Hi.
I've been reading up on all the various programs for recording sound on your pc, however I have been having a real problem with random pops appearing in my recordings.
To explain - I have been using Audacity for a few years, initially just to rip vinyl through a USB turntable and Mini-Discs through the audio jack built into the turntable. Just over a year ago I worked out how to copy sound from DVD which I thought was a godsend as I tend to record a lot of radio broadcasts from the Digital Radio channels on my Sky+ box. It was easy to transfer these onto DVD and stream the audio through first Nero and later WMP into Audacity and then save the file as an MP3 and as a WAV file (the WAV file deleted after I had burned the lossless copy onto CD for car listening). In addition, I also used it to record a few radio streams off the net as well.
All seemed to be good until recently when I listened to a CD I'd just burnt, this time on my Hi-Fi system. I noticed random "pops" on the CD that were not on the original source. As I'd mainly listened to these CDs in the car, I would not have noticed these with road noise occuring around me, but they were very noticable when listening properly.
It had to be something happening during the recording as the only post-production that I do is normalisation. The pops appeared on files that I had applied normalisation to, and on files that I hadn't, so it wasn't that. I've cleared as much of my C drive as I can so there is over 33% free space (probably nearer 50%), I defragment the drive weekly. I've tried temporarily deactivating Windows updates whilst recording, and disconnecting from the Internet completely (unless I'm recording from a stream obviously!) and it still happens. I've deactivated the screen saver in case it was that - same thing. I'm right out of ideas. So I thought I'd try Freecorder instead.
The 2 big pluses were: 1) it records from the speakers and supposedly can filter out background noise (exactly what I wanted!) and 2) it doesn't keep dead space at the beginning and end of recordings. Having tested it on the stream from the Buzzin' Fly Radio Player (
www.buzzinfly.co.uk), I can still hear pops and there is dead space at the beginning and end (about 8 minutes on the end!), so I'm not sure what is happening. I assume there must be some sort of electrical hum from my laptop that it is picking up?
All of which longwinded explanation is my way of saying it has left me completely stumped! In terms of the few web streams I record from, it would appear that Replay is what I am looking for, and I am downloading the trial version as I type so that I can test it out. However I am none the wiser as to how I can record audio from DVD without getting random pops throughout my recordings, as both Audacity and Freecorder appear to suffer from the same problem (or more accurately are copying the same problem from my computer's soundcard).
Now, it may be unnecessary as I ASSUME that the digital radio broadcasts are of a higher quality than just recording the streams off the net (certainly most podcasts seem to be inferior at only 64 or 96kbps). If there is no difference then maybe the easier and less time consuming way is to stop using the Sky+ box for recording and copy the streams off the net instead (I'm not a technical expert so I have no idea about sound quality of web streams. All I know is that I want to be able to have the best sound quality for achiving shows that I can. Recordings that I have made from the BBC Iplayer sound more "tinny" to my ears than the Digital Radio copies). That said, I have a backlog on my Sky+ box that I still need to convert and it's useful when buying live music DVDs if I can copy the audio onto CD, so if there is a program that can solve my problem it would be extremely useful!
In summary, if anyone can recommend a program for copying DVD audio, or has any other comments on the best way I can achieve my objective I'd be glad to hear them.
Thanks for your time!
10-03-2008, 05:30 PM
Linear Mode
