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Question on using Vinyl Studio

I have all my ripped CDs on an external HD and stream them to a PS Audio DirectStream DAC with BridgeII using JRiver and JRemote. Now I’ve started recording my LPs to digital files with a Tascam DA-3000 which puts the files on a CF card. The CF card then goes into a card reader attached to my computer from where I transfer the files to the HD using the same directory structure as the CDs. For instance if I already have 3 Cannonball Addererley CDs in the artist folder with his name on it, that is where I’ll put the newly digitized LPs. I append the names of the LPs with (DSD) or (24 – 96) depending on which format was used.   So it would look like this on my HD:

Shared Music

    Cannonball Adderley

          In The Land Of HiFi

          Somethin’ Else

          Somethin’ Else (DSD)

          Things Are Getting Better

          Know What I Mean? (DSD)

Now I’m ready to start using Vinyl Studio to split the tracks, name the tracks, maybe remove clicks & scratches. When first starting VS it prompts you to create a collection and asks where you want to store it. Should that be on the HD where JRiver looks to find my music files? And is this new “Collection” the location I should tell JRiver to find the new digital files?

The VS documentation has a drawing showing: VinylStudio – Collection: “My Albums.mcf” and says “Within a collection, VinylStudio stores your recordings as a list of albums. These are recorded a side at a time and these recordings are then split up into individual tracks. It is important to realize that VinylStudio is not an audio editor. That is to say, it does not directly edit your recordings or any audio files you might have imported. Instead, any changes you make within the program are stored (in My Albums.mcf) and then ‘overlayed’ onto the original audio when you save your tracks.”

Can anyone familiar with VS help me out with this? Maybe an explanation is all that’s needed and I can just let VS do it’s thing once I know where to locate “Collection – My Albums.mcf


jeff_ss
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,870 posts
 
Dtc thx for that detailed description.  

In in my case I would want to output Flac files all tagged and ready to go to move to my library folder.   
dtc's avatar
dtc
1,047 posts
 
You can certainly output Flac files with the tags that VS handles set directly into your library folder. That is what I do. The tags it handles are shown in the helpfile screen. You cannot add other tags. Those would have to be added by your player or another tagging program. I use JRiver and always add a couple of custom tags when I import, but those mostly happen automatically on import into JRiver. You set the tags for the whole album, but you can also change each field for each track, for example, composer for a non-classical piece or for different pieces by different composers on a classic record.  I use the comment field to put in the name of the recording company and the record number for future reference.


jeff_ss OP
91 posts
 
Thanks dtc, that is an excellent and informative explanation, and what I was hoping for.
dtc's avatar
dtc
1,047 posts
 
Glad to help. I am a real fan of Vinyl Studio. And the price is hard to beat.

You can get a trial version of VS. If I remember correctly you can do the whole process just when you write out the track files the corrections are not saved. And you get 5 albums I think. So, give it a try.
jeff_ss OP
91 posts
 
dtc,

You said "All the changes it (VS) makes are kept in separate files that reside in the same folder as the original file. Once you edit a file with VS, there will be a vsfile and a .crd file in that same folder."

And "Once you process the files (separate tracks, cleanup, tagging) you then write the track files out as separate files. They can go directly into the folder where you store you JRiver albums."

Based on your comments my understanding is that the  "track files" go to the folder JRiver uses for my ripped CDs.  The vsfle and .crd file stay where VS created them, but the track files are dependent on them, so make sure VS continues to know where they are and that they are backed up.  Correct?

If the track files are dependent on the vsfile and .crd file, then the track files are not complete and self sufficient files, so they differ in that way from ripped CD files.  Correct?


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