I have the Mega Drive one (picked it up for about £15 a short while after it came out) and my dad has a vinyl ripping thingy.

Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection (album) if you feel like providing scans.

[Chibisteven]

192 KHz maybe fine if you're recording it, but I don't see any reason for storing such audio like that from a vinyl source unless you're planning on doing additional processing.

The pitch sounds lower like it's playing slower.

Sounds like the accuracy of a 24 KHz recording @ 12-bits.

Vinyl is a low resolution source and more a novelty thing to listen to, for the sake of doing so or the fact that what you have was never faithfully re-released on a newer format that has more resolution. The format is full of all sorts of limitations.

I store it as a 32 KHz @ 16 bit file. However 44.1 KHz @ 16 bits will keep some digital devices happy in my experience that don't like 32 KHz audio.

If you can't sample at 192 KHz, but 48 KHz is the max your card do, only frequencies up to 24 KHz are recorded. 192 KHz assumes frequencies up to 96 KHz can be recorded. The operating system or drivers will simply resample it. Some cards will filter anything above 20 KHz.

This post has been edited by Chibisteven: 10 November 2014 - 07:32 AM

[doc eggfan]

So what do you suggest I should do to improve it? Re-rip at 44.1kHz?

[Chibisteven]

doc eggfan, on 10 November 2014 - 07:37 AM, said:

So what do you suggest I should do to improve it? Re-rip at 44.1kHz?

Best practices with any source:

• Record with a good amount of head room. Clipping is bad. A card with a high SNR ratio allows you good headroom, so the signal doesn't get buried in obsessive noise of the card itself.
  
• You can record at the highest possible rate and bit depth if possible, allowing flexibility when filtering with software, rather than letting the hardware do it. Alternately twice the highest frequency works as well. 44.1 KHz is the lowest you want to record at.
  
• Process everything at the rate you choose.
  
• Downsample to your target rate, if you choose a multiple of your target rate route.
  
• Add dither if you have a SNR ratio of more than -90dB when you're done processing. Dither is simply added noise to offset the rounding error and bit sticking that occurs when going from 24-bit to 16-bit. Alternately you can export 24-bit, but if it's a complete waste if it's from a vinyl record or other noisy source that won't benefit from the resolution. The best ADC and DAC have an accuracy of 21-bits anyway due to thermal noise and will be limited even further in a lot of cases by your card's analog components.
  
• Using the highest possible rate should be a multiple of your target rate (44.1 KHz = 88.2 KHz or 176.4 KHz)

If your card can only do 44.1 KHz or 48 KHz it's fine. It should filter somewhere slightly above 20 KHz in that case. If your card does more, use a multiple of your target rate may help with filtering out frequencies above 20 KHz in problem cases. In the end you still be using the same rate as 44.1 or 48 KHz, but you'll need a good resampler if you go that route. Audacity's resampler works just fine.

This post has been edited by Chibisteven: 10 November 2014 - 09:42 AM

[doc eggfan]

So the problem could be in my sound card, or lack of dedicated sound card. Or do I just not know what levers and pulleys to push when using audacity.

I had trouble with which of the following I should have been using, let alone setting any other variables.

• USB Device, Front Mic:0
  
• USB Device, Rear Mic:0
  
• USB Device, Line:0
  
• USB Device, Front Mic:1
  
• USB Device, Rear Mic:1
  
• USB Device, Line:1

[Chibisteven]

doc eggfan, on 10 November 2014 - 05:36 PM, said:

So the problem could be in my sound card, or lack of dedicated sound card. Or do I just not know what levers and pulleys to push when using audacity.

I had trouble with which of the following I should have been using, let alone setting any other variables.

• USB Device, Front Mic:0
  
• USB Device, Rear Mic:0
  
• USB Device, Line:0
  
• USB Device, Front Mic:1
  
• USB Device, Rear Mic:1
  
• USB Device, Line:1

Try getting the proper drivers and removing any other drivers still on the system for other cards other than the one you're using, that usually fixes some problems, sometimes a generic driver works when OEM ones really fail to fix anything.

Installing a dedicated sound card often involves removing any and all onboard drivers so they don't conflict and of course disabling onboard audio in the system BIOS to keep an operating system from using it and attempting to reinstall the drivers you removed. It's not easy troubleshooting all sound card related problems as some of them can be as bad as any other malfunctioning component inside a computer. Be sure what you're using for any sound interface is supported by the operating system you're using.

This post has been edited by Chibisteven: 10 November 2014 - 08:29 PM

[Phredreeke]

Don't bother uploading wave files. There is no difference in quality between wave and FLAC. (that said, if you open up a file in Audacity, then save it again it will yield a different result than the original because it applies dither again, if you want a "lossless" conversion to FLAC I suggest installing foobar and doing the conversion through that)

I would suggest releasing as 44.1khz or 48khz 16-bit.

[Chibisteven]

Phredreeke, on 11 November 2014 - 04:19 AM, said:

Don't bother uploading wave files. There is no difference in quality between wave and FLAC. (that said, if you open up a file in Audacity, then save it again it will yield a different result than the original because it applies dither again, if you want a "lossless" conversion to FLAC I suggest installing foobar and doing the conversion through that)

I would suggest releasing as 44.1khz or 48khz 16-bit.

TIP: If you set dither to none in high quality conversion and real time conversion before opening a wave, it won't change the file. It's in the documentation and I confirm this myself. Remember to set before exporting if you want dither. Also check the project rate before exporting.

[winterhell]

Is the popping in this instance due to the vinyl wear or due to the turntable?

While most 96Khz/24bit *gold* LP rips have relatively low noise, can they be as good as the CD rips? In the latter there is no noise even(or especially?) when the track is quiet.

[Chibisteven]

winterhell, on 11 November 2014 - 07:45 AM, said:

Is the popping in this instance due to the vinyl wear or due to the turntable?

While most 96Khz/24bit *gold* LP rips have relatively low noise, can they be as good as the CD rips? In the latter there is no noise even(or especially?) when the track is quiet.

A CD has a flat frequency response, something records don't have. A CD can handle peaks perfectly that would make a record skip. CDs handle square waves well. The only difference is that mastering engineers can make CD releases louder. If a 24-bit DVD is less compressed than the same album on the CD release, it's what the mastering engineer did differently that time. Both the CD and the record can be from the same 96 KHz / 24-bit master and you might not ever notice it, because the sound would have to be altered more to be released on a record. Can't get a very loud record without reducing playing time a lot.

Look up the RIAA curve that records have. In mastering a record they lower the lower frequencies and boost the high ones. Your record player lowers the high frequencies and boost the lower ones (this process is not lossless in the analog domain and there is no need for it in the digital domain).

Frequencies above 20 KHz will shorten the life of the diamond cutter dramatically used to cut records.

This post has been edited by Chibisteven: 11 November 2014 - 03:56 PM

[jmr]

I've already ripped my copy of this vinyl a while back. I've upgraded my turntable since then, and would like to re-rip it but the album's at my parents' place with the other half of my record collection until I sort out a way to safely ship it half way across the country.

Ripped at 24bit/96kHz. I don't know how it compares to doc eggfan's rip (haven't downloaded it) but I know mine plays close to the correct speed

SIDE A: http://www.chromelod...mix%202002.flac
SIDE B: http://www.chromelod...0Get%20Out.flac

Chibisteven, on 10 November 2014 - 07:00 AM, said:

Vinyl is a low resolution source and more a novelty thing to listen to, for the sake of doing so or the fact that what you have was never faithfully re-released on a newer format that has more resolution. The format is full of all sorts of limitations.

I'll agree that as a format vinyl has a lot of limitations, but there are cases where a proper, high quality vinyl pressing will sound better than, say, the equivalent CD release. It mostly comes down to how the audio is mastered: you'll typically find that an album mastered for vinyl has greater dynamic range than the equivalent CD mastering. For example: Michael Jackson's Thriller.
http://dr.loudness-w...&album=thriller

Notice that all of the Thriller 25th anniversary releases have much lower dynamic range measurements than the vinyl versions? Good ol' brickwall mastering at it's finest.
EDIT: another good example: Foo Fighters' Rope: https://www.youtube....h?v=lQgPAKEbBDY

This post has been edited by jmr: 15 November 2014 - 01:57 PM