No, I don't think that's a valid test. A valid test would be of an album on vinyl and an album on CD, with the volume normalized. No remastering. Does such a thing exist? Is it possible?
That's pretty much what I'll be doing.
Except it won't be
normalizing as much as just
matching levels.
As far as re-mastering, I will capture the vinyl in it's current state and will not use any noise reduction or click/pop removal software.
I've found that when archiving, if you use too much corrective tools to get rid of "noise" you end up sucking the life out of the recording if it's not used diligently and sparingly.
So, basically I will take a signal out of the phono stage preamp and "capture" that signal into a DAW at 24 bits @96k using very high end professional converters.
The only thing I will
have to do is manually put in edit points/markers between the tracks.
And of course flip and clean the record as well as clean and inspect the stylus... Every. Single. Time.
The labor of love...
btw, I've started to rip my cd collection using XLD and I'm quite amused by the data information that is spewed out after every rip.
Looks like old NASA read-outs or something...
X Lossless Decoder version 20101212 (126.2)
XLD extraction logfile from 2011-01-31 17:49:33 -0500
Soft Machine / Third
Used drive : OPTIARC DVD RW AD-5680H (revision 3AHB)
Ripper mode : CDParanoia III 10.2
Disable audio cache : OK for the drive with a cache less than 2750KiB
Make use of C2 pointers : NO
Read offset correction : 48
Max retry count : 100
Gap status : Analyzed, Appended
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
---------------------------------------------------------
1 | 00:00:00 | 18:45:42 | 0 | 84416
2 | 18:45:42 | 18:12:43 | 84417 | 166359
3 | 36:58:10 | 19:08:30 | 166360 | 252489
4 | 56:06:40 | 19:13:57 | 252490 | 339021
List of alternate offset correction values
# | Absolute | Relative | Confidence
------------------------------------------
1 | 833 | 785 | 9
2 | 344 | 296 | 5
3 | 1038 | 990 | 5
AccurateRip Summary
Track 01 : OK (confidence 8, with different offset)
Track 02 : OK (confidence 9, with different offset)
Track 03 : OK (confidence 9, with different offset)
Track 04 : OK (confidence 8, with different offset)
->All tracks accurately ripped.
All Tracks
Statistics
Read error : 0
Skipped (treated as error) : 0
Edge jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0
Atom jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0
Drift error (maybe fixed) : 0
Dropped bytes error (maybe fixed) : 0
Duplicated bytes error (maybe fixed) : 0
Track 01
Filename : /Users/terrydouglas/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Soft Machine/01 Soft Machine - Facelift.aiff
Pre-gap length : 00:02:00
CRC32 hash : 5D3BEE02
CRC32 hash (skip zero) : 8185C66F
AccurateRip signature : 2F1CD6F6
->Accurately ripped! (confidence 8)
(matched with the different offset correction value;
calculated using an additional offset of 785;
the signature after correction is: 172F711F)
Statistics
Read error : 0
Skipped (treated as error) : 0
Edge jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0
Atom jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0
Drift error (maybe fixed) : 0
Dropped bytes error (maybe fixed) : 0
Duplicated bytes error (maybe fixed) : 0
Track 02
Filename : /Users/terrydouglas/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Soft Machine/02 Soft Machine - Slightly All The Time.aiff
CRC32 hash : D6E5B4A8
CRC32 hash (skip zero) : EDAFBE2D
AccurateRip signature : 41E5D5C5
->Accurately ripped! (confidence 9)
(matched with the different offset correction value;
calculated using an additional offset of 785;
the signature after correction is: DD6A8CA8)
Statistics
Read error : 0
Skipped (treated as error) : 0
Edge jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0
Atom jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0
Drift error (maybe fixed) : 0
Dropped bytes error (maybe fixed) : 0
Duplicated bytes error (maybe fixed) : 0
Track 03
Filename : /Users/terrydouglas/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Soft Machine/03 Soft Machine - Moon In June.aiff
Pre-gap length : 00:00:58
CRC32 hash : 9EB8B649
CRC32 hash (skip zero) : 6CDFB70E
AccurateRip signature : D1F25E3C
->Accurately ripped! (confidence 9)
(matched with the different offset correction value;
calculated using an additional offset of 785;
the signature after correction is: DE61C5E4)
Statistics
Read error : 0
Skipped (treated as error) : 0
Edge jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0
Atom jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0
Drift error (maybe fixed) : 0
Dropped bytes error (maybe fixed) : 0
Duplicated bytes error (maybe fixed) : 0
Track 04
Filename : /Users/terrydouglas/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Soft Machine/04 Soft Machine - Out-Bloody-Rageous.aiff
Pre-gap length : 00:01:15
CRC32 hash : 0AA70951
CRC32 hash (skip zero) : 0329104B
AccurateRip signature : 8917E59D
->Accurately ripped! (confidence 8)
(matched with the different offset correction value;
calculated using an additional offset of 785;
the signature after correction is: 12D8895C)
Statistics
Read error : 0
Skipped (treated as error) : 0
Edge jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0
Atom jitter error (maybe fixed) : 0
Drift error (maybe fixed) : 0
Dropped bytes error (maybe fixed) : 0
Duplicated bytes error (maybe fixed) : 0
No errors occurred
End of status report
