Groove Mechanic 2.5a User's Manual
Contents
1. FIG MENU A da Deo ara 35 Capture MeNU sa A asad A A t 37 Audition Meli A A A e ii aa 38 BEAN e AAN An EEPE EE IE E EE TEE e hich ele 40 TRACKS MENU eaaa a aAa E a De dG 42 BENE EE E E 43 Options Menu socorro Seen EAS E eh 45 Help MENU anei eue ia E enea a vid NEEE aE EEEN Vis naina ia set 49 Keyboard Mnemonics s sssssesrsrrersesserrrrrorsserrrrresrerrerrerresrerrerreereunrerresrerree 51 Keyboard Accelerator Sade iaaa i a ee rre 52 Command Line Operation OvVervieW oooooocccccnccccnnnncnennnnnnrnnrnnnrrrnnnrrrnrrrrrnrrnnnnns 54 Answers to Common QUESTIONS sesserrssrersssrrrrrerosrrerrerrssrerrerressserteroerrerrns 56 Technical SUPpOE ao E EE AET E AE EE AET 57 Appx A Performance Considerations 0coocccccncccccnncccnnnnnrnnnnnrnnrnnnnnrnrnnrrrrrnananens 58 Appx B Using Groove Mechanic with WINE under LinuX ccee tenet teen eens 59 Please note this is a PDF version of Groove Mechanic s built in help system It is suitable for viewing with a PDF viewer or for printing but of course the embedded hyperlinks will not function Coyote Electronics Inc 2 What does Groove Mechanic do The primary purpose of the Groove Mechanic is to dramatically improve the quality of the music on your old vinyl LP records and cassette tapes while getting them ready to record them to a CD While it does not actually perform the CD writing it does allow you to e capture the audio from LPs tapes or other sourc2. Groove Mechanic runs on the following processors and wil Intel Pentium with or without MMX Intel Pentium Pro Pentium Il Intel Pentium III Intel Pentium IV AMD K6 3 AMD Athlon Transmeta Crusoe likely run on subsequent compatible processors You should have at least 32 MB of memory installed and sufficient disk space to hold the largest audio file you will want to work on plus a copy of it The disk should be unfragmented for best results and audio capture may not function properly if the disk is very fragmented Coyote Electronics Inc 4 Hardware S Audio Equipment Connect your turntable and or cassette deck to a preamplifier or receiver ie a pre amp plus tuner and connect the output of the pre amp or receiver to your sound card s Line In input To do this you will need a cable with the correct connectors at each end Most home stereo equipment uses RCA phono jacks for all audio ins and outs But most sound cards use 1 8 stereo jacks which take up much less space If this is the case in your setup you will need an RCA to 1 8 adapter cable These are commonly available at Radio Shacks for a couple of dollars It is not possible to directly connect your turntable to your sound card because of the filtering that has been applied to LPs and which is compensated for by the pre amp This filtering called RIAA Equalization will result in a very tinny sound if you connect your turntable directly to your
3. The gain applied to signals at exactly the cutoff frequency is 3 dB For lower frequencies the gain is reduced at a rate of 24 dB per octave See Also Repairing Clicks Repairing Hiss Coyote Electronics Inc 24 Operation Once the analysis has been done the hiss may now be repaired First find a point in the audio where there is just hiss no audio Left click at this location so that when you hit the Play button Groove Mechanic plays hiss only Now click on Repair Hiss Get Noise Base at Playback Cursor Groove Mechanic reads the file at the specified location and uses this as the noise base Click on Repair Hiss Fix Hiss The hiss will then be reduced considerably it cannot be completely eliminated This may take a considerable amount of time depending on how large the audio file is While hiss repair is going on a dialog box will indicate the progress The dialog box has a Cancel button which may be used to cancel the hiss repair If you do so the file will have a discontinuity in it where the hiss repair left off and therefore cannot be used It will be necessary to open the original file again analyze it and repair the hiss again The amount of noise reduction applied to the audio during the hiss repair can be adjusted slightly using the Options Hiss Repair menu item before hiss repair is performed Theory of Operation Hiss removal uses a technique known as spectral subtraction Knowin
4. performs the specified repairs and writes the resulting audio to the same file If syntax 3 is used Groove Mechanic opens the file and then waits for the user to issue commands as usual When the user exits the program the results will be written to the output file without prompting If syntax 4 is used Groove Mechanic opens the file performs the specified repairs and writes the resulting audio to the output file If either of the filenames contains space characters the filename should be surrounded by quotes Example Groovemech My Music WAVs Test1 wav My Music WAVs Test1_out wav c r q Coyote Electronics Inc 54 One way to process all of the WAV files in one folder using one command is to use the for command Here s an example cd MyWavFolder for i in wav do c program files1lcoyotelgroovemechanic251groovemech i Fixed_ i c r q This repairs the clicks and rumble in each WAV file in the folder and saves the result of each to a file with the same name as the original but prefixed by Fixed_ This will process all the files at the same time which may be too high a computing load if there are a lot of files To process the files one at a time use cd MyWavFolder for i in wav do start wait c PROGRA 1 coyote groovemechanic25 groovemech exe i Fixed i c r q after first creating the subfolder Fixed below the folder MyWavFolder You should not
5. time at which they occurred Each time Groove Mechanic starts up and finds an existing log file it appends any new messages to the end of the file without erasing the file first Coyote Electronics Inc 55 Answers to Common Questions Why doesn t my registration key work Most likely there is a minor error in the entry of either the key itself or the user info which is usually your name and city or country BOTH the key and the user info must be entered into the registration dialog box Will my key still work if change to another PC Yes Your registration key will work on any PC Can upgrade Groove Mechanic Yes Just download the latest version and install it and it will recognize your registration key and all of your previous settings When I try to record get no sound at all Probably your sound card has not been configured to select the input that your external audio equipment eg turntable is connected to Ensure that in the Devices menu the correct Input Device is selected ensure that you specified the correct input eg Line In when you started the capture and ensure that the RECORDING volume for that input is turned up The last point is accomplished by starting the Windows Volume Control clicking on Options Properties Recording Then locate the Line In slider assuming your turntable is connected to the Line In jack and adjust the slider In what order should do the repairs Usually the best order
6. Hiss Fix Hiss The final repair step is usually amplitude normalization You should perform this step if the recorded signal level is somewhat low eg if the Max Ampl is less than about 70 To ensure that the Max Ampl number reflects the amplitude of the audio and not that of the clicks which are now gone you may wish to re open the file and allow the file scan to proceed again To normalize the amplitude click on Repair Normalize Amplitude then in the dialog box that appears enter the value to which you want to set the largest amplitude The default value of 95 is a good one although you may use higher values up to 100 or lower values if you desire The repair has now been completed However in some cases some audible clicks may still remain in the file These are usually small clicks which were not detected in the first analysis because they were masked by a nearby large click If you need to perform as second pass of analysis and repair save the file first then open it again and follow the same steps Repair Analyze Clicks and Rumble and Repair Fix Clicks If the file contains more than one song you may wish to split the file into multiple files one for each song or track To do this see Marking and Extracting Tracks What if want to try it again with different settings After the repair save the file into a different filename eg originalname_FIXED wav Then open the original file
7. However if the click was unusually long so that more audio had to be reconstructed it is sometimes possible to hear a slight bump where the click was See also Repairing Rumble Repairing Hiss Coyote Electronics Inc 23 Operation Once the analysis has been done the rumble very low frequencies may now be repaired Click on Repair Fix Rumble or type Ctrl U The rumble will be removed This may take some time depending on how large the audio file is While rumble repair is going on a dialog box will indicate the progress The dialog box has a Cancel button which may be used to cancel the rumble repair If you do so the file will have a discontinuity in it where the rumble repair left off and therefore cannot be used It will be necessary to open the original file again analyze it and repair the rumble again The cutoff frequency selected using the Options Rumble Filter menu item determines which components of the audio get removed or reduced in amplitude Roughly speaking frequencies below the cutoff frequency get reduced or eliminated while frequencies above the cutoff frequency are not affected Make your selection before applying the rumble repair Once rumble repair has completed the Repair Fix Rumble menu item gets greyed out Theory of Operation A 4 pole Butterworth high pass filter is applied to the entire file The cutoff frequency is selected using the Options Rumble Filter menu item
8. Mechanic is often used repetitively on several files at once and because the audio repair process can take a considerable amount of time to run it is possible to operate Groove Mechanic non interactively from a command line prompt In a single command line operation you can cause Groove Mechanic to open a file analyze it repair it save it and exit By putting multiple commands into a batch BAT file and starting the batch file it is possible to run Groove Mechanic many times on different files all with one command Syntax The syntax for invoking Groove Mechanic from the command line is one of the following 1 Groovemech lt input_filename gt 2 Groovemech lt input _filename gt lt options gt 3 Groovemech lt input_filename gt lt output_filename gt 4 Groovemech lt input _filename gt lt output_filename gt lt options gt where lt options gt can be one or more of the following separated by one or more spaces C r h n q Using c results in click repair taking place Using r results in rumble repair Using h results in hiss repair Using n results in amplitude normalization If any of the previous are specified an analysis phase is automatically run first Using q results in the program quitting after the specified repair has occurred If syntax 1 is used Groove Mechanic opens the file and then waits for the user to issue commands as usual If syntax 2 is used Groove Mechanic opens the file
9. are satisfied with the recording level start the audio playing from the beginning and start Groove Mechanic s capture process by using the Capture Start Recording menu item or just pressing the spacebar When the recording is complete stop it by using the Capture Stop Recording menu item or press Shift F5 The main window now changes back to the Audio Timeline view After the Analysis phase completes you will find out the maximum amplitude of the file you just recorded If it is 100 you have clipping distortion in the file and you should re record with the volume turned down If it is lower than about 90 you can later apply Amplitude Normalization to restore it to a higher level If the maximum amplitude is very low you should probably re record rather than relying on the Amplitude Normalization Next Steps Coyote Electronics Inc 8 Tye vith lio from disk Start Groove Mechanic click on File Open and locate your audio file It must be in WAV format and should have a sample rate of 44100 Hz and a resolution of 16 bits since this is the standard for audio CDs Before you hit the Open button decide whether you want Groove Mechanic to apply all repairs immediately to the file you are about to open The advantage of this approach is e It is faster since Groove Mechanic need not generate a copy of the WAV file e It uses less disk space since no temporary copy is used The disadvantage is that the file gets overw
10. at least one of the following has occurred Analysis has been performed or The file was opened with the Apply Changes Immediately to This File box checked AND the audio timeline shows the audio in blue that is you did not cancel the normal file scan when you opened the file Theory of Operation A constant gain factor is applied to the entire file The gain factor is calculated such that the largest amplitude portion of the audio file will end up at the specified level eg 95 of full scale See Also Repairing Clicks Repairing Rumble Repairing Hiss Coyote Electronics Inc 26 In many cases a single audio file will consist of more than one song This would be the case for example if you captured an entire side of an LP into a single file There are many advantages to working with an entire LP side or even both sides in one file including consistency of the repairs that are applied Eventually however you will probably want to split the songs into individual files so that they may be burned individually onto a CD The advantage of doing so of course is that you can then later use your CD player s track controls to select which song to play That is the songs appear as separate tracks on the CD rather than one big track Doing this splitting is a two step process e Mark the tracks thus telling Groove Mechanic where each song track starts e Extract the tracks into individual files Tra
11. file you had to immediately specify what file the modifications were to be written to This file by default had the same name as the original but with _fixed appended As of version 2 5 Groove Mechanic has eliminated this behaviour to be more consistent with other Windows based programs and thus reduce some confusion See Also Temporary Files Coyote Electronics Inc 15 Normally when you open an audio file and begin working with it Groove Mechanic creates a temporary file in which it writes the modified audio Then later on if you Save the file the temporary file gets copied to the original file and the temporary copy is deleted Since the audio files you will be working with may be extremely large you should be aware of the fact that this temporary files exists There are two considerations available disk space and undeleted temporary files Available Disk Space for Temporary File Groove Mechanic creates the temporary file in your default temporary folder The exact location of this folder varies depending on your operating system and whether you have instructed Windows to put it somewhere other than the default location Usually the temporary folder is either C Windows Temp or C Temp the disk letter might be different if you installed Windows to some drive other than C If you are not sure where the temporary folder is you can check to see what the value of the environment variable TEMP is To do t
12. may also instruct Groove Mechanic to find thumps which are loud sounds caused by scratches that are so big they actually obliterate the music for a millisecond or more These are typically scratches that cut through several grooves and thus they repeat every 1 8 seconds for 33 1 3 rpm records Their audio signature is unusual but not really unique some percussive instruments make a similar sound Because of this and the fact that they normally occur quite infrequently Groove Mechanic requires you to tell it approximately where the thump occurs Position the playback cursor a second or two before the thump by left clicking the mouse at the appropriate spot in the Audio Timeline and click on the Repair Force Thump Detection at Cursor menu item Groove Mechanic will inform you as to whether or not it found a thump near that location it will actually search for 5 seconds following the playback cursor Generally it is best to first do click detection and repair and then if there are thumps that did not get corrected use the manual thump detection If a thump is detected use the Repair Fix Clicks and Thumps menu item to fix it You can do this repetitively find and fix a thump then move on to the next thump if any See Also Analysis Options Repairing Overview Coyote Electronics Inc 19 Options If you have not already done so please read the Analysis Overview The options relevant to the analysis ph
13. platform and operating system it is running on See Also Registration Coyote Electronics Inc 50 Most professional Windows programs support keyboard mnemonics and Groove Mechanic is no exception Keyboard mnemonics give you a way of accessing menu items without using a mouse at all Some people find them much faster to use once you learn the mnemonic keys for the commands that they use most frequently Keyboard mnemonics are accessed by first pressing and releasing the Alt key You will see that menu items all have one letter underlined If you press the key corresponding to an underlined letter that menu will drop down Then each of the items under that menu will have an underlined letter If you press that letter key that menu item will be activated As an example Press and release the Alt key then press F The File menu will drop down Now press O the letter O This produces the same result as if you had clicked on File then Open with the mouse Most dialog box buttons also have mnemonics which can be used in the same way However because of the way keyboard focus works in Windows you must generally press and hold the Alt key while you press the letter corresponding to the button you wish to activate See Also Keyboard Accelerators Coyote Electronics Inc 51 Keyboard Accelerators Keyboard accelerators are similar to keyboard mnemonics but accelerators provide single character access to me
14. playback it starts from where you last stopped Coyote Electronics Inc 47 Track Background Contrast Use this to set the contrast between the two colours used to indicate adjacent tracks in the audio timeline If the value is set to zero the two colours will be identical light grey At maximum 99 the colours will be very distinct approximately pink and purple Higher values can be used but are not very useful Coyote Electronics Inc 48 The Help Menu can be accessed by clicking on Help or by pressing the Alt key followed by H Table of Contents Starts the Windows HTML Help engine to display the Table of Contents in a separate window Index Starts the Windows HTML Help engine to display the help index in a separate window Search Starts the Windows HTML Help engine to display the searchable help in a separate window Enter Permanent Registration Code Brings up a dialog box in which you can enter your registration code This consists of TWO parts the key 8 digits and or letters as well as the user info which is normally your name and city or country After entering these you must shut down Groove Mechanic and restart it in order that the registration takes effect Visit Groove Mechanic Homepage Starts your default browser and directs it to http www coyotes bc ca Coyote Electronics Inc 49 About Groove Mechanic Displays the version of Groove Mechanic as well as the
15. write the repaired files back into the original folder or else the for command will find them and will start Groove Mechanic to process them which will in turn create more files and so on The program name c PROGRA 1 coyote groovemech exe cannot have quotes around it so it cannot have spaces in it and therefore the 8 3 form of the Program Files folder name PROGRA 1 should be used If you create a batch file BAT that runs these commands you should be aware that on some versions of Windows you may need to replace the percent signs shown with double percent signs ie Error Handling Because the whole point of command line operation is to run non interactively Groove Mechanic tries to handle simple errors by itself without prompting for assistance In the case of for instance not being able to open the input file because it does not exist Groove Mechanic will just exit And then if it was started by a batch file the next command in the batch file will be executed Log In command line mode Groove Mechanic writes to a log file so that you can come back after an overnight run say and find out what happened to all of the files you told Groove Mechanic to process The name of the log file is GrooveMech log and it will be written to the default directory this is usually the directory that the command line was defaulted to when Groove Mechanic was started The log file contains major events and the date and
16. Album Track Genre As in MP3 section above External Encoder In the case that you wish to use an encoder program other than LAME or OGGENC you can check the External Encoder radio button then enter the Command Line necessary to run the encoder This ability is provided as a convenience but it is NOT officially supported by Coyote Typically you would enter the name of the encoder program followed by the characters s which Groove Mechanic will translate into the track file name and any option flags needed eg to set the bitrate or quality If the encoder program name including its path has any spaces you should enclose the whole path and name in quotes Also if the track file name has any spaces in it you should enclose the s in quotes So an example command line would be C Program Files SomeEncoder exe s b160 See Also http www vorbis com OGG home page http www mp3dev org mp3 LAME home page http www winamp com _ WinAmp home page reference for Genres Coyote Electronics Inc 34 ac GrooveMech E My Music WAYs GM File cd Audition De Tracks Devic The File Menu can be accessed by clicking on File or by pressing the Alt key followed by F Open WAV Brings up a dialog box in which you can browse to the file you wish to open This command will be greyed out while you are auditioning the current file Save Saves the current file modifications overwriting the original Th
17. Click on Tracks View List or type Ctrl V This will bring up a dialog box that shows the list of the tracks You may use the Clear List button to delete the entire track list re initializing it to consider the entire file as one big track again See Also Extracting Tracks Coyote Electronics Inc 29 To extract one or all tracks click on Tracks Extract Track to File or type Ctrl E This will bring up a dialog box by which you can control how the track s are extracted Track to Extract If you are extracting to WAV files only the top portion is of relevance Track number Enter the number of the track you wish to extract into a file the first track is number 1 Extract All Tracks Check this box if you wish to extract all the tracks at once into separate files Eliminate lead in Check this box if you want Groove Mechanic to try to eliminate any small amount of silence which may remain between the start of the track as marked and the actual start of the song If Groove Mechanic cannot locate the start of the song it will just extract the track as marked and will inform you of this Fadeout at end Check this box if you want Groove Mechanic to gradually reduce the gain to zero in the last few seconds of the extracted track This is especially useful if there is still some background noise at the end of the song If this box is checked you can enter the value of the Fadeout duration seconds Then clic
18. General Preferences Enable record level meter during recording If checked Groove Mechanic leaves the record levels running while the capture is going on This allows you to constantly see the recording level and ensure it does not go too low or high However on slower CPUs 200 MHz and below the added computation due to this may interfere the capture process resulting in skips in the sound If this happens uncheck this box and perform the capture again Groove Mechanic should check if it is the default WAV denoiser Normally Groove Mechanic checks each time it starts to ensure it is registered as your default denoising program for WAV files and if it is not prompts you to let it re establish itself as the default denoiser If you do not wish this to happen clear this box What does default denoiser mean If you start Windows Explorer and right click on a WAV file you will see Groove Mechanic listed on the context menu If you then click on Groove Mechanic Groove Mechanic will start and will immediately open that file The exact appearance of this context menu varies slightly on different operating systems Subtract 5 second from Mark time If this option is checked and you mark a track boundary by clicking on the Mark button or the corresponding menu item then Groove Mechanic will subtract half a second from the time at which you actually hit the button This allows you to listen for the start
19. Groove Mechanic 2 5a User s Manual Coyote Electronics I nc 11174 Canyon Cres Delta BC Canada V4E 2R8 Revision B November 2002 Coyote Electronics Inc 1 Table Of Contents OU WA IA A wba ae db 3 Hardware SUP dt Es 5 Groove Mechanic s User Interface ooocccoocccccnoncccnnnncnnnnnnnnnnnrnnnrrrnnnrrrrr rr rrrrrnrnnns 7 Typical Usage with audio from external device ooooccoccccccncccnnnnnnnnnnrannnnrrnnnnrns 8 Typical Usage with audio from disk 0 cece eect nr eee nr rnrrnnnnnrns 9 Typical Usage continued cee cece cece eee e cnn nr eee ee teen rr rr rr 10 REGISEFAEIONN iii ra a A A CERN UMass A Aa 12 Working With Files iia da aaa 14 Opening and Saving Files occcccocccccncccconnnnncncccn nn cnet eee sees nett rr 15 TEMPORARY lia aa 16 Playing and Recording Audio ooccoccccccnccconnccronncnnnnnnnrnrnnrnrrnrnnrrrrnnrrrrnrrrrrrrnnnens 18 Analysis OVGEMVICW otc A Aa 19 Analysis OPTIONS Rival mes etek A Id 20 Repair OVENVICW si A A Sa 22 Repairing Clik e aso ene doo de 23 Repairing RUMBA ein hie 24 REPalFING VAISS A Soe toad ed elt 25 Normalizing AMplitude seingir cece eee cee eee ne ne nee nett Due pia eai 26 Tracks OVEIVIOW rinii ieri i A eee ek nie a 27 Marking and Viewing Tracks ccccec cece eee eee eee eee e eee ee eee rr rr rtrt rr 28 Extracting Tracks mica E dde ave boa 30 Track Extraction to Compressed File ooooocccccocccccoccccnnnncnnnnnnnnr nara nr rr r nr rnrrrrnnnns 32
20. again adjust the settings Click Detection for example repair again and save as yet another file Then you can play all three version of the file by starting your favourite WAV file player or by starting up 3 copies of Groove Mechanic and opening a different file in each copy What if don t like the results and just want to revert to the original You can do this as long as you did not specify Apply changes immediately to this file when you opened the file J ust open the original file again You will be prompted for whether to save the current file answer No Coyote Electronics Inc 11 Trial Evaluation You can use Groove Mechanic for free for a period of 15 days with no restrictions on functionality During this period you will be able to get a good idea of Groove Mechanic s capabilities and performance and decide whether Groove Mechanic is right for you The trial evaluation period begins at the time when you first run Groove Mechanic and ends 15 days after that After the evaluation period you can still use Groove Mechanic but its declicking capability will be limited to the first two minutes of audio in each file Registering and Purchasing Once you have decided to purchase Groove Mechanic you may do so in one of two ways e via the web using your credit card e via conventional mail using a cheque or money order To register over the web point your browser to www coyotes bc ca reg htm and follow the i
21. ase mostly deal with click detection The Click Detection parameters can be accessed by clicking on Options Click Detection Click Detection Parameters EN Large clicks only Ez Medium to large clicks All clicks Minimum Click Amplitude This determines the minimum size of a click for it to be detected This is a measure of its peakiness in the frequency domain and the value can range from 5 0 to 9 9 Clicking on one of the Presets will set the value as follows Large Clicks Only 9 9 Medium to large clicks 7 5 All clicks 6 0 The value can also be adjusted up or down using the spin control the up and down arrows Detect Pops Wide Clicks If this is checked Groove Mechanic will in addition to the normal search for clicks attempt to find clicks which are more than 1 2 ms long These sometimes occur on records that have visible scratches on them If your LP is in fairly good shape you may wish to keep this unchecked because it increases the likelihood that Groove Mechanic will interpret an actual sound such as a percussive hit as a click and attempt to repair it Ensure clicks are not due to voice This is checked by default Some speaking voices mostly male and some instruments such as saxophone and bass trombone produce waveforms that very closely resemble a repetitive sequence of clicks By checking this box Groove Mechanic will examine the clicks carefully to determine if they are part of a repetitive seq
22. atus bar displays various characteristics of the currently open file The main display area when set for Audio Timeline view shows a representation of the entire audio file A time axis is shown at the bottom The volume level of the audio at each instant of time is shown in blue for both the left and right channels Any clicks that have been detected and not yet repaired show up as vertical red lines There is a Playback Cursor which shows up as a vertical line in a contrasting colour This represents the point in the file at which audio playback is occurring or is going to occur The Playback Cursor can be set by left clicking with your mouse in the main display area Using the Mouse The mouse can be used to access all menu items all toolbar buttons and the Playback Cursor In addition you can use the mouse to drag and drop a file from Windows Explorer into Groove Mechanic which then behaves the same as if you had just done a File Open and selected that file If you right click the mouse in the main display area it will bring up the Repair menu right where the mouse is Using the Keyboard The keyboard can be used to access all menu items See Keyboard Mnemonics for details Coyote Electronics Inc 7 Typical Usage with audio from external device Start Groove Mechanic click on ER Select Save File and select a directory folder and file name for the new audio file your are going to record It wil
23. ave been performed on the audio file Click on Tracks AutoDetect You will be presented with a dialog box in which to enter the parameters that Groove Mechanic will use for automatically finding the track boundaries Minimum song duration Use a value that is somewhat less than the actual length in seconds of the shortest song in the file If this value is too small Groove Mechanic may interpret short pauses within a song as being the beginning of the next track If this value is too large Groove Mechanic may interpret two consecutive songs as being one track Minimum silence duration Use a value that is somewhat less than the actual length in seconds of the shortest pause between songs The exact definition of pause is somewhat nebulous since usually the space between songs is filled by various sounds fadeout of the previous song residual background noise pre echo of the upcoming song The default value is 2 5 seconds If the value is too low Groove Mechanic may interpret very short pauses within songs as being the start of a new track If the value is too high Groove Mechanic may interpret two consecutive songs as being one track Threshold of silence This value will likely need to be determined by experimentation although the default value of 25 dB is suitable for many LPs If the value is too low ie a large negative value Groove Mechanic may interpret consecutive songs as being one track If the value is too hig
24. cks may be extracted into WAV files which can be burned directly onto audio CDs or they may be extracted into MP3 files or OGG files MP3 and OGG are both lossy compressed formats which means that they sacrifice some sound quality in order to make the file smaller sometimes MUCH smaller Tip since Groove Mechanic initially considers the entire file to be just one track the track extraction function can be used without the marking step to simply compress an entire WAV file that is to MP3 encode it or OGG encode it MP3 or OGG encoded files on a CD cannot be played by a standard audio CD player but many new CD players and even DVD players now are able to play CDs with MP3 files on them As each track is marked or unmarked Groove Mechanic s Audio Timeline display changes to indicate where the track boundaries are The background colour alternates between two light colours Each change in colour is the start of a new track Marking and viewing the tracks Extracting the tracks See also www vorbis com The OGG Vorbis home page Coyote Electronics Inc 27 If you have not already done so please see the Overview Track marking may be done automatically by Groove Mechanic manually by you or a combination of the two It is usually best to do the automatic marking first then use manual marking only if there are some errors in the automatic marking Automatic Marking Once all the required repairs h
25. e to allow the existence of both the original and a copy to which the changes are made you can tell Groove Mechanic to apply all changes directly and immediately to the original file To do this check the box Apply changes immediately to this file when you open a file But be aware that it will NOT be possible to recover the unmodified original file Warning when Saving Files By default Groove Mechanic will ask for confirmation when you save a file eg by using the File Save menu item This is a precaution to avoid accidentally losing the original file However if you wish to you can disable this warning See General Preferences for details File Scan when a File is Opened In previous versions of Groove Mechanic the WAV file was not scanned until the Analysis was done This was primarily to avoid a long wait each time you open a file However most PCs these days have disks that are fast enough that the file scan should take no more than a few seconds per song and so Groove Mechanic now scans the file as soon as the file is opened However should you wish to avoid the delay involved in this operation you can press the Cancel button while the scan is proceeding If you do so the Timeline view will be blank and the Max Amplitude will not be displayed However once you do the Analysis the timeline and max amplitude will then be displayed What Happened to the _ fixed file In previous versions of Groove Mechanic when you opened a
26. ed For more details see the LAME website Coyote Electronics Inc 32 Artist This and the remaining fields allow you to specify ID3 fields which get written into the MP3 file Most MP3 players recognize 1D3 fields and will display some of them accordingly Normally you would enter the name of the artist in this field Title Normally you would enter the name of the song in this field Year Normally you would enter the year the album was first released Album Normally you would enter the name of the album in this field Track Normally you would enter the track number This is not necessarily the same as Groove Mechanic s track number for instance in a file recorded from the second side of an LP the first song would be Track 1 to Groove Mechanic but would be a larger number with respect to the entire album Genre You can pick one of many predefined genres Numbers 0 through 79 Blues through Hard Rock are industry standard values Numbers 80 through 125 are WinAmp defined values Numbers 126 through 147 are LAME defined OGG Parameters CA Sea Dream Time and a Word 1 Classic Rock e You must check the Built in OGG Encoder radio button and fill in the Bitrate field All of the remaining fields are optional Bitrate As in MP3 section above Coyote Electronics Inc 33 Var Bitrate OGG encoding always uses variable bitrate so this box is always checked Artist Title Year
27. es into audio files on your computer e analyze the quality of the sound remove the clicks and pops that often plague older LPs remove broadband noise eg tape hiss remove the rumble that is sometimes apparent in both new and old LPs normalize adjust the amplitude of the file to maximize the dynamic range work on an entire LP side at a time and then split it into individual songs or tracks The output from Groove Mechanic is WAV files which are accepted by nearly every CD recording software package The resulting CDs can be played back on any audio or computer CD player Groove Mechanic can also produce MP3 or OGG files Both of these are compressed formats which are commonly used to pack many more songs onto a CD or hard disk than would otherwise be possible If you have already recorded your audio into files on your hard disk these can be used as inputs to Groove Mechanic These MUST be WAV files If they are in some other format there are lots of shareware tools available that can be used to convert them into WAV format Coyote Electronics Inc 3 System Requirements Groove It MAY Mechanic runs under the following Microsoft operating systems Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows NT 4 0 Windows 2000 Windows ME Windows XP also run under Linux using the WINE emulator although this capability is not officially supported by Coyote For pointers on using Groove Mechanic with WINE see Appendix B
28. ficially supported users have reported some success in using Groove Mechanic under Linux with the WINE emulator Try the following Install Groove Mechanic under Windows Boot to Linux RedHat 7 2 seems to work but only the latest CVS version of WINE as of January 2002 works with Groove Mechanic a bug in mmio dll which prevented dirty buffers from being written to disk was just patched in December 2001 Remove any WINE packages which may have come with the distribution Download the latest CVS build http www winehg org and build Properly configure WINE so that it can play MSHEARTS etc From a Linux shell cd to the Groove Mechanic directory e g C Prog Coy Gro Type wine managed GrooveMech exe Coyote Electronics Inc 59
29. g the characteristics of the hiss the Noise Base Groove Mechanic examines each portion of the audio to see by how much it exceeds the noise base The audio is examined in 32 different bands from very low frequencies to very high frequencies For each band Groove Mechanic reduces the amplitude by an amount that is just enough to put the amplitude at the magnitude it would be if the hiss was not there in the first place See Also Repairing Clicks Repairing Rumble Coyote Electronics Inc 25 Operation If you wish to change the volume level amplitude of the entire file eg to maximize the dynamic range or to make this file roughly the same loudness as others you can apply amplitude normalization To do this click on Repair Normalize Amplitude or type Ctri N then specify the level which you would like the loudest sounds to be at The default value is 95 of full scale which is usually a good value You can use larger up to 100 or smaller values if you so desire While normalization is going on a dialog box will indicate the progress The dialog box has a Cancel button which may be used to cancel the normalization If you do so the file will have a discontinuity in it where the normalization left off and therefore cannot be used It will be necessary to open the original file again analyze it and apply normalization again When Normalization Can Be Performed Amplitude normalization can be performed when
30. grams Accessories Entertainment on later versions of Windows Click on Options Properties and in the Adjust volume for box click the Recording button and ensure the Line box is checked in the lower window Click on OK You should see a window with one or two sections one of which should be labelled Line Ensure the Balance control is set to the midpoint Coyote Electronics Inc 5 Leave the Volume Control application running You will use it while setting the recording levels in Groove Mechanic Note that some sound cards may use their own volume control app rather than the standard Windows one if so please refer to your sound card s software documentation to see how to select the source and adjust the volume Coyote Electronics Inc 6 The Main Window Groove Mechanic s visual interface consists of e A menu bar at the top e A toolbar just below that e The main display area which can display the Audio Timeline view or the Recording Levels view selectable by the tabs near the top of the display area e A status bar at the bottom The menu bar toolbar and status bar are similar to those of most Windows based programs The menu bar can be used to accomplish almost all tasks The toolbar allows quick mouse based access to commonly used functions And if you position the mouse cursor over a toolbar button for a second or two a tooltip will pop up describing the function of that button The st
31. h Groove Mechanic may interpret quiet parts of a song as being the start of a new track Manual Marking You may tell Groove Mechanic the location of the start of a track by clicking on Tracks Mark Track Boundary or typing Ctrl M or by clicking on the Mark button while playing auditioning the audio file By default Groove Mechanic subtracts 0 5 seconds from the actual time at which you issued the command so you can listen for the actual start of the track then quickly hit the Mark button see below and you will most likely get the track start position correctly acks Devices Or 5 Coyote Electronics Inc 28 If you need to adjust one of the track boundaries slightly just mark it again If the new mark is within 5 seconds of the old one Groove Mechanic will replace the old one If you need to delete a track boundary eg if auto detection incorrectly marked a track boundary position the playback cursor near the bad boundary and click on Tracks Delete Boundary Marker or type Ctrl Shift M As long as you were within 15 seconds of the actual location of the track boundary it will be erased To delete a marker you must not be playing the file at the time Viewing the Track List At all times you will see a graphical representation of the tracks in the Audio Timeline indicated by alternating background colours If you wish to you can also see a track list showing the start time and duration of each track
32. he analysis The Rumble field contains the amount of low frequency rumble sounds below about 30 Hz in the file expressed in dB relative to full scale The Fs field displays the sample rate of the file Next you should repair the clicks To do this click on Repair Fix Clicks A dialog box will pop up to indicate the progress of the declicking This may take some time depending on the number of clicks in the file Once click repair has completed the audio timeline will be seen without the red vertical lines and the Clicks field in the status bar will indicate 0 Next you may want to repair the rumble If the rumble value is below about 50 dB it will be inaudible and need not be repaired If it is above 20 dB it should definitely be repaired Between those two values you can decide whether you want to repair it To repair the rumble click on Repair Fix Rumble Again a dialog box will pop up to show the progress through the file If the audio came from a tape deck or other source with considerable background hiss you may now want to repair the hiss To do this first establish the noise base that is tell Groove Mechanic what part of the file contains only noise no audio To Coyote Electronics Inc 10 establish the noise base position the playback cursor at a point in the file where there is hiss but no noise and click on Repair Hiss Get Noise Base at Playback Cursor Now dehiss the file by selecting Repair
33. he recording is going on Also ensure your screen saver is disabled See Also Audition Menu Capture Menu Coyote Electronics Inc 18 XA NAFTA ANA IVErview Before any repairs can be carried out the audio file must be analyzed To do this click on Repair Analyze Clicks and Rumble The analysis performs several functions e Checks for clicks e Measures the average amount of rumble low frequency content e Measures the largest amplitude in the file The click detection is the most involved of the three functions and it takes up most of the time Click detection is primarily a frequency domain operation that is the signal is converted into its frequency components and these components are checked to find the signature of a click Clicks are checked carefully to ensure that they really are artifacts and not just spiky waveforms due to something natural for instance percussion instruments or saxophones which produce a repetitive sequence of spikes Once a click is found Groove Mechanic examines the edges of the click to find exactly where it starts and ends This ensure that the subsequent click repair will only have to replace the minimum possible amount of audio Once the analysis has been carried out the Repair Analyze Clicks and Rumble menu item gets greyed out and analysis cannot be performed again without opening the file again After analysis has been performed and the clicks detected you
34. his under Windows NT or 2000 click on Start Settings Control Panel System Then click on the Advanced tab and the Environment Variables button Look in either the User variables or System Variables list for TEMP In Windows 95 or 98 start a command prompt Start Programs MS DOS Prompt and type set All of your environment variables will be listed one of them should be TEMP The important point is that the disk that contains the temporary folder MUST have enough free space to hold a copy of the file you are working with If it does not you have two options e Move the temporary folder to a different drive by changing the TEMP environment variable and rebooting Windows e Open the audio file without a temporary file by checking the Apply changes immediately to this file box Undeleted Temporary Files If Groove Mechanic crashes never happens or your PC crashes Groove Mechanic will not get a chance to delete the temporary file With most programs this is not a big deal and in fact your temporary folder is probably littered with undeleted temporary files However Groove Mechanic normally deals with very large files so having a large unusable temporary file sitting around wasting disk space is not desirable If you suspect that a temporary file did not get deleted use Windows Explorer to look at your temporary folder If there is a file named GrvXXXXX tmp where XXXXX is a 5 digit number and Groove Mechanic is not c
35. is Repair clicks Listen to the result and if there are large thumps remaining which may not have been detected due to reasons explained earlier then o Force detection of a thump then repair that thump o Repeat if more thumps are still present Repair rumble if needed Repair hiss if needed Re open the file to re detect the maximum amplitude which may now have changed then perform Amplitude Normalization Why does Groove Mechanic detect more clicks if repair clicks then re open and re analyze the repaired file Often a small click will be hidden by the presence of a large click nearby When the large click is repaired the small one then becomes audible so Groove Mechanic detects it Sometimes you can get a minor improvement by processing a file twice sometimes even three times but normally the first pass accomplishes 99 9 of the possible improvement Why do I hear a 2 second gap between songs when listen to the CD recorded CD players will pause for 2 seconds at the start of each track if the CD was recorded in track at once mode You can avoid this by recording the CD in disc at once mode but not all CD recorders and CD burning software packages support this mode Why don t you add this great feature I ll consider it Coyote Electronics is always looking for ways to improve Groove Mechanic and many of the new features and enhancements made over the past years were suggested by users Coyote E
36. is command will be greyed out until the file has been modified that is until there is something to save Also if the file was opened with the Apply changes immediately to this file box checked the Save command will be greyed out since any file changes are immediately saved Save As Brings up a dialog box in which you can specify the name of a file to save the modified audio to This command will be greyed out until the file has been modified that is until there is something to save Also if the file was opened with the Apply changes immediately to this file box checked the Save As command will be greyed out Windows Volume Control Starts the Windows Volume Control application SndVol32 Most sound cards use this to control the volume of the Line In input as well as various other parameters related to recording and playing sound Coyote Electronics Inc 35 Exit Exits Groove Mechanic If you have modified the audio file but have not yet saved your changes you will be prompted for whether to save or discard the changes or cancel the exit If you have marked tracks but have not yet extracted them you will be prompted for whether to cancel the exit See Also Working with Files Setting Sound Levels Coyote Electronics Inc 36 aa Save File Ctrl Shift S Reset Peak Hold Ctrl D Start Recording Space Ctl R Stop Recording Shift F5 The Capture Menu can be accessed by clicking o
37. k OK You will be presented with a dialog box in which to specify the name of the file into which the track will be written Then track extraction will proceed While it is doing so a dialog box will indicate the progress Coyote Electronics Inc 30 See Also Track Extraction to Compressed File Coyote Electronics Inc z351 If you have not already done so please read Track Extraction If you want to extract a track into a compressed file MP3 or OGG encoded then you need to proceed through the instructions given in the Track Extraction section then fill in some MP3 specific or OGG specific fields described below MP3 Parameters 2o weet Dreams Time and a Word 1 Classic Rock x You must select the Built in MP3 Encoder radio button and the Bitrate field All of the remaining fields are optional Bitrate The bit rate in Kbits second of the resulting MP3 file Larger values sound better but result in larger files Values of 160 and higher are usually indistinguishable from the original uncompressed sound Var Bitrate If checked variable bitrate mode will be used In this mode the exact bitrate varies somewhat based on the instantaneous complexity of the audio In general this results in better audio quality for the same size of file Most MP3 players can play variable bitrate files R3 Mix If checked needs Var Bitrate to be checked first the super high quality R3Mix mode is enabl
38. l be in WAV format and will have a sample rate of 44100 Hz and a resolution of 16 bits If your sound card supports multiple input sources most do the Recording Source Selection dialog box will appear Choose the sound card input that your external audio equipment is connected to normally this will be the Line In jack and click OK Another dialog box will then tell you have much room you have on your disk for recording the file in terms of minutes and seconds Also if you have a screen saver enabled it will warn you to disable the screen saver because if the screen saver activates during capture it could result in missing chunks of audio The Groove Mechanic main window will then change to the Record Levels view Now you should start your audio source LP or tape deck playing preferably in the loudest part of the audio Check that the coloured bars extend up into the 6 dB to 3 dB range They can go higher than that but if they hit O dB the file will have clipping distortion in it which may be hard to remove If the record levels never go above 12 dB or so you should increase the audio level You may be able to do this using either the Windows Volume Control application see File Menu for details or by increasing the volume level on your external audio equipment If you make a change to the audio levels you may wish to reset the peak hold feature of the bar graph by using the Capture Reset Peak Hold menu item When you
39. lectronics Inc 56 Technical port If you have a problem using Groove Mechanic please first try to resolve it by looking in this help file under the relevant usage section Working with Files Analysis Repairing Track Marking and Splitting or menu reference File Capture Audition Repair Tracks Devices or Options If you cannot find the information to resolve your problem next check the Answers to Common Questions If there is still not enough information provided to resolve your problem please contact Coyote Electronics Technical Support by e mailing info coyotes bc ca We will respond to you promptly usually within a day and ensure that your problem gets resolved You may also wish to visit the Coyote Electronics website http www coyotes bc ca to see if there is a newer release of the software the help file or the Frequently Asked Questions on the website Coyote Electronics Inc 57 Perform atic Working with audio files places great demand on your CPU and disk The following are some tips to ensure that processing can run as fast as possible with minimal problems Ensure you have enough free disk space Audio files can be very large eg a 20 minute LP side requires about 212 MB and usually there are two copies of the file that is being worked on the original plus a temporary file into which all repairs are made Please ensure that you have enough free space to accommodate this If not
40. n Capture or by pressing the Alt key followed by C Select Save File Brings up a dialog box in which you can specify the name of a file to write the captured recorded audio into If the file exists you will be prompted for whether to overwrite it This command will be greyed out while you are auditioning the current file Reset Peak Hold Resets the peak hold function of the recording level meter Use this if for instance you have made a change to the sound card s volume level and you wish to re establish the maximum amplitude of the audio Start Recording Starts capture into the selected save file Stop Recording Terminates the capture and changes the main window back to the Audio Timeline view See Also Working with Files Playing and Recording Coyote Electronics Inc 37 Tusi WAVE 1 IT AA Tracks Devices T The Audition Menu can be accessed by clicking on Audition or by pressing the Alt key followed by A Play From Cursor Starts playback of the audio file at the location of the Playback Cursor playing via the sound device selected in the Devices menu While playing several other menu items including File Open Capture Select and the Repair menu will be greyed out Once you stop playing those menus will become enabled again Play Up To Cursor Starts playback of the audio file at a position 5 seconds prior to the Playback Cursor Playback stops when it reaches the Playback Cur
41. nalysis Overview for details Fix Clicks and Thumps Repairs all of the detected clicks and thumps See Click Repair for details Fix Rumble Reduces low frequency rumble See Rumble Repair for details Get Noise Base at Playback Cursor Tells Groove Mechanic that the audio immediately following the playback cursor contains background noise only and no actual music See Hiss Repair for details Get Noise Base at End of File Tells Groove Mechanic that the audio in the last few seconds of the file contains background noise only and no actual music See Hiss Repair for details Coyote Electronics Inc 40 Fix Hiss Reduces the hiss using the specified Noise Base See Hiss Repair for details Normalize Amplitude Changes the amplitude of the entire file in order to make the largest signal amplitude become the specified value See Amplitude Normalization for details See Also Repair Overview Coyote Electronics Inc 41 an as Tracks Devices Options 4 4al Auto Detect Ctrl B Mark Track Boundary Ctrl M Delete Boundary Marker Ctrl Shift M View List Ctrl V Extract Track to File Ctrl E Record l The Tracks Menu can be accessed by clicking on Tracks or by pressing the Alt key followed by T Auto Detect Auto detects track boundaries based on parameters that you specify See Marking Tracks for details Mark Track Boundary Tells Groove Mechanic the current playback has just started playing a new song Thi
42. nd restart it Now your name should be displayed in the Registered to field when you first start Groove Mechanic Safeguarding the Registration I nformation Your copy of Groove Mechanic is now registered to you personally and you are entitled to run it on one PC If you later upgrade to a different PC you are free to copy the registration to your new PC as long as you delete it from the old PC Please keep your registration key confidential Also please write down both the registration key and the user info in case you later suffer a failure of your hard disk or some other event that makes retrieval of them impossible However should you find that you have lost the registration information contact Coyote Electronics Inc at info coyotes bc ca and we will be pleased to send them to you again at no charge Coyote Electronics Inc 13 E aan L DrKINQ See the following topics Opening and Saving Files Temporary Files Playing and Recording Coyote Electronics Inc 14 E 8 ing File Groove Mechanic works in a manner familiar to most Windows users you open a file work on it then save it or possibly save to a new file thus preserving the original file However because the files you will typically work on are very large compared to most files there are a few extra features in the file handling that you should be aware of Avoiding a Temporary Copy In the event that you do not have enough disk spac
43. nstructions there You will receive your registration key as soon as your credit card is verified To register by cheque or money order make it payable to Norm Campbell and send it to Coyote Electronics Inc 11174 Canyon Cres Delta BC Canada V4E 2R8 along with e your name e your e mail address e your city and country The cheque must be in the currency of your country The cost of Groove Mechanic is 39 US To convert to your own currency please use the standard rate of exchange Current exchange rates can be found on the web for example at http www xe net ucc http www oanda com convert classic As soon as your cheque is processed Coyote Electronics will send you the registration key Coyote Electronics Inc 12 Entering your Registration Key into Groove Mechanic Once you have received your registration key along with some text called the user info which is usually your name and country you can enter it into Groove Mechanic thus permanently enabling the full functionality When you start Groove Mechanic you may encounter a dialog box asking if you would like to enter the registration key If so answer Yes Otherwise you can get to the same point by clicking on Help Enter Permanent Registration Key Fill in the two boxes Registration Key and User Info with the information you received via e mail then click on OK Permanent Registration Code xl wT ME a E Exit Groove Mechanic a
44. nu functions and so they are slightly faster The accelerators usually consist of the Control key Ctrl plus a letter You must press and hold the Ctrl key while you press and release the letter key In some cases other keys such as Function keys or arrow keys are used as accelerators Groove Mechanic uses the same accelerator keys as most other Windows programs do for the basic operations eg File Open File Save and then adds many more for its other functions In most cases the accelerator is shown in the menu drop down on the right hand side of the menu For instance if you click on File and look at the Open WAV item you will see Ctri O on the right side Ctri O is the accelerator for the File Open function In some cases a command may have more than one keyboard accelerator for compatibility or ease of access and usually only one accelerator is shown in the menu item to avoid cluttering up the menus Here is a complete list of all keyboard accelerators Capture Start Recording F5 Space or Ctrl R Capture Stop Recording Shift F5 Audition Play Ctrl P or Right arrow Audition Stop Left arrow or Down arrow Audition Position to Track Ctrl T Repair Analyze Clicks and Ctri A Rumble Ctri U Ctri H Ctrl V Coyote Electronics Inc 52 Tracks Extract Track to File Ctrl E Help Contents See Also Keyboard Mnemonics Coyote Electronics Inc 53 Because Groove
45. o record from Most sound cards support multiple inputs eg Line In Microphone In CD In and sometimes others and they will record from only the input that is selected You make this selection when you start the Capture Groove Mechanic will examine the sound card that is checked in the Input Devices list will report all of its inputs and will let you specify which input the audio is actually connected to Coyote Electronics Inc 43 The Output Devices are sound cards or subsystems of a sound card which are capable of playing back audio in stereo The device with the check mark beside it will be the one which the sound will be coming out of See Also Playing and Recording Coyote Electronics Inc 44 ces Options Click Detection Rumble Filter Hiss Repair General Preferences The options menu can be accessed by clicking on Options or by pressing the Alt key followed by O Click Detection Bring up a dialog box in which you can specify the parameters for click detection See Analysis Options for details Rumble Filter Brings up a dialog box in which you can specify the cutoff frequency for rumble repair See Repairing Rumble for details Hiss Repair Brings up a dialog box in which you can specify the amount of correction to be applied during hiss repair See Repairing Hiss for details General Preferences Brings up the Preferences dialog box Coyote Electronics Inc 45
46. of a song and as soon as you hear it immediately hit the button Then the start of the track will usually be placed at exactly the right time just BEFORE the song starts Limit maximum recording time to If you check this box you can enter a time in minutes and seconds which represent the longest that Groove Mechanic will capture record before it stops the recording This is useful if you know how long an LP side lasts you can start the capture of the LP then go away and Groove Mechanic will stop by itself Coyote Electronics Inc 46 Disable Save confirmation Normally when you use the File Save menu item to save the file modification back into the original file Groove Mechanic will prompt you to ensure you really want to overwrite the original file If you do not want this confirmation check this box Disable non 44100 Hz warning Normally Groove Mechanic will warn you if you open a file that was not recorded at a sample rate of 44100 Hz because if so the file is probably not compatible with standard audio CDs If you want to disable this warning check this box Stop updates the playback cursor If this button is unchecked then when you stop a playback the cursor jumps back to where it was last set to This is useful if you want to repetitively play the same section of audio However if you want playback to behave as it did in previous versions of Groove Mechanic check this button Then each time you start a
47. ritten when the repairs are done so it is not possible to recover the original unmodified file If you wish to apply all repairs immediately to the original file check the box Apply changes immediately to this file Now click on Open Next steps Coyote Electronics Inc 9 Groove Mechanic will scan the file measuring the amplitude of the signal When it is finished which should be only a few seconds it will display the Audio Timeline view showing the signal in blue If you cancel the file scan the timeline will be blank except for the time scale at the bottom Click on Repair Analyze Clicks and Rumble Groove Mechanic is now searching for clicks and measuring the rumble in the file This may take a few minutes depending on the size of your audio file When the analysis is complete the Audio Timeline window will show a graphical representation of the complete audio file The audio waveform is shown in blue and the clicks are shown as red vertical lines In addition some statistics are now displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the screen 0 00 010 0 20 0 30 0 40 0 30 00 00 Max Ampl 45 Clicks 1370 Rumble 47dB Fs441 00 The Max Ampl gives you the largest audio value that was found in the file as a percentage of full scale Note that large clicks will often make this number higher than you would get due to the audio alone The Clicks field contains the number of clicks found during t
48. s can be selected only while playback audition is underway See Marking Tracks for details Delete Boundary Marker Deletes the track boundary if any within 15 seconds of the Playback Cursor This can be selected only when playback is stopped See Marking Tracks for details View List Brings up a dialog box listing the start times and durations of the currently marked tracks See Marking Tracks for details Extract Track to File Brings up a dialog box in which you specify track extraction parameters then extracts the selected track s to individual audio files See Extracting Tracks for details See Also Tracks Overview Coyote Electronics Inc 42 The Devices Menu can be accessed by clicking on Devices or by pressing the Alt key followed by D The menu is divided into two parts Input Devices and Output Devices The devices listed will be specific to your system and may not resemble the example shown above Most PCs will have only one or two devices listed for each of Input and Output The Input Devices are sound cards or subsystems of a sound card which are capable of recording a 44100 Hz 16 bit stereo audio signal Before doing a Capture operation ensure that the device that you have your turntable of tape deck connected to is the one with the check mark beside it In addition to telling Groove Mechanic which sound card the capture should record from you must also tell it which input of that sound card t
49. sor This is useful for ensuring that the track positions you have marked are correct For example use Position To Track to position the playback cursor at a track mark then use Play Up To Cursor to verify that the end of the previous track sounds correct Rewind Moves the playback cursor towards the beginning of the file Moves slowly at first but gains speed after a few seconds Rewind to Beginning Sets the playback cursor to the start of the file Coyote Electronics Inc 38 Fast Forward Moves the playback cursor towards the end of the file Moves slowly at first but gains speed after a few seconds Fast Fwd to End Sets the playback cursor to the end of the file Stop Stops playback or positioning Position to Track Brings up a dialog box in which you can specify the track number at which to set the playback cursor Subsequent playback will be from this point See Also Playing and Recording Coyote Electronics Inc 39 The Repair Menu can be accessed by clicking on Repair or by pressing the Alt key followed by R Analyze Clicks and Rumble Starts the analysis phase See Analysis Overview for details Force Thump Detection at Cursor Tells Groove Mechanic to search the 5 seconds of audio starting at the playback cursor looking for a thump Use this if click detection has failed to locate what sounds like a very large and obvious defect such as is caused by a large scratch in an LP See A
50. sound card You can however connect a cassette deck directly to your sound card without going through a pre amp Since you will want to make the best quality CDs you can ensure your turntable and cassette deck are in good working order and the turntable is equipped with a good and clean stylus Use a record cleaning kit to get any extraneous dust or lint off your record Clean your tape heads with a tape cleaning kit If the tape deck has been operated for a long time without degaussing de magnetizing you may wish to degauss the heads also If possible place your turntable and cassette deck a few feet away from your PC to avoid pickup of hum Telling Groove Mechanic which Sound Device to Use Use the menu item Devices to select which sound input device to use If you have only one sound card there may only be one tem in the list under Input Devices in which case you do not need to do anything But if there are more than one device listed ensure that you put a check mark beside the one that you have the external audio equipment connected to See Devices Menu for more information Setting Levels To ensure everything is set up correctly put on a record or tape set your preamp to input from the turntable or cassette deck and start Windows Volume Control application This can be done by clicking on File then Start Volume Control or it can be found in your Windows Start menu under Programs Accessories Multimedia or Pro
51. uence and if so will not count them as clicks This works very well most of the time However under some circumstances it may prevent Groove Mechanic from detecting some clicks that really are clicks If you find Coyote Electronics Inc 20 that Groove Mechanic is not detecting some obvious clicks and the sound is not like any of those mentioned above you can uncheck this box re open the file and re analyze it and then Groove Mechanic will likely catch the clicks Don t find clicks that are not audible Groove Mechanic uses psychoacoustic principles to determine which clicks are not audible due to the phenomenon of masking Masking occurs when a sound cannot be heard because there is another loud sound of a similar frequency occurring at the same time If Groove Mechanic thinks that a click is inaudible due to masking it does not count it as a click Under some circumstances this may result in Groove Mechanic not detecting some very small clicks that are just barely audible If you find this happens uncheck the box re open the file and re analyze it See Also Repairing Clicks Coyote Electronics Inc 21 Repair of an audio file may consist of up to four components e Click Repair e Rumble Repair e Hiss Repair e Amplitude Normalization Coyote Electronics Inc 22 Operation Once the analysis has been done and the Audio Timeline window shows the clicks as vertical red lines the clicks may no
52. urrently running you should delete that file Coyote Electronics Inc 16 You may occasionally find a xxxxxx MKC file in the same directory as your WAV files where xxxxxx is the name of a WAV file that Groove Mechanic processed Again if Groove Mechanic is not currently running you may safely delete the file Coyote Electronics Inc 17 Playing Files Using the mouse left click in the Audio Timeline window at the point at which you want the playback to start then press the Play button or use the Audition Play menu item While the file is being played the playback cursor will move along to indicate which part of the file is being played To stop the playback press the Stop button or use the Audition Stop menu item The playback cursor will jump back to the point which you last set it to Recording Files To record audio you must set up your hardware and recording levels see Hardware Setup specify a file to record into using Capture Select Save File then hit the red Record button or use the Capture Start Recording menu item To stop recording hit the red Stop button or use the Capture Stop Recording menu item If you have specified a maximum recording time Groove Mechanic will automatically stop recording when that time limit has been reached See General Preferences To avoid missing any audio data do not use your PC for any compute intensive or disk intensive applications while t
53. w be repaired Click on Repair Fix Clicks and Thumps or type Ctrl C The clicks will all be repaired This may take some time depending on how many clicks there are While click repair is going on a dialog box will indicate the progress The dialog box has a Cancel button which may be used to cancel the click repair If you do so some of the clicks have been repaired and some have not so you will normally need to repair them again In this case the clicks which have already been repaired will be repaired again but this produces exactly the same result as the original repair There are no user adjustable parameters for click repair Once click repair has completed the Repair Fix Clicks and Thumps menu item gets greyed out since there are no longer any clicks to fix The Clicks in the status bar will still show the number of clicks that were detected in the file before the repair However they have now all been repaired as you can verify by listening to the file Theory of Operation Sections of audio that have been identified as clicks are completely erased then reconstructed using the characteristics of the audio sections immediately adjacent to each click before it and after it The reconstruction guarantees that the audio signal will not have discontinuities at the click edges In nearly all cases reconstruction is accurate enough that it is not possible to hear that there was ever an imperfection at all
54. you may need to delete or compress some files or perhaps to install a bigger disk drive Note that using disk compression products such as DriveSpace will not necessarily help as audio files do not compress significantly Defragment your disk Any disk will get fragmented after enough files are created deleted and updated Fragmentation results in much slower disk operation and may result in missing chunks of audio when recording or playing back To defragment your disk refer to your Windows user documentation Most versions of Windows have a built in defragmenter which can be accessed by right clicking on the disk in the Windows Explorer and selecting Properties and or Tools Special considerations for compressed disks If you are using a disk compression product such as DriveSpace your disk access may be slow because the CPU must do a considerable amount of processing for every disk access in order to do the compression and decompression Furthermore since audio files do not compress well the disk compression achieves little benefit Minimize the use of other applications Especially while recording do not run other applications that may use significant amounts of CPU or disk bandwidth Examples e Screensavers e Indexing activities such as is performed at by Microsoft Office at scheduled intervals e Word processors e Other audio applications e Web browsers Coyote Electronics Inc 58 Although this is not of
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