Ripped vinyl sounds crap; how can I fix it?

Hi!

I’m trying to set up a vinyl ripping set-up with the following hardware:

Stanton Arkiv stylus and needle
Technics 1210 MK3D
Allen & Heath XONE 4D
USB cable that came bundled with Allen & Heath XONE 4D
Apple MacBook

I have recorded a sample track (Dennis Ferrer – Red Room) to try this set-up out and I’m, well, not pleased. You can listen to it here:



It sounds a bit flat and tinny. If you download the WAVE from soundcloud and open it in Audacity you’ll see that the waveform (in Waveform view) is very small and flat.

I have recorded the signal without any EQ from the mixer (by using the Pre button on the input source so that the signal is sent straight to the soundcard output right after the pre-amp). I have configured the drivers to output at 24-bit 96khz and Audacity to record at 24-bit 96khz.

Please note that the stylus is absolutely new, only used once so far (when I recorded the track above).

I have tried sending the signal through ”post fader”, adding some gain to it, but it still comes out very flat. Running the Amplify effect on the recording in Audacity only affords me a 2.4 dB adjustment without any clipping.

So, what’s wrong with my set-up?

Thanks!

I have little experience on vinyl ripping, but i know that some recordings were "dynamic range compressed" before put on vinyl to avoid background noise on the low parts and jumps on the needle in the high parts of the track.
Maybe you can try to enhace your recording by apply a dynamic range filter expansion to the track with Sony´s Sound Forge or a similar software.
Some explanation here: [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression"]Dynamic range compression - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Comp._rack_(Supernatural).jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Comp._rack_%28Supernatural%29.jpg/220px-Comp._rack_%28Supernatural%29.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@comm ons/thumb/e/e5/Comp._rack_%28Supernatural%29.jpg/220px-Comp._rack_%28Supernatural%29.jpg[/ame]
Hope it helps..

UPDATE
Ive found this in a "how to rip vinyl" webpage:

Vinyl recorded material suffers from a lack of dynamic range. The Cool Edit software allows you to define an "expansion" algorithm that can expand the dynamic range of the source material where you can actually create a wider dynamic range than the album had to begin with. This is another reason for the -6db initial record level. To expand the music's dynamic range, you need what is called head room to allow you the ability to increase the dynamic range without causing clipping. You will need to experiment with this to find the optimal settings. Generally expansion at 2:1 is over expanded and the default expansion offered is even more, 3:1. I generally run between 1.2:1 to 1.4:1 as a healthy value. You don't need to perform this step but it will add life to your music. There are companders available from MXR, DBx and others that work in the analog domain. I also have a DBx unit which is still connected to my stereo system. For the purpose of expanding albums for CD archiving, I use the digital functions built into the audio editor.

SOURCE:
http://www.cybergrass.com/modules.ph...le=print&sid=4