Timestretching 78's

Ben Walker · Post by **Ben Walker** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:52 am

My mum's given a few 78's which she played on right at the start of her career. She wants them put on CD. My turntable won't play at 78, but I was told by a colleague that they'd had good results recording at 45 rpm and then timestretching by 173%.

I've tried this in Cubase SX3 and SoundForge7 and the results are awful in both cases. In Soundforge it stretches the Audio without altering pitch and I can't find a way to get it to pitch and time stretch.
In Cubase SX 3 the results are just awful, and I also can't work out how to stretch by % only by tones.

Anyone got any ideas? I can't justify buying WaveLab for this (don't know if the DIRAC timestretch algorithm is any better) - are there any settings I should chose in either program to get this working better, or any other not too expensive programs which would do this better for me?

Or should I just bite the bullet and send the discs to a vinyl transfer shop who'll do the whole thing for me for more money but less hassle.

Ben

alfonso · Post by **alfonso** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 3:00 am

Don't you have any Cutmaster or Tripledat software? If I remember well it can speed the playback changing the pitch accordingly....which was one of the flaws I thought of (the lack of fixed pitch), but it can be exactly what you're after.
I'm not 100% sure though...

Zer · Post by **Zer** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 3:10 am

try cleaning lab and the 78 preset

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 3:20 am

actually that's the way any old fashioned sampler works

you probably just don't find it under 'timestretchig' as that includes pitch correction by definition.
Alfonso's tip points to what it really is: playback speed - hard to imagine that Cubase cannot do that...

on the other hand it's a serious amount of work to transfer a bunch of black disks to silver ones...
the offer may be worth checking if they can provide an example of the final quality and a fixed price. They may be much more efficient due to experience and possibly sophisticated software already adjusted for the job.

cheers, Tom

Ben Walker · Post by **Ben Walker** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 3:30 am

Looks like it'll only cost me £25 or so to get them all done professionally, so I think that's what I'll do.

I'll give it one more try with tripleDat and Osiris tonight - if no luck I'll hand it over to people who do this all day.

I've been looking at
http://www.vinyltodigital.co.uk/78rpm2cd.htm
and
http://oldiesmadegoodies.co.uk/index.htm

The latter are more expensive, but maybe more professional.

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 4:35 am

Am I missing something here... when you play a 78 at 45 it's just played slower right? So if you want to get them back to normal pitch surely you don't have to use any stretching at all, just a simple pitch correction without keeping the speed constant.

Ben Walker · Post by **Ben Walker** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 4:44 am

Sorry - timestretching isn't the right term.

Maybe shrinking is better. It needs to be made shorter and pitched up, apparently by a factor of 73%.

The function that I've looked at in Soundforge only does stretch/shrink with constant pitch - unless I'm missing something.

Cubase will do it quite easily, but it doesn't sound very good afterwards -- all sorts of unwanted artefacts.

next to nothing · Post by **next to nothing** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 6:11 am

so basically standard transposing would do i guess. maybe you can sample it in STS or tripledat or anything which does standard transposing and transpose it up 73% (if that is an option).

petal · Post by **petal** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 6:20 am

You should just playback the digitial copy at the appropriate speed (nomal transposition), which will give you the right pitch by it self. This can be done in any waveeditor I've worked with, also Cubase.

1. Record the 78's to wav.
2. Open waveeditor of choice.
3. Resample the file at a faster tempo: I.e.: 173% (The correct speed can be calculated perfectly).
4. Voila

I'm pretty sure this can be done in Audacity, which is a freeware waveeditor.

Good luck!
Thomas

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 6:45 am

That is a lot of stretching. I don't think you will have good results with any program. She should get a turntable on ebay.

next to nothing · Post by **next to nothing** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 6:49 am

its not stretching at all actually. its just a sample played back at a different speed, same theory as playing a 33rpm vinyl at 44rpm. like you could sample the vinyl , get it into STS (or kontakt for that matter, but with STS, as it actually is a SAMPLER you can sample with it as well), map it across numerous keys and just play it until you find a key thet sounds good

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 8:58 am

If you're using Sound Forge the function you want is called 'pitch shift' (in Processes menu if I remember correctly). Make sure you don't tick the checkbox to keep the speed constant.

fra77x · Post by **fra77x** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 9:18 am

You can also find a pitch transpose utility (real-time) in winamp.
Go preferences, plugins and you'll find there several effect algorithms. One of them time-stretches. (and is able for extreme ranges with not so bad effect)

You'll have to re-record the sound files.

arela · Post by **arela** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:10 pm

Audition is good for this, but i think you should stay inside of about +/-20% .
(You choose pitch and/or speed change)

Ben Walker · Post by **Ben Walker** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 3:22 am

Thanks to all those who helped me with this. The answer, as many of you pointed out, is not to timestretch but to resample, available in both Cubase and Soundforge.

I found this article in sound on sound very useful. They suggest resampling by a factor of 57.692. I'm getting good results with this, although some of the records were clearly not recorded at exactly 78rpm as some of them sound slightly sped up at this rate, so am having to experiment.

Thanks again for all the helpful suggestions,
Ben

next to nothing · Post by **next to nothing** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 5:12 am

its second nature to those of us who used trackers back in the amiga days