However I wasn't satisfied with the sound and discovered you can use Apple's "Garageband" as a powerful and effective remastering tool to record Vinyl to digital.
Mumford & Sons' "Babel" Vinyl came with an "HD Vinyl" Downloadable rip of the vinyl itself. However it sounds awful.....flat, noisy, pops, hisses....wait but that's how records sound no?
Tools required:
Mac with Garageband
Record player with RCA to 1/8" to plug into Mac Audio Input (Using a Sony LX250H) ($69 on Amazon for the turn table)
iZotope RX Advanced $1,199 (not necessary but also integral) (yes it's expensive)
It gets incredibly technical from here, but Using the 31 Band EQ in Garageband I was able to produce a very efficient Preset for Vinyl Recording.
Here's what the EQ settings look like:
And the Compressor settings:
You may see the "Noise Gate" settings set, this helps a lot with native noise it will detect for output which will provide you a cleaner sound.
The Compressor settings were key in recording the Vinyl in order to produce the best possible output.
I then record each individual side of the record itself continuously under these settings.
The EQ and Compressor settings can be changed at anytime, however once you finish the project and export it as an Uncompressed 32 Bit AIFF (Big Endian), the sound will come out clean as your EQ/Compressor/Noise Gate settings are at.
Here are the finished files once you have everything set:
You will see the Basic Sides recorded, Chopped in track order, and "Declicked" and "Remastered" versions as well. (more on that below)
For this project, I worked on Mumford & Sons' "Babel" which is an extraordinary record if I may add.
As for as "Declicking" is concerned, that is where iZotope RX Advanced comes into play.
Declicking removes clicks and pops from records, which in results make them sound cleaner.
Here you see a batch processing of the files, which are then reprocessed under a "Denoiser" to remove any excess noise.
Once you're finished, the output will be 2116 Kbps sound (LOL at your 320 Kps MP3s), they will blow you away compared to CD.
(You can always downconvert them in iTunes or what have you. I choose to burn straight from the source at 2X for optimum recording.
I have already worked on several albums, new and old.
I don't even want to listen to CD anymore.
I did my Original Pressing Beatles albums....Mind Blown
