Help...Vinyl to CD...How many MB's?

[PaulC]

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[Bernie]

Depends on the bit-rate you are using. At 16 bit (CD standard) I can get around 10 songs (74-80 minutes weighting in at around 650-700 Mb.

As for 24 bit, I'm looking at one file on my Mac that comes in at 90.1 Mb with a duration of 5:56. I just converted that same file to 16 bits and now it is at 59.7 Mb.

Sounds like you may be recording it at 24 bit. You'll have to convert to 16 anyway before burning your CD so you'll see the drop in file size then.

[BrunoRepublic]

For audio CD, which is 16-bit, 44.1kHz stereo, it's about 10 megs per minute of music. However, one thing to keep in mind is that audio CDs (as in the ones that will play in any plain old CD player) are formatted quite differently from data CDs (as in the ones that you would use as backup storage, MP3 discs, etc.). If you're using different sample rates or bit-depths, then file sizes increase accordingly. An 88.2kHz file will be twice the size of a 44.1 file, and a 24-bit file will be 50% larger than a 16-bit one.

Audio CDs were designed back in the early 80s, long before the notion of CD-ROMs were thought of, much less the concept of being able to record on a CD at all. Since audio CDs are meant to be streamed, there is very little error correction on them. A few missing bits of data won't ruin an audio CD. Also, they don't have a very specific addressing system; when you switch tracks on an audio CD, your player just drops the laser in the general area -- this is why you need to leave put the track index markers at about .1 of a second before the track starts, or your player may clip the beginning when you manually select tracks. However, a data CD must be able to retrieve 100% of the information on the disc, and must be able to find exactly where it is. A file with one bad bit is useless. So, they have a much more robust error-correction scheme, as well as more specific info for data retrieval.

The result is that even though you can fit 78 minutes of music on a 700MB audio CD, you will only be able to fit about 70 minutes if you're making a data disc (i.e. backing up your WAV/AIFF files).

Just something to keep in mind if you back up your raw files -- which you should do for anything that isn't disposeable, as ripping audio CDs is often not 100% accurate, whereas copying a data CD is.

[PaulC]

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[Bernie]

Haven't used Spin Doctor in ages. I believe this was in the menu under "prefs" where you can set how you want the file saved as:
stereo
16 bit
AIFF

If you've already recorded the tracks as 24 bit then you should be able to do a "Save As" and there should be options in the dialogue box. Good luck.

[PaulC]

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[Masdefi]

you need to leave put the track index markers at about .1 of a second before the track starts, or your player may clip the beginning when you manually select tracks

Hi Graham, sorry for my bad understanding but I think you are talking about a very interesting point for me...... 8) actually I understand that when burning a track on a CD this one should not start Immedeately, but we better have to leave a silence of about 0.1 second before the song starts.. or haven't I understood?!? :roll: Sorry again, my english goes bad further on...
If so, why???
Bye!
Mas

[BrunoRepublic]

actually I understand that when burning a track on a CD this one should not start Immedeately, but we better have to leave a silence of about 0.1 second before the song starts.. or haven't I understood?!?

That's correct. It's not essential to do this, but it helps. Almost all CD players (with the exception of some pro- and DJ-oriented models) do not have frame-specific addressing. So, when you're listening to track 1, and decide to jump to track 5 for example, the CD player won't know exactly where track 5 starts. So, it will drop it in the general area where track 5 begins... but this might be a few fractions of a second after it actually begins. It's a lot like like cueing the tonearm on a record player -- you can see where the spaces are between the tracks, but you're not likely to get the precise start of a track when you lower the arm.

Newer CD players tend to be a bit better for this. Old ones (especially ones from the 80s!) can be terrible. I used to have one that would chop off the first half-second or so when I manually switched tracks. If you've ever ripped images of CDs mastered in the 80s, you'll see some of them have much greater "padding" than just .1 second to accomodate these players.

[Masdefi]

Thanks a lot for your reply, I managed to insert 0.1 silence before the track starts, using GoldWave program. I tryed also to insert from 0.1 to 0.6 seconds in order to verify the worst case where the cueing is not right and find out the bast solution. Thanks again you're very clear.
Ciao!

[Lardarz]

I use the line in sampling feature on audiograbber to grab a raw wav file from vinyl. This produces an average 50mb file size for a 7 minute track.

Then I normalise it using soundforge and remove any unwanted silence at the start or end. You can also remove any inaudible frequencies to reduce filesize at this stage.

You can then put it into any good audio cleaning software to remove the hisses and crackles and open it back up in soundforge, resaving as an mp3 at whatever bit rate you like to reduce the filesize even more.

I then simply use easy cd creator or nero to burn the cd's.

This method produces great results.
It is also possible to grab from Audiograbber straight to an mp3, but this produces a lower quality as soundforge's mp3 encoder seems to be better.

Good software to use in conjunction with this method for recording your own 80 minute DJ mixes is CDWave, which lets you split your wav file up into smaller tracks wherever you like. You can then burn a continuous mix onto cd with track breaks and even add cd text so it show up on your cd player!

[Mixmachine]

Good software to use in conjunction with this method for recording your own 80 minute DJ mixes is CDWave, which lets you split your wav file up into smaller tracks wherever you like. You can then burn a continuous mix onto cd with track breaks and even add cd text so it show up on your cd player!

I haven't used it in a while but CDwave works great, my version is 1.7, did they ever released a new version?

[paul]

Hey guys. What do you all recommend as an inexpensive sound card that has a stereo input? I tried recording my tapes on the computer and only on channel recorded. Yes, I did use a stereo mini plug to rca connectors.

[BrunoRepublic]

I use an M-Audio 2496. This has the same DAC as their pro Delta models, but uses RCA jacks for input/output, which is perfect for hooking up to the stereo. No need for cheap and nasty adaptor cables.

[paul]

Thanks. Graham. I'm almost afraid to ask but how much is it?

[BrunoRepublic]

Thanks. Graham. I'm almost afraid to ask but how much is it?

I got mine for $275 Cnd a couple of years ago. I think it goes for about $200 US now.

[paul]

Ouch :o
That's a little pricey for me right now. I know you're gonna tell me you get what you pay for :D

[Bernie]

Paul, not sure if this helps, but Graham's audio card is listed for under $100. at...
M-Audio

[BrunoRepublic]

Failing that, Sam Ash has it for $150 US.

[paul]

Thanks Bernie. I'll let you know I lucky I am.

[paul]

Well, good news and bad. First the bad. I got out bid on the M-Audio. I guess they are really popular and good and perhaps I'm a little cheap :oops:
The good news. Wallowing in my saddened state after seeing I was out bid, I had an epiphany. I decided to check my soundcard configuration on the computer. I had the mic box checked. So the reason I was only getting one channel is I was using the mic input before. Once I checked the line input and connected my tape deck to line in, voila :D

[Mixmachine]

This card's price apparently hasn't drop much in the last two years when I paid 150.00 at Midi-store.com. they still have it for this price.

[geo__]

I Will explain how much space is needed for 1sec.

The standard for audio cds is 16 bit 44,1Khz

This means that I take 44,100 samples per second and I encode every sample with 16 bits.

1 Byte=8 bit, so 16Bits=2 Bytes

so it's 44100X2=88200 Bytes. That is for mono.

For stereo is 88200 X 2 = 176400 Bytes

Now 1Kbyte=1024 Bytes so 176200/1024 is 172.265Kbytes

and 1Mb=1024 Kbytes so it's 0.168Mb
That's what you need for 1 second of stereo recording.

Now why 44,100 samples? There's Nyquist's theorem which says that if I sample an analog signal at twice its maximum frequency I can reconstruct it without loss.

So we assume that the maximum hearable frequency is 22,050Hz. In reality it is about 16Khz only. If you don't believe go to an acoustics labs and test your ears.

I think that the 96Khz sampling rate that some cards often is way too high and you won't find any difference in sound quality. Of course it reduces aliasing (which theoritically is 0 at Nyquist's rate, but this isn't a perfect world), but still I think is unecessary and I wouldn't be surprised if one day in the future music labels offer audio cds with these characteristices just to find a way to charge us more than we have to pay.

George

[BrunoRepublic]

So we assume that the maximum hearable frequency is 22,050Hz. In reality it is about 16Khz only. If you don't believe go to an acoustics labs and test your ears.

Very true, however...

1 - the actual maximum is slightly less than half of the Nyquist frequency. Open up almost any commercial CD in a wave editor with spectral view, and you'll find that there is almost nothing above 20k.

2 - Most people can only hear up to about 17KHz (myself included), however there are a few with "golden ears" who can hear up to 24KHz or even higher.

3 - Although most of us cannot hear any signals above 20KHz, these signals do alter our perception of how the audible ones sound.

The 16/44.1 standard was based on what was considered state-of-the-art in 1983. There's no reason why we can't do better than that today. It doesn't really have anything to do with killing off the CD, as the buying public has already demonstrated considerable indifference to the format in favour of lossy audio codecs (and even those with average hearing could tell the difference if they were to compare on a decent system).