Projects

Indy500 wrote: Raise your hand if you've ever spent an entire day reconstructing the Frankenstein that is Chicago's "Beginnings"? Part of my 1970-1971 45s project.

Not an entire day, but I did manage to re-create the edit
in about an hour but I was pretty well versed in editing
software by the time I got around to that one. I used the
LP mix on the old Chicago Greatest Hits CD as my source
(the remastered CDs from Rhino and the remixes the band
has put out just didn't sound too good).

Glad my library has been an inspiration!

For me personally, having lyrics in the tags has been the bane of my existence. When I search for title and/or artist, having those words in the lyrics gives a ton of false positives. As a result, I've deliberately deleted all the "lyrics" fields in all the files I've ever accumulated. It's just me; your mileage may vary! :)

When you're doing comparisons, here's a tip: listen carefully to the fades. I often make my selection based on sound quality in the fade (if the high end disappears, it's usually a symptom of added noise reduction). All other things being equal, I'll choose the file that has the longest tail on the fade.

Pro tip: If you're working in Audacity with multiple files open, you can select all (CTRL-A), then make the tracks all the same volume (with everything still selected, Effect > Volume And Compression > Loudness Normalization > Normalize perceived loudness to -16.0 LUFS, leave the stereo channels button unchecked, check the dual-mono button. The exact numerical value isn't really important, but -16.0 LUFS seems to work nicely.)

Your files will all be the same volume, which is perfect for an A/B test. If you want to trim the opening silence, select the first few seconds of all the tracks simultaneously, then Effect > Special > Truncate Silence, then I made up some numerical values that seem to work well enough: threshold -40 dB, duration 0.1 seconds, Truncated Detected Silence, truncate to 0.01 seconds, check the truncate tracks independently button).

If you want to focus on the fades, select the last few seconds of the song (after the fade has started), and repeat the Loudness Normalization steps from above, using the same settings and numerical values. You can repeat this as often as you like until you're left with dithering noise.

Have fun!

And if you *really* want to get into the weeds, rename the tracks before you import them, so that the filename starts with the copyright date, then includes the album name, and (optionally) artist and title afterward. That puts everything in chronological order by release date, from top to bottom on the screen.

Edited by crapfromthepast - 1 hour 35 minutes ago at 7:36pm