Question on using Vinyl Studio


I have all my ripped CDs on an external HD and stream them to a DirectStream 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
Jeff, I tinkered with this a while back, but I dropped the project pretty quickly.  My question is, why record vinyl to digital exactly?  In order to get great sound from vinyl, one needs a great playback system (cartridge, arm, table, phonostage).  If that combo is just average or below, a digital recording will sound better. So, if you have a good analog front end, and then you record it as faithfully as you can, which is suspect, in the end you will no longer be using a fine analog front end, and will be using your digital rig instead.

i would have to guess, that in order to make this worth it, you would need a very fine analogue system, an extremely fine A/D converter, and finally a very good digital front end, not to mention vinyl in exceptional condition.

IMHO, I think one is better off with the analog system for the vinyl, and when you're feeling a bit digital, just play Tidal streaming at CD quality through a decent, or more than decent DAC.

i play my vinyl more than my digital, despite the fact that my digital collection is far bigger.  But I do get lazy now and again, or just in the mood to listen via the DAC.
Jeff - if you still are unsure, the Vinyl Studio folder can go anywhere you want to put it. It is not used by JRiver so should not be part of that folder structure. It is used only by VS. It is just the VS library, just like JRiver has a separate library.

You should put the output files from VS (the individual tracks) into your JRiver folder structure. But the VS folder and the original digitized files are independent of JRiver.
dtc, i've been using VS since your post to my question in the pc audio forum.  following your process and it works beautifully.  i've got the VS folder on my internal hard drive.  the output files from VS go into my JRiver folder on the external hard drive.  many thanks!
Great. I have been traveling and not checking in regularly and just saw this, so wanted to check. Glad it is working. Happy digitizing.
I'm so glad to spot this conversation here. I am a film maker and in my studio I have a sound devices USBPre 2 that I use for voice over recording on my corporate video work. http://www.sounddevices.com/products/portable-audio-tools/usbpre2

It is a great quality a/d converter with usb out so it should work well as a means to get the signal from my turn table to my mac. I am using a Linn lp12/itok.dynavector 20x ho to a fosgate signature phono preamp to the usbpre 2 to the mac as a signal path. Once I get  that setup my plan is to use Vinyl Studio to record Flac or Wav files and store them on a Synology DS1315+. It is a 20 TB array system and has a media server that will interface directly via usb out with a peachtree nova 220 se I recently purcgased as a means for playing back digital recordings of my albums. It is my first time trying to record and playback hi res files from vinyl and I am hoping it's worth the time and effort. It would be great to hear back from anyone with advice of how they made out with a similar setup. 

~ Frank