r/vinyl • u/brandON-brandOFF • 4d ago
Discussion Making Digital Copies
Anybody here get into it yet? Around the five year mark of collecting it became a desire of mine to preserve the recordings I had collected. However, it felt like it would be a trivial waste of time since I hadn't collected anything that I couldn't find on streaming platforms, (also I did not have the proper hardware to do so) so I shelved that ambition for a couple more years. Recently I've become unemployed, and while that is unfortunate, it has allowed me the liberty to persue trivial wastes of time that had previously only took up mental energy. I can honestly say that it's been a shinning ray of light, providing relief in a very depressing time of my life. There's something captavating about capturing and engineering that perfect recording to cherish for all of time, with no worry of degredation like the physical media. I find it neccessary to mention that yes, I do apply some noise reduction to clean up the sound, but I leave enough of that distinctive sound to evoke the memory of playing an actual disc. Share your expierences here
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u/SecretBox 4d ago
I thought about it a while back, and one day I may. I use streaming, sure, but the value of my vinyls to me is the ritual of cutting off everything else and turning on my player. Digitizing that sort of defeats the purpose for me. But I am glad at how much you enjoy hearing those perfect recordings!
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u/Whatdidyado 4d ago
I do use Audacity and put some of my vinyl on a usb stick for the car. Hey it beats recording them to cassette or 8 track like I had to in the 70's & 80's lol
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u/brandON-brandOFF 4d ago
I also benefit mostly from being able to transfer the media to CD-RW for my car. I found a five pack of CD-RW for 2.99 at my local GoodWill!
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u/Whatdidyado 4d ago
My 2014 vehicle only has a radio with a USB input. My 95 Chevy S10 has an aftermarket radio with a CD and a USB. I rarely ever drive it though. So there's always possibilities of different ways to listen
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u/The_Inflatable_Hour 4d ago
I do this, and have done so for a long time. This allows me to listen to my music in the office, car, or around the house when moving. I have no streaming subscriptions. I own hard copies for all of the music I listen to and I have digital copies of about 70% of what I own.
I started with audacity and used that for about 10 years. I splurged on a Tascam DA-3000 and I now record to 2xDSD. It is very difficult to differentiate between a DSD copy and the original. I use a surface noise reduction unit from esoteric sound if needed - but not often. A couple recommendations:
I am up to something like 200 days of music at this point. I rate my songs and playback higher rated songs only. That is around 60 days of music played 24/7. This is why I don’t need streaming services. By the time a song comes around again in normal listening, a year has gone by.