Recommendations for Analog to Digital conversion

Question

I am seeking the help of all the Pros out there. I am moving my extensive analog music collection (LP/Cassette) to the digital world. Are there any recommendations for creating a CD-quality sound/volume level. I am currently using the standards (click/pop/hiss reduction, compressor and/or hard limiting). I am recording at 44.1/16 Bit and saving files in mp3 PRO-320 kbps for sake of storage. I welcome any assistance in regard to Plug-ins, equalization or other suggestions.
Thank you in advance
Paddy 41
Pentium 4/3.2 GHz, 2.0 MB Ram, Soundblaster X-Fi Elite Pro, Windows XP PRO SP3, Adobe Audition 3.0, Sony PS-LX250H Turntable, Denon DRM-600 Cassette.

Answer 1

>I am recording at 44.1/16 Bit and saving files in mp3 PRO-320 kbps for sake of storage. I welcome any assistance in regard to Plug-ins, equalization or other suggestions.
You shouldn't save files as MP3s until all the processing you want to do has been done - this is a lossy format, and every time you open a file saved like this it gets re-decoded, and then re-encoded when you do a save. And the quality degeneration is progressive. And unfortunately, recording your files as 16-bit is also not going to be quite the thing to do if you are going to do any sort of amplitude processing at all, either, especially if you are recording at a lower-than-optimum amplitude, which is usually the case. 44.1k is fine, though!
So, to get over the potential problems, the thing to do is to digitise your files as 44.1k 32-bit floating point, and until all processing is done, store them as Windows PCM wav files in this format, because that is uncompressed, which is what you need.
If you want to reduce noise on cassette recordings, it's worth using a fairly high FFT setting, even though it takes longer to do the processing. Since most of the noise is not LF, this tends to work better, although there is also a case for doing the NR twice, once with a lower FFT setting and once with a higher one, but not trying to take out too much in one go.
As for click reduction - well, you have to experiment. But letting the software determine all of the levels tends to give you a pretty good starting point. Another trick that's sometimes worth it is to transform your files temporarily to M-S stereo instead of L-R, and treat each channel separately - you generally get different levels of clicks in each, usually more in the S signal, whilst the M cancels out quite a few. And in general, the less clicks you can get away with processing, the better.
Hard limiting? Never used it on a conversion like that at all, and wouldn't even consider it - transients are already likely to be distorted, and hard limiting them further seems like a
very strange thing to do...
Other tools that are useful, especially on cassettes are iZotope's Ozone (some of which is already in Audition) and HarBal. You can restore usually distorted frequency responses with the latter, and get a good average value automatically and easily. And judicious use of Ozone's enhancer can make them seem a lot less like the results came from a cassette...
One of the useful things you can do with Ozone is to selectively widen parts of the spectrum. Since most records of music tend (for reasons of tracking) to have had the bass forced to be virtually mono, with subsequent similar consequences for other instruments with substantial LF content, it's worth expanding just about everything under about 250Hz, possibly by more than you might think.
Generally, 'normal' EQ doesn't have a lot of use when processing vinyl, if it's relatively recent. And that generally means anything from the 60's onwards. If you think things are seriously wrong, the chances are that it's your monitors and environment that are misleading you. Just bear in mind that when this stuff was produced, it was all monitored in a professional environment - more so than it might be today, even.
No doubt there will be a few other responses - I don't think that the foregoing is anything like complete, but is at least a start.