Source: UK 12″ Carry Me vinyl single

Here in semi-official Hunters and Collectors land, we have been fiddling with digitising vinyl.

The first reason is archival. The original tapes for many Hunters and Collectors recordings are either degraded or, even worse, missing. This often makes vinyl one of, if not the, authentic artifact for many recordings.

The second and far more subjective reason is that Hunters on vinyl sounds fantastic. With a lower dynamic range and frequency response than a CD, this should not theoretically be the case, but many fans swear the only way to listen to Hunters is vinyl. This may be an exaggeration, but there is definitely something special about Hunters on vinyl.

In a twisted circle, of course, we now have the technology to copy the ‘sound’ of vinyl accurately enough in digital form for it to sound identical to playing the vinyl. This has been the goal. While we cannot claim studio vinyl rip quality, we have been lovingly putting Record Revirginiser treatment and then putting the best vinyl we have through a few grand worth of quality equipment.

The result? Well, it’s not perfect, but it is as close as we are going to get this side of tens of thousands of bucks. I can hear the warmth from the Rega setup (see the full lineage below), though it’s quite similar on that front to the warmth from Rob’s Yamaha setup.

Anyway, here is a recent vinyl rip from the relatively rare UK Carry Me 12″ vinyl single. The UK Carry Me single is the only release to include the full 6 minutes, 35 second studio version of The Unbeliever.

Punters may know the 4 minute 38 second studio version of The Unbeliever found on the Mutations album (CD or digital form). Fans of this track – I know you are out there – may be amused to know that The Unbeliever only narrowly made it on to Mutations. At the time, Mark viewed it as “too long” and “boring”, we argued it was far too solid to be left off. The eventual resolution was the included cut down version.

Nerdy lineage information:

Elys40 Cartridge
-> Rega RP40 Record Player
-> Rega Fono MM phono pre-amp
-> MOTU (24 bit 96kHz) — set to increase volume (‘trim’) by 3dB.
-> Audacity on PC
-> 24 bit / 96 kHz lossless FLAC
-> Click Repair (DeClick 13; Pitch Protection on, Reverse on, Decrackle off, Automatic All, Method: Wavelet)
-> Audacity to manually remove major clicks and split into tracks
-> 24 bit / 96kHz lossless FLAC