Hello Guys, I´m back!!

After a very long I´m back with some remastered stuff of mine. This little project of mine began in November 2009. At first I only wanted to try to bring some music coming from my old Vinyls in the best possible quality onto my computer. But then I couldn´t stop and in the end I was so consumed that I ended up having 97 minutes of music. I wanted to try a so called "flat transfer", that means a Vinyl transfer without the usually required Phono-Amplifier which provides the RIAA equalization to the LP. I wanted to do this RIAA purely with software after I did major processing steps like declicking or denoising. You´ll only need a turntable and a good soundcard for this. Thankfully I had both, especially the soundcard is important because if you do phono recordings this way you have to have a soundcard with very little noise. The E-MU 0202 USB is such a soundcard and so I could make some awsome sounding vinyl rips.

Since my turntable offers a speed adjustment I therefore recorded with the lowest speed it offered. In case of 45 singles this means that I spent a lot of time recording But the end justifies the means because that way huge pops became tiny crackles after the speedup which could be removed more easily. It also helped moving possible artifacts from any denoising-process further out of the hearing range. Needless to say that all of this took a very long time to do. I started in mid-November and was finished in mid-December. The reasons it took me so long to release it were 1. a new computer 2. the cover. I started the cover with a blank space, very horrible. But yesterday I decided that I wanted to give it a try... well, here it is. For the first time ever I even created a picture that you can put onto the CD/DVD!

Now I´ll list the processing steps:

1. Recording using ASIO in 32 Bit & 192 kHz
2. DC-Offset correction
3. First declicking/decrackling
4. Denoising
5. Speed-up
6. Applying the RIAA equalization
7. Second declicking/decrackling
8. Removing remaining pops & clicks manually by hand
9. Using an EQ to match the original or to change the sound to my liking
10. Editing
12. Downsampling to 96 kHz for better convenience
13. Converting to WavPack lossy with a bitrate of 1.200 kBit/s

On roughly half of the tracks the sound quality exceeds that of the CD. Crisper, more dynamic and a better room response surpass the typical analogue vinyl artifacts. This music is a joy to listen to. The WavPack lossy codec I used is transparent with such high bitrates. And since it doesn´t employ any passband filtering it´ll be a joy for full frequency content.

Since I couldn´t decide which subtle variation of the cover design I liked the most I simply included them all. So you can decide for yourself. You may find that some of the music is really garbage. Well, you´re right. Since I began collecting music in the 80s I therefore have many vinyls from that period - and you know how the 80s were. Some vinyls were of very good quality, others were completely worn out and almost unplayable. On the awful sounding tracks I ended up doing a manual spectral editing on sharp S-consonants. Some tracks were mastered from a digital master onto vinyl so that a vinyl rip wouldn´t make sense at all (using the flat-transfer-method I could see very good how it was mastered). But I included them anyway. On some tracks I pushed the remastering so far ahead that I ended up remastering the original master sound.

But you can be sure of one thing: here you can hear to REAL high definition music. Tracks that were mastered analogue could reach up to 50 kHz. So this release begs to be burned as a DVD-Audio.

TRACKLIST

1. 01. Stephanie de Monaco: Irresistible (worn out, huge clicks, analogue mastering)  2. 02. Madonna: Miles Away (brand-new, never played, some distortions (also on CD), analogue/digital mastering)  3. 03. Barbra Streisand: Guilty (seldomly played, analogue mastering)  4. 04. De-Phazz: Viva La Felicita (used for DJing, very good quality, only minor editing, digital mastering)  5. 05. Yzma: This Is My Life (severe distortions, digital mastering)  6. 06. Don Johnson: Voice On A Hotline (severe distortions, digital mastering)  7. 07. Aneka: Little Lady (completely worn out, severe distortions, lots clicks & pops, heavily edited, analouge mastering)  8. 08. Enya: Smaointe... (severe distortions, analogue/digital mastering)  9. 09. Ofra Haza: Im Nin’ Alu (minor distortions but lots of clicks (manually removed), analogue/digital mastering) 10. 10. Madonna: Music (few clicks, seldomly played, analogue mastering) 11. 11. Barbra Streisand: Woman In Love (seldomly played, analogue mastering) 12. 12. Tina Turner: Bold And Reckless (severe distortions, digital mastering) 13. 13. Ofra Haza: Shaday (severe distortions, lots of clicks (manually removed), analogue/digital mastering) 14. 14. Michael Jackson: HIStory (seldomly played, no clicks, analogue/digital mastering) 15. 15. John Williams: The Empire Strikes Back - Main Title (many distortions, many clicks, analogue mastering) 16. 16. John Williams: The Empire Strikes Back - The Asteroid Field (many distortions, many clicks, analogue mastering) 17. 17. Jerry Goldsmith: Gremlins - The Gift (seldomly played, some distortions, analogue/digital mastering) 18. 18. Jerry Goldsmith: Gremlins - Gizmo (seldomly played, some distortions, analogue/digital mastering) 19. 19. Jerry Goldsmith: Gremlins - Mrs. Deagle (seldomly played, some distortions, analogue/digital mastering) 20. 20. Jerry Goldsmith: Gremlins - The Gremlin Rag (seldomly played, some distortions, analogue/digital mastering) 21. 21. Jan Hammer: Theresa (seldomly played, exceptional quality, minor editing, digital mastering) 22. 22. Jan Hammer: Forever Tonight (seldomly played, exceptional quality, minor editing, digital mastering)

But most of the time you won´t hear that the source was vinyl. I managed to remove/hide pops, clicks, noise and other things. As well as most of the distortions. Have Fun!