Vinyl Shine for Mac - follow-up

Since last week's announcement of Vinyl Shine, the app seemed to approach the point where it was usable. But then that seemed so far away from beta as it was lacking functionality.

At its core is the pop filter. That had taken a large amount of the development time and was becoming pretty effective. 

But the app surrounding it wasn't so functional. Opening a file, running the filter and saving the clean file quickly gets tedious. Even if you run the filter over a whole side of an LP at a time, you first needed to run something else to record the sound and then something else to split and add track names. 

So it seemed best to build more supporting functionality. We returned to the original aim of 'real time' filtering. Much coffee later and we have recording and real-time-pop-filtering done. Also splitting and saving individual tracks. It's becoming much more useful.

Scenario 1. Plug your record player into the computer. (USB or line-in). Simply use Vinyl Shine as a player, with the pop-filter running in real-time*.

There's a 10-band graphic equaliser applied to the playthrough / recording  with the RIAA curve as a preset. Make your own default settings too.

Scenario 2. With the pop filter on, press record and put the needle down. Record a single track or a whole side, then switch to editing mode to normalise and select and save individual cleaned and normalised tracks. 

I'm also pleased with how 'cool' it's running. With many efficiencies still to be made, its cpu use is fine.

[update 8 Jul 18] After a weekend of working on refinements and efficiencies, this is how things are running with pop filtering switched on (testing here using a 2012 Mac mini).

* ok, it's running with a buffer. It's slightly odd putting the stylus down on the record and hearing that 'needle down' sound through the speakers a fraction of a second later, but otherwise the delay isn't really noticeable. [update] there's now an option in preferences for the amount of buffering, this can help avoid glitches in the playback caused by buffer underrun. This is only for listening pleasure. Even if the underrun happens, the glitch won't appear in the recording.

Announcing Vinyl Shine for Mac

This is probably the most satisfying new release ever from NPD at PeacockMedia Towers. It represents a new direction of exploration for us.

Work on this was prompted by me failing to find a plugin component that could be used by my favourite sound recorder as a filter to remove pops and crackles, or a plugin for a player to filter the pops in real time during playback.

The work has involved a steep learning curve with Apple's AVAudioEngine. The documentation is far from thorough and there's very little sample code around. That has not been fun but learning more about sound processing (DSP) and getting hands-on with some C++ really has been enjoyable.

We now have a standalone app that will open a sound file, apply pop filtering (pretty quickly - currently <6s for a 4 minute track, but I hope to significantly improve this).

The pop filter is applied, along with EQ and normalisation. For some reason, LPs seem to vary quite widely in sound (I think this is a different thing from playback equalization curves for early LPs and 78s.) Either way we intend that the graphic EQ in Vinyl Shine be flexible enough to handle all of this.

Options are minimal. A commercial app I currently use for pop filtering works ok but the result isn't perfect and it offers a shedload of options. What do those options mean? What am I supposed to change? Surely a pop is a pop, identify and remove it. Fewer options is the Mac way.

Vinyl Shine allows you to listen to the result and toggle between original and cleaned audio. And save the result as a new file when you're happy. (The final offline render is very quick, ~3s for a 4m song).

For the time being it currently exists as a standalone app and is working pretty well, making crackly recording much more listenable. It'll shortly be available as a free beta.

pops, clicks and crackles are identified, highlighted visually and repaired