[pianotech] MP3 on Website

[Horace Greeley]

Hi, David,

At 12:26 PM 12/16/2011, you wrote:
>Horace, thanks for those interesting observations. You are obviously 
>very experienced with sound files!

I've spent a fair amount of time converting formats for archival 
work.  Tape and vinyl has a nasty habit of deteriorating beyond 
usability after 40 - 50 years or so.

>I opted for MP3 just because the service that I used to make my 
>website (yola.com) has a widget for uploading MP3 files, which makes 
>it very easy.

Right!  Understood; and no worries.

My primary concern about the use of mp3 (and other) "lossy" 
compression formats is that the data that is not included in the 
archive is literally discarded.  While it undoubtedly still exists on 
whatever the original media was, the discarded data can never be 
retrieved from a "lossy" compressed file.

>I converted the vinyl LP tracks first of all by playing the LP on my 
>turntable, and using a Philips CDR 785 Audio CD Recorder. This is an 
>interesting HiFi separate, that slightly predates the advent of 
>ubiquitous MP3 and laptops, and iPods.  An unusual feature is that 
>it has a stereo microphone socket on the front, and it is possible 
>to use a suitable mic to record live sound straight to Audio CD.

For the price, this is a very good unit.  Depending on your need and 
location, it would be cheap enough to pick up a second just in case 
your primary died in the middle of a project...not likely, but it does happen.

>While I do have some software, not yet loaded onto my laptop, for 
>working with sound files, and could have tried to clean up the 
>crackles from the old (mono) vinyl LP, simply in the interest of 
>speed, I uploaded the files just as they are, with the authentic 
>sound of a 50 year old LP!

Understood.

Whenever I do any thing like this, I make the initial "pass" (if you 
will) doing an up-sample recording at 24bit/192kHz.  While I admit 
that this is massive overkill and creates huge files, it also allows 
very careful editing even with "lower-end" software.  As an added 
bonus, if you do decide to try to remove clicks, pops, crackles, etc 
from the file, up-sampling makes this a much more efficient process.

>Best regards,

And, to you, as well.

Horace