Apparatus used on metalonvinyl.net 

Article originally published on metalonvinyl.net on 27th January 2011.

As a website that reviews heavy metal on vinyl music, it’s important to know what I use to judge these albums.

Software

For recording purposes, I use the freely available Audacity. Simple in comparison perhaps to Adobe Audition or Sony Sound Forge, but for recording and splitting purposes it’s perfect.

I record all of my records in 24-bit, and at a sample rate of 96,000Hz. This gives me plenty of space for my recordings to breath. For instance, I can make adjustments to the signal to reduce artifacts such as crack or pops to a much finer degree than if I had have recorded in CD quality 16-bit, 44,100Hz.

I also then have plenty of room if I want to put my recording on to a CD to dither and down sample the audio files.

For click and noise removal, I use the excellent ClickRepair. It applies a specially written algorithm for detecting typical pop noises caused by dust and grime that may have accumulated on a disc.

ClickRepair can be used in both manual and automatic modes, but I suggest that if this program is used in automatic mode, keep it at conservative detection levels so as not to unintentionally detect and remove actual music.

For playback, I use foobar2000, available for free and compatible with Windows. It has plugins for just about anything you can think of in the realm of audio and will play just about any audio format you throw at it.

Hardware description coming soon…