I have about 100 LPs I've started transferring to audio
CD. I'm using SoundForge 6.0 together with Sonic Foundry's
Noise Reduction 2.0 plug-in to do the processing. My
process goes something like this...

1) thoroughly clean the LP (Nitty Gritty vacuum system)

2) capture each side of the LP as one, long file
(44.1kHz, 16 or 24 bit, stereo)

3) apply Sonic Foundry's click and crackle removal plug-in

4) split the big file into smaller files containing
individual tracks.

5) apply one or more rounds of Sonic Foundry's noise
reduction plug-in to each track using portions of the
surface noise in the gaps between songs as the noise
fingerprint (resampling the noiseprint between rounds
if multiple rounds are used)

6) carefully listen to the processed track through
headphones and try to manually fix any remaining
problems.

7) normalize the audio to some consistent sound level

8) burn the collection of processed tracks to CD


My trouble is with step number 6. I consistently run into
two audio problems: the stray click or pop and something
that I don't know how to describe other than "buzz". The
clicks are usually not hard to clean up but this "buzz" is
something else altogether. I would appreciate any advice on
how to get rid of it or ideas on what might be causing it.
Here's some more details...

I'm not sure how best to describe the "buzz" noise. It
sounds like a torn speaker or something sitting on top of
your speakers vibrating at a resonance. It doesn't appear
(or often appear) at very low signal levels but it most
certainly appears in areas with lots and lots of headroom
left so it's not distortion due to clipping or something I
wouldn't think (however this is consistent with the
resonance theory). It's worse on some LPs than on others.
In fact, some LPs produce no "buzz" at all. It typically
lasts 100 to 200 milliseconds and it typically appears in
only one channel at a time. It can appear in either the
left or right channel, and seems to do so with equal
frequency, but it doesn't usually appear in both channels at
once. For mono recordings I've had good success replacing
the "buzzy" bit with a snippet from the clean channel.
Unfortunately, for stereo recordings that trick doesn't work
so well.

I can't find a good way to get rid of it and I'm out of
ideas. Here's what I've tried so far...

* I tried just deleting the bad region but, although
short, the duration is usually long enough that it
can't be simply snipped out without hearing the edit
in the final audio.

* When I zoom in on the waveform of an area with "buzz"
I can usually see a small amplitude, high-frequency
signal superimposed on the top of the "good" signal.
For that reason I tried using the equalizer tools to
filter out high frequencies just over the affected
region. This can occasionally reduce the problem but
more often than not it just replaces the "buzz" with a
"thump".

* I've tried SoundForge's Tools--Repair--Replace
option, and that actually does a pretty good job
getting rid of the buzzing sound. Unfortunately, in
its place it leaves other audio artifacts that are
usually more annoying than the orignal buzz. In fact,
as near as I can tell, the "Replace" tool is about
worthless.

Initially I was worried that the buzz may be an artifact of
using the click and crackle removal and/or surface noise
reduction tools too aggressively. However, I've gone back
and listened to parts of the original audio captures before
any processing was applied and the buzz is there. That
means its either something real on the disc or it is being
caused by something in the equipment between the disc and
the computer. Like I said, it reminds me of a resonance
buzz so I could be made to believe it has something to do
with my turntable pickup. I just don't know how to fix it
if that's the case. Anyway, for the sake of completeness,
here's my equipment...

An Esoteric Sound Murray II turntable

A new Stanton D5100AL11 stylus (tone arm adjusted for
2.5g of tracking force)

A KAB EQS MK12 pre-amp/equalizer

Either an ESI Waveterminal U24 USB, 24-bit, low noise
digitizer or a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy sound
card.

If anybody can offer any advice on what may be causing the
buzz or how I might be able to clean it up I would be most
greatful!


Thanks in advance,


Charlie Hubbard

Charlie,

the stray click or pop

You can edit those out manually with the pencil tool, but it's a nuisance.
Your best bet is to select a small region around the click and use either
the SF Click and Crackle remover, or the built-in Smooth tool. If you
highlight JUST the single pop the Smooth tool works quite well.

I'm not sure how best to describe the "buzz" noise.

I'm sure this buzz was always present in the record, but now that you've
removed the other surface noise it's more noticeable. If it's just for a
short duration, again try the Smooth tool.

--Ethan

Ethan Winer wrote:
I'm sure this buzz was always present in the record, but now that you've
removed the other surface noise it's more noticeable. If it's just for a
short duration, again try the Smooth tool.


It is very unlikely that the buzz was present in the record. What's likely is a
buzz introduced in playback of the records; it would be due to incorrect
grounding of arm and/or turntable chassis and/or cartridge; or possibly to buzz
inherent in the preamp.

The solution is to re-do the transfers after eliminating the buzz from the
playback system.

That you leap to think that generations of music lovers listened to recordings
with built-in buzz is amusing. Sort of.


James Boyk

Possibilities:

1) Mechanical problems in the turntable/tonearm/cartridge system. Possibly a
resonance is getting excited by a particular frequency. Check to make sure your
tonearm bearings aren't rattling and that your cartridge is tightly connected.
(I'd rate this as a low probability, but one worth checking.)

2) Electrical problems in the cartridge/tonearm/preamp/digitizer system.
Possibly there's an intermittent ground. Make sure all ground wires and signal
wires are soldered properly to their jacks, then try replacing cables and
seeing if the problem goes away. (I'd rate this as a high probability.)

3) Interference. You may have some intermittent source of radio-frequency
interference that is injecting a signal into the system. Where do you live, and
is there an airport or airbase nearby, or a paging system tower, or a ham radio
operator, or a highway? (I'd rate this as a medium probability, because the
problem only seems to show up in one channel.)

But in any case, since the problem is showing up in the un-messed-with
recordings, it's clearly not a software issue.

Peace,
Paul

James,

What's likely is a buzz ... due to incorrect grounding

We'll have to wait for Charlie to come back and clarify, but I took his use
of the word "buzz" to mean a short burst of fuzzy distortion. Buzz as you
and I know the term implies the constant sound of 60 Hz hum and its
harmonics.

That you leap to think that generations of music lovers listened to
recordings with built-in buzz is amusing. Sort of.

Do I detect some pro-LP bias? :-)

Hey, I'm so old I remember when cassettes first came out. I listened to LPs
for years, and they were great for the time. Except for all the pops and
clicks, and the nuisance of having to handle them so carefully. And clean
them every time before playing. I even still have one of those soft purple
record cleaning thingies, though I no longer have a turntable to use it
with.

--Ethan

Ethan Winer ethan at ethanwiner dot com wrote:

We'll have to wait for Charlie to come back and clarify, but I took his use
of the word "buzz" to mean a short burst of fuzzy distortion. Buzz as you
and I know the term implies the constant sound of 60 Hz hum and its
harmonics.

Do you mean mistracking?

The solution for that is usually a fineline stylus, if it's caused by
the record being worn-out.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Charlie Hubbard wrote:
sounds like a torn speaker or something sitting on top of
your speakers vibrating at a resonance. It doesn't appear
(or often appear) at very low signal levels but it most
certainly appears in areas with lots and lots of headroom
left so it's not distortion due to clipping or something I
wouldn't think (however this is consistent with the
resonance theory). It's worse on some LPs than on others.
In fact, some LPs produce no "buzz" at all. It typically
lasts 100 to 200 milliseconds and it typically appears in
only one channel at a time. It can appear in either the
left or right channel, and seems to do so with equal
frequency, but it doesn't usually appear in both channels at
once.


That is mistracking. Every time you hear it, you are destroying the
record. Fix your playback gear so it does not mistrack and does not
ruin records.

A new Stanton D5100AL11 stylus (tone arm adjusted for
2.5g of tracking force)

There is where your problem probably starts. Try adding more tracking
weight and playing with the anti-skating force a bit. But honestly, you
really might want to dump that Stanton and try something that is better
suited to your arm.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 30 Sep 2003 14:13:08 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

That is mistracking. Every time you hear it, you are destroying the
record. Fix your playback gear so it does not mistrack and does not
ruin records.

A new Stanton D5100AL11 stylus (tone arm adjusted for
2.5g of tracking force)

There is where your problem probably starts. Try adding more tracking
weight and playing with the anti-skating force a bit. But honestly, you
really might want to dump that Stanton and try something that is better
suited to your arm.
--scott

Scott, thanks for the suggestions. As you have probably discerned, I
basically have no idea what I'm doing so any further details on
exactly what mistracking is and what should be done to avoid it would
be most helpful.

Adding more tracking weight is an easy thing to try. Are there
guidelines for this? Stanton rates my cartridge for 2 to 5 grams
tracking weight. Having no idea if lighter is better than heavier, I
just went with 2.5g for no good reason. What should I do instead?

As for the stylus, I'm using the particular stylus that I'm using
because it was the one recommended for the Murray II for LPs when I
bought the turn table (purchased at www.78rpm.com). I did try to do a
careful job of aligning the cartridge when I mounted it in the
headshell but really, other than "don't play a 78 with a microgroove
stylus" I don't know anything about stylii. It appears you don't like
the Stanton. What would be more appropriate to my set up?

Thanks in advace,


Charlie Hubbard

On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 13:23:55 -0400, "Ethan Winer" ethan at ethanwiner
dot com wrote:

We'll have to wait for Charlie to come back and clarify, but I took his use
of the word "buzz" to mean a short burst of fuzzy distortion. Buzz as you
and I know the term implies the constant sound of 60 Hz hum and its
harmonics.

You're right! "Buzz" was perhaps a poor choice of words. The ummm...
"distortion" I'm talking about is by no means constant. It's short
(usually about 100 ms or less, sometimes a bit longer) and how often
it appears can range from never to 10 - 15 times in a single, five
minute song. It can appear in either channel but rarely appears in
both channels at the same time. It seems to be more prevalent on
records that have been more heavily played than on seldom played
records. I'm not sure what this is but Scott Dorsey's "mistracking"
theory seems likely (I wish I knew more about that). I know exactly
what 60 Hz hum sounds like and this is something different.

Charlie Hubbard

"Charlie Hubbard" wrote in message
...
Snip
Adding more tracking weight is an easy thing to try. Are there
guidelines for this? Stanton rates my cartridge for 2 to 5 grams
tracking weight. Having no idea if lighter is better than heavier, I
just went with 2.5g for no good reason. What should I do instead?


While you're waiting for a real answer from Scott, I'll chime in to say that
the usual recommendation from people who seem to know whereof they speak is
to go to the high side when setting tracking force, so I would be inclined
to go to at least 4 grams. (The usual rationale is that added wear due to
the higher force is much less damaging than mistracking due to not enough
force.) On the other hand, the cartridges I used never suggested such a high
range. I don't think any of them ever recommended as high as 2 grams.

I see from the site where you bought the turntable that it's anti-skating
only goes up to 3 grams. That might be a reason to stay away from higher
tracking forces. It looks like the turntable is really aimed at 78s, not
LPs.

Jerry Steiger

Yeah, this definitely sounds like groove distortion, which sometimes happens
with well-used records, badly-pressed records, records cut too "hot," or a
combination of all three. I bet you get even more distortion towards the end
of the side, which is a typical problem, as the inner-grooves tend to have
this problem even more -- along with pre-echo, where you hear sounds of
adjacent grooves a second or two early.

Aside from redrawing the waveform to smooth it out, I'd suggest you try using
a Shure V15 Type VxMR, which has got very good tracking ability. It's an
expensive cartridge (usually over $200), but I think they're worth the money.
I'd try tracking it a 2 grams, and see how that sounds on your particular
turntable.

That, plus getting better copies of the records you're transfering, are about
the only advice I can think of. I've encountered cases where the records I
was transferring were so horrible, it sounded like a cross between Rice
Krispies and bacon frying. In that case, I was able to find a substitute for
the pressing, and it was bone-quiet. You'd never be able to see the
difference with the naked eye -- it was just a horrible pressing from the
1970s, which was a dark age for the vinyl LP.

Check eBay -- you never know. Some of the strangest and rarest records
around do pop up there from time to time.

--MFW

In article writes:

Scott, thanks for the suggestions. As you have probably discerned, I
basically have no idea what I'm doing so any further details on
exactly what mistracking is and what should be done to avoid it would
be most helpful.

First thing you need to do is determine whether the problem is with
what's going into the sound card (tracking adjustments, stylus size
and shape, cleanliness, etc.) or whether something is happening in
your computer. From your description, the noise you're experiencing
could very well be a computer glitch. People used to give this sort of
thing the name "diginoise" as in noise that was introduced in the
digitizing process. As you've described, it's usually visually evident
as a group of spikes superimposed on an othewise reasonable looking
waveform.

Try recording a CD on your computer through the same path (less the
phono preamp) as you're using for your turntable and see if the noise
disappears. If it doesn't, you need to do some optimizing on your
computer. This mostly involves turning off things that might
momentarily interrupt the recording process and playing with buffer
sizes in the sound card driver. The standard guilty parties are
auto-detect of a CD, virus checkers, and screen savers. Those
constantly check to see if they need to do something, interrupting
whatever the computer is trying to do (write audio data on disk) at
the moment.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

"Charlie Hubbard" wrote in message


My trouble is with step number 6. I consistently run into
two audio problems: the stray click or pop and something
that I don't know how to describe other than "buzz". The
clicks are usually not hard to clean up but this "buzz" is
something else altogether. I would appreciate any advice on
how to get rid of it or ideas on what might be causing it.
Here's some more details...


I see a procedural issue. If you are really serious about transcribing LPs,
you should check your playback system out by trying to cleanly transcribe a
good test record. Right now there are only about two modern test records
currently being made, one by Cardas and the other from High Fidelity News
(HFN) . You can also find legacy test records for sale on eBay. As a rule
test records are things that people buy and then don't use much, so used
ones are often suitable tools.

I suspect that the trackability tracks on the HFN test record will shed
considerable light on your problem.

Here's one source:

http://www.garage-a-records.com/hifinews.html

Charlie Hubbard wrote:

Scott, thanks for the suggestions. As you have probably discerned, I
basically have no idea what I'm doing so any further details on
exactly what mistracking is and what should be done to avoid it would
be most helpful.

Old Colony makes a very good introduction to LP playback that you might
want to try out.

Basically, the stylus needs to follow the grooves. If it does not follow
the grooves and starts bouncing around on peaks, tearing huge gouts of vinyl
off and destroying the record, it's not good.

Adding more tracking weight is an easy thing to try. Are there
guidelines for this? Stanton rates my cartridge for 2 to 5 grams
tracking weight. Having no idea if lighter is better than heavier, I
just went with 2.5g for no good reason. What should I do instead?

Play one of the inner tracks. Add weight and see when it stops mistracking.
Use that. Adjust the anti-skate in more or less the same way. Make sure
you have the overhang set up properly before you do any of this.

As for the stylus, I'm using the particular stylus that I'm using
because it was the one recommended for the Murray II for LPs when I
bought the turn table (purchased at www.78rpm.com). I did try to do a
careful job of aligning the cartridge when I mounted it in the
headshell but really, other than "don't play a 78 with a microgroove
stylus" I don't know anything about stylii. It appears you don't like
the Stanton. What would be more appropriate to my set up?

The Stanton is a great cartridge for 78s, but it's not a good match to
that arm, and frankly it doesn't track microgroove discs worth a damn.
It has very poor stereo separation (which again is not an issue for 78s).

I'd suggest starting with an inexpensive fineline type rather than an
elliptical. The Audio-Technica AT440 is a good first start for around
a hundred bucks. The fineline styli are much more touchy about VTA than
ellipticals but they will track worn material much better.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Could it be tonearm resonance?

Charlie Hubbard wrote:

On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 13:23:55 -0400, "Ethan Winer" ethan at ethanwiner
dot com wrote:


We'll have to wait for Charlie to come back and clarify, but I took his use
of the word "buzz" to mean a short burst of fuzzy distortion. Buzz as you
and I know the term implies the constant sound of 60 Hz hum and its
harmonics.


You're right! "Buzz" was perhaps a poor choice of words. The ummm...
"distortion" I'm talking about is by no means constant. It's short
(usually about 100 ms or less, sometimes a bit longer) and how often
it appears can range from never to 10 - 15 times in a single, five
minute song. It can appear in either channel but rarely appears in
both channels at the same time. It seems to be more prevalent on
records that have been more heavily played than on seldom played
records. I'm not sure what this is but Scott Dorsey's "mistracking"
theory seems likely (I wish I knew more about that). I know exactly
what 60 Hz hum sounds like and this is something different.

Charlie Hubbard

S O'Neill wrote:
Could it be tonearm resonance?

That is one of the things that can cause mistracking, yes. If the arm
and cartridge have a combined resonant point that is too low, they can grado
right out of the groove.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Well, put up a sample so we can here it.

It could be a dirty stylus, a worn record.... anything.

James Boyk

Well, put up a sample so we can here it.

It could be a dirty stylus, a worn record.... anything.

James Boyk

Jerry Steiger wrote:
While you're waiting for a real answer from Scott, I'll chime in to say that
the usual recommendation from people who seem to know whereof they speak is
to go to the high side when setting tracking force, so I would be inclined
to go to at least 4 grams.


You NEVER use a tracking force higher than mfr.'s recommendation; and I don't
think any good cartridge goes that high these days. Yes, it's a good idea to
work at the upper end of the RECOMMENDED tracking range.

To the original poster: If you don't know what you're doing w/ Lp playback, get
someone who does. It is a complex subject involving numerous issues with
turntable, arm, cartridge and preamp; NOT something that can be conveyed in a
few words or a few pages.

James Boyk

Jerry Steiger wrote:
While you're waiting for a real answer from Scott, I'll chime in to say that
the usual recommendation from people who seem to know whereof they speak is
to go to the high side when setting tracking force, so I would be inclined
to go to at least 4 grams.


You NEVER use a tracking force higher than mfr.'s recommendation; and I don't
think any good cartridge goes that high these days. Yes, it's a good idea to
work at the upper end of the RECOMMENDED tracking range.

To the original poster: If you don't know what you're doing w/ Lp playback, get
someone who does. It is a complex subject involving numerous issues with
turntable, arm, cartridge and preamp; NOT something that can be conveyed in a
few words or a few pages.

James Boyk

On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 22:22:29 -0700, James Boyk
wrote:

You NEVER use a tracking force higher than mfr.'s recommendation; and I don't
think any good cartridge goes that high these days. Yes, it's a good idea to
work at the upper end of the RECOMMENDED tracking range.

The recommended range for tracking force on the Stanton cartridge I'm
using is 2-5 grams. I've increased the tracking force to 4g as per
the earlier poster's recommendation (and also tweaked the anti-skating
adjustment by a corresponding amount as per the manufacturer's
recommendation). I haven't heard any "buzz" since then but I haven't
played with it enough yet to be able to say definitively whether or
not it's helped my problem. It looks good so far though.

To the original poster: If you don't know what you're doing w/ Lp playback, get
someone who does.

Let's try to maintain some perspective. I'm not engaged in
professional remastering work. I'm simply trying to transfer 100 or so
of my LP's to CD getting the best results I can with the software and
tools I have available. I just want to reduce the "buzz". "...get
someone who does" is why I came here looking for advice in the first
place. If you have some tips to help me identify and eliminate the
buzz, I'd love to hear them!

On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 22:22:29 -0700, James Boyk
wrote:

You NEVER use a tracking force higher than mfr.'s recommendation; and I don't
think any good cartridge goes that high these days. Yes, it's a good idea to
work at the upper end of the RECOMMENDED tracking range.

The recommended range for tracking force on the Stanton cartridge I'm
using is 2-5 grams. I've increased the tracking force to 4g as per
the earlier poster's recommendation (and also tweaked the anti-skating
adjustment by a corresponding amount as per the manufacturer's
recommendation). I haven't heard any "buzz" since then but I haven't
played with it enough yet to be able to say definitively whether or
not it's helped my problem. It looks good so far though.

To the original poster: If you don't know what you're doing w/ Lp playback, get
someone who does.

Let's try to maintain some perspective. I'm not engaged in
professional remastering work. I'm simply trying to transfer 100 or so
of my LP's to CD getting the best results I can with the software and
tools I have available. I just want to reduce the "buzz". "...get
someone who does" is why I came here looking for advice in the first
place. If you have some tips to help me identify and eliminate the
buzz, I'd love to hear them!

On 1 Oct 2003 10:07:42 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Old Colony makes a very good introduction to LP playback that you might
want to try out.

Thanks for the recommendation. I ordered a copy of this yesterday.

The Stanton is a great cartridge for 78s, but it's not a good match to
that arm, and frankly it doesn't track microgroove discs worth a damn.
It has very poor stereo separation (which again is not an issue for 78s).

I'd suggest starting with an inexpensive fineline type rather than an
elliptical. The Audio-Technica AT440 is a good first start for around
a hundred bucks. The fineline styli are much more touchy about VTA than
ellipticals but they will track worn material much better.
--scott

I haven't looked into a new stylus yet but I will before continue
forward with my project. From what I've heard so far I guess that will
be the AT440 you suggest or the Shure V15 Type VxMR that Marc Wielage
mentioned.


Charlie Hubbard

On 1 Oct 2003 10:07:42 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Old Colony makes a very good introduction to LP playback that you might
want to try out.

Thanks for the recommendation. I ordered a copy of this yesterday.

The Stanton is a great cartridge for 78s, but it's not a good match to
that arm, and frankly it doesn't track microgroove discs worth a damn.
It has very poor stereo separation (which again is not an issue for 78s).

I'd suggest starting with an inexpensive fineline type rather than an
elliptical. The Audio-Technica AT440 is a good first start for around
a hundred bucks. The fineline styli are much more touchy about VTA than
ellipticals but they will track worn material much better.
--scott

I haven't looked into a new stylus yet but I will before continue
forward with my project. From what I've heard so far I guess that will
be the AT440 you suggest or the Shure V15 Type VxMR that Marc Wielage
mentioned.


Charlie Hubbard

Charlie Hubbard wrote:

I haven't looked into a new stylus yet but I will before continue
forward with my project. From what I've heard so far I guess that will
be the AT440 you suggest or the Shure V15 Type VxMR that Marc Wielage
mentioned.

The top end on the V15 is a good bit cleaner but the output level is lower.
They both do an excellent job of tracking worn records. The Shure will work
on a wider variety of arms because of the dynamic stabilizer brush, but it's
also four times the cost of the AT440.

The AT440 is pretty much the cheapest fineline cartridge you'll find, and it's
a great performer for the price. The V15 is better, and there are plenty of
cartridges still better than that for increasingly larger amounts of money and
decreasing output levels.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Charlie Hubbard wrote:

I haven't looked into a new stylus yet but I will before continue
forward with my project. From what I've heard so far I guess that will
be the AT440 you suggest or the Shure V15 Type VxMR that Marc Wielage
mentioned.

The top end on the V15 is a good bit cleaner but the output level is lower.
They both do an excellent job of tracking worn records. The Shure will work
on a wider variety of arms because of the dynamic stabilizer brush, but it's
also four times the cost of the AT440.

The AT440 is pretty much the cheapest fineline cartridge you'll find, and it's
a great performer for the price. The V15 is better, and there are plenty of
cartridges still better than that for increasingly larger amounts of money and
decreasing output levels.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 1 Oct 2003 08:52:46 -0400, (Mike Rivers) wrote:
Try recording a CD on your computer through the same path (less the
phono preamp) as you're using for your turntable and see if the noise
disappears. If it doesn't, you need to do some optimizing on your
computer. This mostly involves turning off things that might
momentarily interrupt the recording process and playing with buffer
sizes in the sound card driver. The standard guilty parties are
auto-detect of a CD, virus checkers, and screen savers. Those
constantly check to see if they need to do something, interrupting
whatever the computer is trying to do (write audio data on disk) at
the moment.

Hi Mike. That's a good suggestion. I haven't done exactly this but I
have run a series of 30 minute recordings in which all my equipment
was turned on and the turntable was spinning but the tone arm remained
locked in its cradle. My thought was periodic computer noise would
show up easily against an otherwise quiet background. So far, I
haven't seen any problems. The recordings are always uniformly quiet.
There is some 60Hz ripple at about -75dBfs and there are even quieter
120Hz spikes (switching power supply is my guess) but I haven't seen
anything resembling the noise I've been calling "buzz". I'm not
particularly worried about the 60Hz ripple. It's 30 or 40dB below the
surface noise off my typical LP. It goes away along with the surface
noise when I apply the Sonic Foundry noise reduction plug-in.


Charlie Hubbard

On 1 Oct 2003 08:52:46 -0400, (Mike Rivers) wrote:
Try recording a CD on your computer through the same path (less the
phono preamp) as you're using for your turntable and see if the noise
disappears. If it doesn't, you need to do some optimizing on your
computer. This mostly involves turning off things that might
momentarily interrupt the recording process and playing with buffer
sizes in the sound card driver. The standard guilty parties are
auto-detect of a CD, virus checkers, and screen savers. Those
constantly check to see if they need to do something, interrupting
whatever the computer is trying to do (write audio data on disk) at
the moment.

Hi Mike. That's a good suggestion. I haven't done exactly this but I
have run a series of 30 minute recordings in which all my equipment
was turned on and the turntable was spinning but the tone arm remained
locked in its cradle. My thought was periodic computer noise would
show up easily against an otherwise quiet background. So far, I
haven't seen any problems. The recordings are always uniformly quiet.
There is some 60Hz ripple at about -75dBfs and there are even quieter
120Hz spikes (switching power supply is my guess) but I haven't seen
anything resembling the noise I've been calling "buzz". I'm not
particularly worried about the 60Hz ripple. It's 30 or 40dB below the
surface noise off my typical LP. It goes away along with the surface
noise when I apply the Sonic Foundry noise reduction plug-in.


Charlie Hubbard

Put a penny on the headshell?

Charlie Hubbard wrote:

On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 22:22:29 -0700, James Boyk
wrote:


You NEVER use a tracking force higher than mfr.'s recommendation; and I don't
think any good cartridge goes that high these days. Yes, it's a good idea to
work at the upper end of the RECOMMENDED tracking range.


The recommended range for tracking force on the Stanton cartridge I'm
using is 2-5 grams. I've increased the tracking force to 4g as per
the earlier poster's recommendation (and also tweaked the anti-skating
adjustment by a corresponding amount as per the manufacturer's
recommendation). I haven't heard any "buzz" since then but I haven't
played with it enough yet to be able to say definitively whether or
not it's helped my problem. It looks good so far though.


To the original poster: If you don't know what you're doing w/ Lp playback, get
someone who does.


Let's try to maintain some perspective. I'm not engaged in
professional remastering work. I'm simply trying to transfer 100 or so
of my LP's to CD getting the best results I can with the software and
tools I have available. I just want to reduce the "buzz". "...get
someone who does" is why I came here looking for advice in the first
place. If you have some tips to help me identify and eliminate the
buzz, I'd love to hear them!

Put a penny on the headshell?

Charlie Hubbard wrote:

On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 22:22:29 -0700, James Boyk
wrote:


You NEVER use a tracking force higher than mfr.'s recommendation; and I don't
think any good cartridge goes that high these days. Yes, it's a good idea to
work at the upper end of the RECOMMENDED tracking range.


The recommended range for tracking force on the Stanton cartridge I'm
using is 2-5 grams. I've increased the tracking force to 4g as per
the earlier poster's recommendation (and also tweaked the anti-skating
adjustment by a corresponding amount as per the manufacturer's
recommendation). I haven't heard any "buzz" since then but I haven't
played with it enough yet to be able to say definitively whether or
not it's helped my problem. It looks good so far though.


To the original poster: If you don't know what you're doing w/ Lp playback, get
someone who does.


Let's try to maintain some perspective. I'm not engaged in
professional remastering work. I'm simply trying to transfer 100 or so
of my LP's to CD getting the best results I can with the software and
tools I have available. I just want to reduce the "buzz". "...get
someone who does" is why I came here looking for advice in the first
place. If you have some tips to help me identify and eliminate the
buzz, I'd love to hear them!

In article writes:

Let's try to maintain some perspective. I'm not engaged in
professional remastering work. I'm simply trying to transfer 100 or so
of my LP's to CD getting the best results I can with the software and
tools I have available.

I don't know if you saw my previous posting, but have you definitely
determined that this is a problem with record playback? Can you hear
it in the same place, every time, when you just play the record
without recording it into the computer? If it's a function of the
computer hardware or software or how that's affeted by the phase of
the moon or what you had for lunch, no amout of tracking adjustments
will fix it.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

In article writes:

Let's try to maintain some perspective. I'm not engaged in
professional remastering work. I'm simply trying to transfer 100 or so
of my LP's to CD getting the best results I can with the software and
tools I have available.

I don't know if you saw my previous posting, but have you definitely
determined that this is a problem with record playback? Can you hear
it in the same place, every time, when you just play the record
without recording it into the computer? If it's a function of the
computer hardware or software or how that's affeted by the phase of
the moon or what you had for lunch, no amout of tracking adjustments
will fix it.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

Charlie Hubbard wrote:
Let's try to maintain some perspective. I'm not engaged in
professional remastering work. I'm simply trying to transfer 100 or so
of my LP's to CD getting the best results I can with the software and
tools I have available....


You're "not engaged in professional remastering," you just want that quality of
results! You get such results in either of two ways: you hire an expert, or you
turn yourself into an expert. You're unwilling to do the first; and getting
advice at a distance is not the way to do the second.


James Boyk

Charlie Hubbard wrote:
Let's try to maintain some perspective. I'm not engaged in
professional remastering work. I'm simply trying to transfer 100 or so
of my LP's to CD getting the best results I can with the software and
tools I have available....


You're "not engaged in professional remastering," you just want that quality of
results! You get such results in either of two ways: you hire an expert, or you
turn yourself into an expert. You're unwilling to do the first; and getting
advice at a distance is not the way to do the second.


James Boyk

In rec.audio.pro, (Charlie Hubbard) wrote:

On 1 Oct 2003 08:52:46 -0400, (Mike Rivers) wrote:
Try recording a CD on your computer through the same path (less the
phono preamp) as you're using for your turntable and see if the noise
disappears. If it doesn't, you need to do some optimizing on your
computer. This mostly involves turning off things that might
momentarily interrupt the recording process and playing with buffer
sizes in the sound card driver. The standard guilty parties are
auto-detect of a CD, virus checkers, and screen savers. Those
constantly check to see if they need to do something, interrupting
whatever the computer is trying to do (write audio data on disk) at
the moment.

Hi Mike. That's a good suggestion. I haven't done exactly this but I
have run a series of 30 minute recordings in which all my equipment
was turned on and the turntable was spinning but the tone arm remained
locked in its cradle. My thought was periodic computer noise would
show up easily against an otherwise quiet background.

Not neccesarily so. If the problem is the recording process losing
samples, as Mike was thinking, you'll never notice with silence
because all samples are (approximately) zero, and you'll never hear a
missed one. A better way to detect this is to record a low-frequency
sine wave for the 30 minutes, and listen to the recorded file for
clicks/ticks, or look to see if every wave is complete and not chopped
up anywhere.
If it's a problem (even if it's not - you can probably speed up
your computer noticably doing this), run msconfig to control what
startups load on boot, and do a websearch for windows startups so
you'll know what each one does. Here's a relevant webpage:
http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm

If I knew I was going to learn this much about MS Windows, I would
have learned Linux/Unix and ended up with some useful skills...

So far, I
haven't seen any problems. The recordings are always uniformly quiet.
There is some 60Hz ripple at about -75dBfs and there are even quieter

Expand it and look through the whole file as above...

120Hz spikes (switching power supply is my guess) but I haven't seen
anything resembling the noise I've been calling "buzz". I'm not
particularly worried about the 60Hz ripple. It's 30 or 40dB below the
surface noise off my typical LP. It goes away along with the surface
noise when I apply the Sonic Foundry noise reduction plug-in.

Be careful with those FFT-based noise reduction/elimination
programs, they can eat into and change the desired sound, especially
quiet passages and especially if set to 'full on' to eliminate all
noise.

Charlie Hubbard

-----
http://mindspring.com/~benbradley

In rec.audio.pro, (Charlie Hubbard) wrote:

On 1 Oct 2003 08:52:46 -0400, (Mike Rivers) wrote:
Try recording a CD on your computer through the same path (less the
phono preamp) as you're using for your turntable and see if the noise
disappears. If it doesn't, you need to do some optimizing on your
computer. This mostly involves turning off things that might
momentarily interrupt the recording process and playing with buffer
sizes in the sound card driver. The standard guilty parties are
auto-detect of a CD, virus checkers, and screen savers. Those
constantly check to see if they need to do something, interrupting
whatever the computer is trying to do (write audio data on disk) at
the moment.

Hi Mike. That's a good suggestion. I haven't done exactly this but I
have run a series of 30 minute recordings in which all my equipment
was turned on and the turntable was spinning but the tone arm remained
locked in its cradle. My thought was periodic computer noise would
show up easily against an otherwise quiet background.

Not neccesarily so. If the problem is the recording process losing
samples, as Mike was thinking, you'll never notice with silence
because all samples are (approximately) zero, and you'll never hear a
missed one. A better way to detect this is to record a low-frequency
sine wave for the 30 minutes, and listen to the recorded file for
clicks/ticks, or look to see if every wave is complete and not chopped
up anywhere.
If it's a problem (even if it's not - you can probably speed up
your computer noticably doing this), run msconfig to control what
startups load on boot, and do a websearch for windows startups so
you'll know what each one does. Here's a relevant webpage:
http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm

If I knew I was going to learn this much about MS Windows, I would
have learned Linux/Unix and ended up with some useful skills...

So far, I
haven't seen any problems. The recordings are always uniformly quiet.
There is some 60Hz ripple at about -75dBfs and there are even quieter

Expand it and look through the whole file as above...

120Hz spikes (switching power supply is my guess) but I haven't seen
anything resembling the noise I've been calling "buzz". I'm not
particularly worried about the 60Hz ripple. It's 30 or 40dB below the
surface noise off my typical LP. It goes away along with the surface
noise when I apply the Sonic Foundry noise reduction plug-in.

Be careful with those FFT-based noise reduction/elimination
programs, they can eat into and change the desired sound, especially
quiet passages and especially if set to 'full on' to eliminate all
noise.

Charlie Hubbard

-----
http://mindspring.com/~benbradley

Ben Bradley wrote:

snip?

Be careful with those FFT-based noise reduction/elimination
programs, they can eat into and change the desired sound, especially
quiet passages and especially if set to 'full on' to eliminate all
noise.


The more CPU you sacrifice to 'em, the better they do.

Charlie Hubbard

-----
http://mindspring.com/~benbradley


--
Les Cargill

Ben Bradley wrote:

snip?

Be careful with those FFT-based noise reduction/elimination
programs, they can eat into and change the desired sound, especially
quiet passages and especially if set to 'full on' to eliminate all
noise.


The more CPU you sacrifice to 'em, the better they do.

Charlie Hubbard

-----
http://mindspring.com/~benbradley


--
Les Cargill

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003 09:11:03 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
I suspect that the trackability tracks on the HFN test record will shed
considerable light on your problem.

Here's one source:

http://www.garage-a-records.com/hifinews.html


Thanks for the tip, Arny. I ordered one of these yesterday from
audioXpress. It's the HFN version.

Charlie Hubbard

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003 09:11:03 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
I suspect that the trackability tracks on the HFN test record will shed
considerable light on your problem.

Here's one source:

http://www.garage-a-records.com/hifinews.html


Thanks for the tip, Arny. I ordered one of these yesterday from
audioXpress. It's the HFN version.

Charlie Hubbard