Matching digitized vinyl iTunes imports

roebeet wrote:

Just did another test - this time with an old LP, Nat King Cole's "Sings for Two in Love". I picked this one because I think it's the oldest LP I've needledropped - mono pressing with the Capitol rainbow label, probably an early 1960's pressing if not earlier.

I really expected it to fail to match at all. but I actually got 11 out of 12 matched!

The most important thing you've proven here is that you've got very broad interests in music (Nat King Cole vs Madonna) and for that I salute you (and suggest we ought to be talking outside of this discussion).

That the older stuff matches at all may seem counterintuitive, but there may be something at play here that we've only sort of touched on - the type/complexity of the music. Consider the difference between a single vocal with fairly simple instrumental backup and say, a heavy metal track. Look at the waveforms and on one you're not going to have any trouble spotting the beat, sometimes catching where the artist is singing, where he's not. In know we're only human, but still which might be easier to match?

But we also both know all too well that the good vinyl from the 50's & 60's, if in good shape is amazing to hear and a joy to own. Really top flight recording was being done back then. The master cutter didn't have to try and cram 20 minutes on a side and that sure changed in the 70's. 180 gram wasn't something particularly special, it was just done. Wonderful "advancements" like "microgroove"or RCA's "dynaflex" sure didn't help matters much. So the truth is on the old stuff, we might well have vinyl that's more true to the digital copy than something pressed, say, during the arab oil embargo, when the cooties in recycled vinly had a lot of us returning records that just wouldn't track.

I'm recording a fresh copy of Pearl, will put it through all the steps we've discussed. I think my Audacity file on Brubeck's Time Out hasn't been toyed with, so I'll just pick up with it and run it through ClickRepair. I'm using 20-25. I'll let you know how it goes.

Message was edited by: JiminMissouri

I am definitely all over the place with my music (it's one of the reasons why I have so much of it to deal with!). Bouncing between genres is actually a lot of fun - I might start my day with Nat King Cole, move over to The Pogues, then off to some Slayer and even Lady Gaga. It's all good. And I agree that old vinyl really was made well - it's amazing how well a 50 year old LP can play, as long as it was treated with care. I'm also a big fan of bee bop jazz like Monk/Mingus/Trane/Davis, but those are a little harder to buy in pristine condition. 🙂

And maybe genre does matter - I was thinking about that with Madonna since my True Blue had a high success rate too. I did attempt one classical LP so far (a Rubinstein LP I believe), but it didn't match at all. Genre / mastering / intro match / pitch, possibly all factors here.

Like I said, we need to talk, sir! Send me a PM sometime. I think my Apple account allows it, but if not let me know and we'll work something out. I say that because we seem to look at music much the same way and to me that's significant. I get a kick right now out of hearing Billie Holiday's "You've Changed" under a Chanel spot. Wonder how many people even know who they're listening to. I'm re-recording Lady In Satin right now (not her best, but it's what I've got) and if any tracks on the A side get matched I'll be amazed. It was so trashed I didn't even bother keeping the original Audacity file, let alone break out tracks. I've gotten ClickRepair since I first recorded it, so if it can work magic, great.

Monk/Mingus/Coltrane/Davis, well I know what you mean about finding mint copies. It's not that there aren't other artists deserving of the same interest, but you've hit on several of the hot names, so if a clean copy shows up, it's high dollar. I've got a few, but honestly based on visual grading, just put them on the shelf. I did get an excellent copy of a Miles Davis, but it was a later work, not one people would kill to get. But this is exactly why I'm looking to get good matches. If the file from my source disk can be made good enough for a match, I'll have access to music I'd really like to explore more. After all, I've got a row over two feet long of old jazz upstairs.

You'd also be at home in the Steve Hoffman fourms - mainly a 60's / 70's rock audience, but a lot of earlier influences - Steve Hoffman actually did some Nat King Cole reamasters in the last few years, as I recall. I have the same username over there.

"Lady In Satin", being that you mentioned it, is the one album I have from Billy Holiday (CD, I believe). Still have a lot of old classical / vocal / jazz / gospel LP's to go through (some garage sales that I picked up on the cheap) - will likely take me years to go through them all but that's the way I like it. And yes, the newer bee bop stuff is usually a little easier to find - I grabbed a copy of "B*****s Brew" (Apple forum bleeped it out, not me) for fairly cheap recently, but most of his 50's stuff goes for a lot more. I usually just take the re-issue as my wallet can't afford those first pressings. 🙂

There was a recent thread in macrumors about the 25k song limit, and at least one person who couldn't understand how anyone could reach that. But once yoiu move into different genres like jazz, you could easier surpass 25k.

When I get a minute, I'll look you up over in the Hoffman forums. For what it's worth, anything over $3 is hard for me to even consider. Most of what I pick up in the Kansas City areas (which for me includes the small towns within 100 miles), is under a buck. I pass up a lot of buck stuff simply because I know if I'm patient I'll pay half that, or depending on the place, a tenth of that. I really do love hunting for bargains. That may be why I've got so many shelves full of stuff I've not even found time to catalog, let alone clean and play. 25k songs doesn't seem like much. 25k albums, well that's entirely different.

The MIles Davis I got was Amandla. I like it.

Think of it this way -- Shazam, Soundhound and others are doing their darnedest to find you the song being presented. The goal is 100% match -- with much less significance given to the accuracy of the match.

Apple's goal is to match as much as possible -- while giving the RIAA 100% assurance that Apple is not giving away music by mismatching. i.e. the goal is to have 100% accuracy on songs matched.

The difference is huge. Statistically speaking, a 100% confidence level is impossible, so Apple has probably convinced the RIAA (or paid them) to accept something less -- but probably still at least 99%.

Total conjecture, here, but when I start thinking about iTunes Match in this context, I start thinking that the time-distance between the start of the track and the start of the song might be the nost critical, as there are probably 2 or 3 waveform snippets randomly selected and compared to the waveforms of what might be a selection of songs that meet a lower standard of "possible" matches. But, in order to actually score a "Matched", the waveforms have to be extremely close. Clipping, might be overlooked, as long as the unclipped portion of the waveform matches, and clicks/pops might be able to be filtered out during the match process, but a .2 second difference in the start of the song might mean a completely different waveform being compared, and thus rejected.

But that would make 40-60% success rate in matching LP rips seem exceedingly high....

I don't know. Maybe I should spend my time ripping some music and trying to get the best I can out of it. Though I think I've learned something of how to do that, by reading the threads associated with it.

I am not a technical as you guys, but some old vinyls have a completely different post production mix than the current distributions of the same albums. For example, the very first Crosby Still and Nash album release in early 70's has a much better mix than the later CD's. If you compare original vinyl mix to the later CD's you would never choose to listen to the later digital releases . . they are terrible by comparison. I was wondering if iTunes-Match would identify my original Vinyl version of this 40 year old album.

Whether iTunes would find your CS&N album similar enough to match, you'd really have to try it to find out. Given it has for Roebeet, matched stereo Beatles albums to his monos, I'd say there is no guarantee that a different mix will in and of itself be enough to preclude a match.

Roebee'ts described in some detail how he's managed to get some tracks to force upload. Once a song has been matched, getting it out of the cloud and then getting an altered copy to uploaded instead can be done, but requires additional steps to remove and replace the track with altered copies. That's been described here as well.

If the CSN vinyl is actually a different mix than whatever is in iTunes (and not just a different master) then there's a higher probability that the vinyl rip will be an upload and not a match - assuming that's what you're hoping for. The more different the waveform, then the more likelihood that you won't have a match.

Some older CD's have, imo, the SAME master as the vinyl - and I would argue that the possiblity of a match in those cases is much higher. Take a slightly obscure 80's band that had their vinyl and CD released at the same time and never had a remaster - the CD was likely cut from a master made for vinyl and thus the sound will be very similar outside of the actual format.

It's really hit and miss, from my experience. If you absolutely must have the tracks as uploads, seek out my other post on the matter. I've managed to force Beatles mono tracks to upload by either slight pitch or speed alterations, or by added silence at the beginning. Remixes might not even need this, or might need just a small alteration to push it over whatever threshold Apple is using. It is, unfortunately, a very time-consuming process if you have lot of matches you are trying to fix.

If the CSN vinyl is actually a different mix than whatever is in iTunes (and not just a different master) then there's a higher probability that the vinyl rip will be an upload and not a match

I agree. I just wouldn't assume it'll be a upload. That said, if somebody wanted odds on it, given all the experience we've had, combine it being a different mix with it coming from vinyl and I'd say more likely to upload than to match.

I also want to add that, if someone is looking specifically to do uploads because they prefer the sound of their vinyl needledrops, then iTM itself may not be the best solution for you right now versus something like Amazon Cloud Services or even Google Music. The latter two services only do uploads, and Amazon actually supports AAC files (Google only supports MP3's).

I've tested needledrop matches but most of the time I prefer uploads - the only exception for me being really scratched up vinyl where even a tool like ClickRepair can only fix so much. If iTM gets a "force upload" button in a future revision, that will fix a lot of problems for us Beatles Mono / needledropper types, but it doesn't exist yet and there's no guarantee that it ever will. As always, I would recommend contacting Apple and adding your voice - the more of us who ask for it, the more likely that they will add that functionality.

A Match Question: I have folder full of ripped Burning Spear but they are only labeled as Track 1, Track 2 etc in iTunes.

All of the Tracks can be identified by Shazam on my phone. When I upload them to iTunes Match, delete them on my PC, then Download them back to my PC, they are still the original files, not the Matched AAC files. I manually labeled Song and Album but that did not help;. How does iTunes match a music file ??? If you guys can rip Vinyl records and get matched . . what is the difference ???

It's been discussed at length, but it's not looking at metatags, it's looking at waveforms. If you songs aren't matching and they are vinyl needledrops, there's something different about your tracks that the matching process does not like - maybe it's the pitch, maybe the speed of your TT's belt is off, or maybe you have too much (or too little) silence at the intro of the track, or maybe the master is just too different from whatever exists in iTunes. We don't know for sure, it's really still guesswork at this point.

+2 on what Robeet says. Getting something to match in Shazam really isn't relevant, for reasons that have been discussed in other posts. For what it's worth, I had several "track 01" files that came from CD, but somehow all the metadata got screwed up. iTunes matched them anyway. After they matched, I used Tuneup on them and was able to restore the tags.

Correction: The description I gave for DC offset in my original post is totally wrong. In essence, if you look at a waveform and it's shifted off the null line, that's what DC offset does. So if you are looking at what is supposed to be silence and it's not on the null line - there you go.

Turns out I did not have this problem at all. The Macbook Pro's sound card is fine in this respect. What I thought was a DC offset problem turned out to be turntable rumble below 20Hz, most beloe 10Hz. For some reason the DC offset remove filter in Audacity was taking a lot of this out, which just added to my confusion. I'm currently using the Apple LowShelfFilter in Audacity to remove the low-end noise.

Also, my workflow has changed in the past month. I now record 96/24 in Audacity (though I understand I might not really be getting it). I run the LowShelffilter, then export a 24 bit AIFF, which I run through Clickrepair. The cleaned up file is moved back into Audacity, where I break it down into individual tracks. Those tracks get exported as as 24 bit AIFF, which are then added to the iTunes library, with iTunes Match turned off. I then create 256 AACs of the AIFF files, delete the AIFFs and turn on iTunes Match.