Posted by Bill Vermillion on 10/22/05 21:05

In article <nce6f.13538$H3.8087@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
AnthonyR <nomail@nospam.com> wrote:
>
>"Bill Vermillion" <bv@wjv.com> wrote in message news:Ion1KJ.1ou7@wjv.com...

[lots deleted - wjv]


[regarding the laser LP player]

>>>You might be right, I was just guessing the price from memory,
>>>Yikes...that's a lot for a record player.


>> It is targeted to a specific market - places that have archival
>> storage and are fragile enough that they can not be played on
>> physical contact equipment without the risk of damage.

>> Those include a lot of old transcriptions where the lacquer can
>> start peeling off.

>> And other delicate things like the stack of 16" glass based
>> transcriptions I have. Those were used for live recordings on
>> portable recorders, and the reason for the glass was that during
>> WWII all aluminum was being used for making such things as
>> airplanes.

>> In many respects the glass base was better as it was much flatter -
>> but it is breakable.

>> Well I have a turntable that does tempo changes flawlessly.

>> I've used it to take old recordings that I felt were cut too fast
>> or too slow and brought them into what I thought felt good. I've
>> played them for others and they agree with my judgement.


>> But then I did spend a lot of years as music director in radio
>> and then wound up as a recording engineer running a fairly costly
>> [for it's day] recording studio. The day we got it up and running
>> we had $850,000 invested - and that would take $3-5 Million today.
>> Analog studios were NOT cheap - nor were huge sound-proof rooms.

>> But the turntable is a Stanton ST-150. It has a built in
>> preamp with SPDIF outputs and is locked into the turntable speed
>> control and pitch. You press the lock pitch button and move the
>> slider and tempo changes. It was designed for DJ [club] work
>> but with the S-shaped tone arm it does quite well on the humoungous
>> stacks of '45s that I accumlated as MD over the years.

.....

>Hey Bill,

>Thanks for the informative post.

>I transferred most of my old vinyl using the cheaper Stanton
>STR8-20 and going into PC with a preamp and then cleaning and
>removing pops with the pinnacle "clean" program. It was pretty
>buggy however and since bought the magix audio studio cleaner,
>but haven't had time to learn it well, and keep using the clean
>as i am use to its simplicity. What's amazing about digital
>restoration is also how you can capture a sound sample from the
>beginning of the record and create a noise pattern to remove from
>the rest of the recording, sorry I forgot the proper terminology
>at the moment.

>The pops can also be removed individually when pretty bad, but I
>use sound forge for that. :)

The wet-playing can remove a lot of noise - and when I show it to
people they don't believe.

I used to have an old LencoClean - which is a wet-playing device
that tracks a moist pad across the groove when it plays.

But they aren't available in the US anymore. I've found links
that show they are still available in Europe - but the places
that I found to buy them won't ship outside of Europe because
of insurance problems [as noted on their site].

So for the 45's and less-than-audiophile-quality LPs I mix up a
small solution of pure water with a couple of drops of a wetting
agent. And then 'paint' it on the surface with a small brush.

The Stanton 680HP cartridge that comes with the ST-150 [I prefer
the curved arm instead of the ST8-150 - with the straigh tone arm
better for club deejay work] has not problem as the stylus is
exposed enough not to wick up the solutions. The lower priced
500's would be good too.

[On my good LPs I use a VPI 16.5 vacuum cleaning device].

The list price of the ST-150 probably scares many off, but I found
a place that sold it for $419 - shipping included. Their sites
says they will ship within 48 hours. I checked and my order was
picked up by UPS about 4 hours after I placed it, and got to me
2 days early. So good price and fast service is hard to find.

If you [or anyone else] wants the name of the place you can send me
email - as I don't like to post commercial things on Usenet -
having that inbred into my motions here since I got on the 'net
in about 1984. [My address has been 'real' since I got on the 'net
and with proper filters spams is not a problme. [Unix systems and
my own mail server]

With the SPDIF output, and running into my Creative Soundblasster
Audigy 2ZS, the pops/click are removed in real-time. I've only had
to bring up an editor 1 or 2 times to do some severe cleanup. But
those recording were used on the radio station I used to work at a
jillion years ago [ it seems ] and were badly worn, and some
exhibited severe cue-burn, which can't be eliminated.

Another plus on the SPDIF is that the ground loops or induced hum I
was getting with analog inputs disappeared entirely.

Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

[Back to original message]