Digital Home Thoughts: Reviving Your Vinyl: A review of Instant Music from ADS Tech

Editing for Song Breaks and Album Info
Once you have completed the recording, SpinItAgain's workflow takes you directly into editing the WAV file to identify where each track (song) starts and ends.


Figure 8: Editing the WAV file to set the start and end points of each track.

As I mentioned before, you pretty well have to do this step next, since I couldn't find any way to 'save this for later'. The software will analyze the recording using gaps with low or no sound, to identify start and end points. Unfortunately, with the live concert material, SpinItAgain split songs at quiet points, in the middle of jokes, and around applause. It took quite a while to get it sorted out. The interface wasn't the easiest for me either, as the end point of one song isn't the same as the start point of the next. Thus, gaps between the end point of one song and the start of the next are skipped, and it's possible to have the second song start before the first has finished. The arrangement provides ultimate flexibility, but it is a bit confusing until you get the hang of it. Fortunately, the sound editor provides zoom-in, zoom-out capabilities so you can set the points very precisely.

During this editing process is also when you can apply pre-defined filters to help eliminate hiss and pops commonly encountered on older records.


Figure 9: List of filters available

Once the track start and end points are set, then it's time to name each of the songs. Again, the interface was a bit confusing, since they seemed to want the Artist and Album information repeated again for each song. I'm not sure why, if needed, this couldn't have been copied down from the album info already provided.


Figure 10: Naming each one of the tracks in the album. Note the repeat of the Album, Genre, Year, and Artist info for each track. It's good if you're putting together your own compilation, but for album recording why can't they fill it in automatically?