A couple years ago two events led to a momentous decision in my "audiophile" life. First, I moved… this entailed hauling boxes and boxes of CDs and LPs to the new house. While I now had a very nice "studio" and listening room, the sheer mass of possessions, particularly the LP collection, started me thinking about alternative storage.
The second major event in my recent life was retirement. Now I had the time to contemplate (and listen!) to my extensive LP music collection (I'm not a golfer nor a gardner…). Also, as an amateur recordist, I've accumulated very appropriate audio hardware and processing software.
So, finally, I decided to rip all my LPs to digital for storage on a RAID hard drive system, plus further backups, simplify my life, and provide the most convenient legacy for my son… and certainly easier to move than 2500 LPs. This may condemn me in the eyes of analog purists, with LP fanatics tearing their hair out and forming lynch mobs to hunt me down and punish me for LP heresy. Well, there comes a time in your life when major decisions have to be made, and for me convenience rules over bulk. Besides, with Airplay and Apple TV boxes, I can stream music all over my house, for as long as I want, without flipping LPs and not be tied to my listening room. I’m not one to debate the superiority of digital vs. analog. They both have their good points and bad, but listenability, at least to me, is not a point of concern. By transferring analog sources to digital, I expected to retain the sound of analog and gain the convenience of digital, and this expectation has proven true. I do enjoy the LP conversions more than commercial CDs, which are often over processed and unlistenable
Since hard drive space is cheap these days, but not infinite, I felt that keeping "ripped" LPs at 16/44 (CD) resolution would preserve my collection at a reasonable quality level. I also decided that I would also do a compressed conversion for portable uses (mostly for playback on a small bedroom system… brandy, a book, and jazz for pre-sleep relaxation is my idea of heaven). Then there are the digital fanatics who would claim that 24/96 files are a better storage solution, but, again, hard drive space is not infinite, and my ears appreciate 16/44 just fine (I did convert several, special, near mint LPs to 24/96, however).
In general, my LP collection (probably around 2500 total) is in very good condition. I've always taken good care of the albums and played them on quality equipment (AR/Shure in college, Thorens/SME/Shure after I got a job). However, many are used, so there are clicks and pops and a few scratches and occasional bad vinyl (when the record companies sacrificed quality for cost savings). Also, older records often have a low level hum present and apparent in the space between tunes. But the music is there and sounds good (no excessive groove wear). This conversion process has had an additional benefit, exploring lots of great music I haven't heard in years.
So on to the process of converting zillions of LPs to digital. If you have a modest quantity of LPs, the process may seem simple. But for preserving a legacy of vast collection, I felt a few extras were required.
First, my LP playback equipment consists of Thorens TD 125 MkII with an SME tonearm and a Shure V15 TypeV cartridge. My phono preamp is the Bugle kit from Hagerman Technology. Combined with their power supply (you can use it with batteries if you like), this is a ridiculously good preamp for a ridiculously low amount of buckage. I couple my phono preamp to a line driver of my own design (it uses a JFET superbuffer card from Borbely Audio… the construction was published in AudioXpress). This preamp is connected to a Metric Halo 2882 Firewire computer interface. The 2882 has an excellent A/D converter, and provides a stable Record Console software app. All conversion was done at 24/44 for further editing and dithering to 16/44.
Once in my Mac, I used software to clean up the audio and audio editors to create the songs. Since all LPs have some clicks and pops, I use Izotope RX software to clean up the LPs. The Declicker plugin gets most of the bad guys (I vary the sensitivity setting depending on the condition of the LP), and the Denoiser cleans up basic surface noise (and often low level hum on older LPs). I then used RX to raised the overall level to -.5db. Finally, RX provides great dithering to 16 bit for the final file format. I used Peak and eventually Twisted Wave for recording, editing, track marking, and file saving.
All tracks are placed in an individual folder named with the LP title. Using iTunes, an iTunes Plus (or M4a) conversion of each tune was converted, for future transfer to an iPhone or iPad. Also in the individual LP folder, I add digital photographs of the album covers. This is done with a very good pocket Panasonic camera, with the photos enhanced in Photoshope Elements and saved in LP and in CD sizes. Multi page booklets were scanned at my local library (larger format scanner) into pdfs and added to the LP folders. This allows me to fully archive any album notes for future reference.
Finally, all LP conversions are databased in Filemaker Pro. Filemaker is a relational database, so I created 3 tables linked by a common field. The main table holds LP title, lead musician, catalog info, and CD sized LP photos. Additional tables hold supporting musician info and song info.. This allows me to search on track or musician if I want to know how many versions of “House of the Rising Sun” I have or how many Jeff Beck releases I have, for examples.
Of course, besides the RAID hard drives, all LP files were backed up to both a spinner and to a solid state drive. Initially these backups were stored in my “cloud”, a safe deposit box at my credit union, but since those boxes were discontinued, I’m now looking at other off site storage.
ll this is a lot of work, but I hope it is worth it both for my own interest and as a legacy of an important collection. The project took about 15 years, working around other projects. The old LPs have since been sold at a decent price to a collector, garnering enough funds to pay for my gear and software.
Equipment Used:
Thorens TD 125 MkII
Shure SME Tonearm
Shure V15 Type 5 cartridge
Hagerman Bugle Phono preamp
Borbely-Clow JFET Superbuffer
Tannoy 502 and Genelec Powered Speakers
Metric Halo 2882 DSP F/W audio I/O
Metric Halo Record Console software
MacMini I7 and iMac Pro
Peak Pro 7 audio editing software
Twisted Wave audio recording and editing software
Izotope RX2 DeClicker and DeNoiser plugins and dithering to 16bit
G-Technology G-RAID Studio Thunderbolt Storage 8TB
Filemaker Pro database
Panasonic digital cameras
Photoshop Elements software
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