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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
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?


mapman's avatar
mapman
22,147 posts
 
Yes thanks.  I will likely give it a try sometime in the near future.  
dtc's avatar
dtc
1,047 posts
 
Jeff - You are correct - the original file, vsfile and .crd files stay in the original folder and the output files (the tracks) go into the JRiver folder.

The track files are independent of VS, just like CD rip files. Once you create them, they are stand alone files. You need the original file, the vsfile and the .crd file to create the output files (tracks), but once the output file is created it is independent of VS. You can move it anywhere you want, including to another computer.

The reason to not move the input files is in case you want to re-edit in VS - such as correcting a click you missed. VS needs to know where the original files are to do that. You would the open up VS, call up the album, add the new corrections and write new output (track files) into the JRiver folders. So, you do not want to move the original files, just in case you want to make more edits or re-create the files. Actually VS can recreate the vsfile easily, but the .crd file has all your corrections in it and you do not want to have to redo those. Therefore it is important that you back up the .crd files.

Again, the track files are independent of vsfile and the .crd file. You just need those files if you want to do more corrections or if you, for some reason loose the track files and need to recreate them. You do not want to loose the corrections that you have already done in VS.

As an aside, if you create new track files, you loose any custom tags you may have applied to the old track files by JRiver. However, you can re-create the custom tags in the new track files by using Library Tools to write the library tags for the tracks to the files.

Hope that helps. Sorry for the confusion.
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