Tag Archives: digital

A customer Question

question, , , , , , Gary Ankin

Talking with a customer last week on the phone the question he asked was ‘Why should I choose MK Vinyl 2 CD?’…..

First and foremost my answer was I have been doing audio transfer work since 2003 I have learned an awful lot and am 100% comfortable that the audio transfers I do are done in the most efficient, effective and cost economical way to produce good results that customers really want.

We communicate with our customers confirm safe arrival of their media and do what we say on our website mkvinyl2cd.co.uk by first professionally cleaning all vinyl followed by recording on quality reliable turntables then that signal is sent to the www.cedaraudio.co.uk hardware from a world leader in sound & audio forensic technology. We manually separate tracks not relying on time saving software that can make drastic mistakes when trying to find those gaps in audio files the final audio is compiled to a high quality CDr disk in most cases but can also be made available to you in other digital formats like MP3, FLAC or wav on flash drives (USB memory sticks).

Audio tapes whether Reel to Reel or Cassette are all captured on quality reliable studio machines such as Revox, sony and Teac and the audio files edited and produced to the best possible quality we can achieve based on the audio condition of the original media that is sent to us.

Finally we take pride in returning the media in a well packaged and protected parcel and we email you to let you know in advance that the order is on its way, the final stage in the process is for the customer to pay us of course.

Our Vinyl to Digital Process

vinyl, , , Gary Ankin

What happens to a vinyl record when it arrives at mkvinyl2cd.co.uk, it will surprise many customers as I know some customers do think that the cost to transfer vinyl records to digital is quite disproportional to the cost of the vinyl record whether a 7 inch single or a 12 inch LP.

When we buy in services we are first and formost buying time and expertise from a professional and depending on what that project may involve based on labour, materials etc will denote the cost.

From start to finish a 12 inch LP takes about 1.5 hours to transfer to CD, our first aim is to give the vinyl a deep clean and vacuum on a professional record cleaning machine, I use the MOTH Pro MK2 which offers a robust and reliable machine to work with. I am in control of the cleaning action, application of cleaning fluids and vacuum time as some machines do this all for you which may save you ‘hands on time’ but can mean spending more time if the cleaning was not thorough. The cleaning fluid used is dependant on the level of soiling on the record and we use organic fluids to ensure the playing surface is not likely to suffer any damage due to some high strength non organic solutions.

Our next stage is to place the record on the turntable and set up for recording. We do not use a basic USB plug in turntable but reliable higher end hi fi decks and in my case I use the Rega Planar 5 fitted with a goldring 1042 stylus and cartridge. We record at 24bit and 96000khz to achieve a good result in a .wav format.

At this point our set up chain is vinyl turntable to pre amp, to the HHB Pro 850 Cd recorder where the signal is converted into the digital signal as the Cd recorder unit offers great controllability of the signal in to allow for accurate adjustment in level and output to the www.cedaraudio.co.uk Declick rack mounted unit and then the final journey of the signal is to the hard disk on the PC.

At this point the digital signal is recorded by our chosen software program and in my case I use sony soundforge Pro primarily as I am visually impaired and need to use speech software soundforge allows for great accessibility via my access software.

Once we have the digital file we can then edit and compile as required so such things like sound enhancement, normalising signal, track seperating can be done. It would also be at this point we assess the audio files for suitability of our storage means for the customer such things as file formats like MP3, FLAC or WAV are considered but much depends on how the customer intends to listen or work with the audio.