Album Information:
Artist: Brian Eno
Album: Another Green World
Year: 1975
Label: Island Records ILPS-9351
The Equipment
VPI 16.5 Cleaning Machine
Custom KAB Technics SL-1200 MK2 with the following mods:
- Cardas Tonearm rewire w/aftermarket RCA plate
- KAB Tonearm Fluid Dampener
- Herbie's Way Excellent II 3.7mm mat
KAB Ortofon S30 (new stylus 3/05/2012)
Cambridge 640P preamp
Mogami Interconnects
EMU 0202 USB
Cleaning
1. Light steam / vacuum to collect initial dust layer. Clean VPI pickup tube w/ steam.
2. Apply MoFi Record Wash and scrub w/ MoFi brush for 20 seconds while platter spins. Steam + scrub for another 15 seconds. Vacuum.
3. Steam rinse. Vacuum. Flip record onto second clean cork mat and repeat process.
4. Clean stylus w/ Mr. Clean magic eraser and dry brush with Audioquest brush prior to needledrop to destatic/final dust removal.
Capture
1. Capture entire side in 32bit - 96khz with Adobe Audition 3.0, adjust gain levels on EMU 0202 so that peaks are around -3db to -1db range.
2. Fully manual click and pop removal using Adobe Audition.
3. Run fade-in/fade-out routines, cut sides into individual 32 bit WAV tracks.
4. Run IsotopeRX Advanced for dither down from 32/96 to 24/96 (no dither actually applied, only removes 8 bits of float from recording).
Post-Processing
The entire album was run through my custom autoheal preset in Adobe Audition to remove an insane amount of crackle. Musical transients verified unharmed.
Musical Notes
One of the best albums of all-time (RS: 429) and one of the most important recordings in ambient music. Another Green World is experimental, yet accessible -- a true work of art.
Technical Notes
Vinyl DR: 11
CD DR (Original Masters edition): 11
This was one of the most challenging rips I have ever done. As is normally the case with a tough rip, the difficulty begins with very quiet music. Well, this album is full of it. When I first played the LP on my main speaker system, I thought this LP would be a breeze. After all, it was visually flawless and sounded phenomenal. Yet, when I put the headphones on to post-process, the entire LP was blessed with the most insane amount of crackle I have ever heard. I created a custom Autoheal in Audition to clean up all of it to great effect. I prefer to use this over ClickRepair or DeCrackle in these cases simply because I find those tools to be a little too heavy-handed for very fine crackle. I have included a small 35 second clip along with my release of this rip just to illustrate what I was up against. There are also plenty of clicks and artifacts present on the master tape - I did my best to address those, but some of them are left in because... that's what's there on the CD as well. The same is true of the tape hiss, and I don't use noise reduction. There is some very faint swishing in the waning seconds of the album's final track that I found impossible to remove without harming the music, but it will only be audible on headphones.
In comparing this album with the CD version, I found the original UK vinyl to have a clearer top end primarily, but otherwise dynamically they are very close. The benefits of analog are not as pronounced when it comes to music like this, but they are there. I was mostly interested in doing this album because it's simply never been done by anyone to my knowledge.
Special Note
Big thanks to advsd558 who sent me this LP. Without him, this rip would not have been possible. I will be offering a couple more selections from his collection in the coming weeks.