Digitizing Vinyl; Suggestions Please
I have been experimenting with digitizing vinyl and found a not too pricey solution that I think provides very close to equivalent performance to the original vinyl. I bought an RME ADI-2 Pro AD/DA. I am using Vinylstudio which is pretty reasonable and designed for ripping vinyl from a workflow point of view. I am ripping @ 24/352 (aka DXD). Yes the files are big. (5GB for an album)...storage is cheap. My analog front end is a refurbedTechnics SP10 MKII / Basis Vector IV arm / Soundsmith Paua cartridge/ Tom Tutay tube phono..My digital playback is Lumin A1 streaming from Synology NAS. I think you can do an album in about 80 minutes beginning to end. Yes it is a lot of time. |
@tellefsen will check out vinyl studio, thank you, and for the other info- helps me gauge my time, which Im running out of. Recently: I received the Nordost Heimdall double RCA to 1/8" terminator yesterday. Burning it in. This was part of the main plan before I even posted this forum topic. To run a double RCA from the preAmp into the Sony PCM D100 for ADC and recording onto a Mem stick. The Heimdall was expensive, but I can resell it in a couple months without too big a loss $$ (there were none on the used market). But the Heimdall cable seems to be head and shoulders above the others in terms of SQ and without going over $500 for a cable. In a quick test, it sounded much much better than the Belkin. I haven't been impressed with the Sony ADC until now. It just needed better cohorts to increase SQ. I was getting too much "hum/low level distortion" when waiting for the needle to drop. the distortion appears to be constant, eg it doesn't go away after the needle drops. So I reduced the gain in the Chinook tubed phonoAmp from 65 to 60, and reduced the gain in the Calypso tubed PreAmp from 29 toto 22. Made an obvious difference, but not substantial. Eg. I can still here the hum, made I have some RFI or something. Ive cleaned up my electricity as much as possible. I live off-grid, so Im using an "audiophile" :) gas generator for power (rolls eyes) running into the cabin in an open circuit. - To mitigate this, Ive got a Richard Gray Power Co/RGPC Pole Pig, a RGPC 400 Pro conditioner, and a Shunyata Hydra 2. When I daisy-chained these 3 components together, it was overload from my audio gear, even tho Im using low-power Class D DAC and amps. So I removed the Hydra, and it sounded better. But it looks like I should do more tests. Oh, the challenges continue |
Cool, thx @peter_s Ive always found the Benchmark stuff to be really neutral and clean, but the Ayre has a more sublime sound, the nuances and overall balance and musicality being strong points. Can someone help me with this ???? So Im doing practice recordings from vinyl onto the Sony PCM D100 ADC portable recorder, and Im not a musician or sound guy. I want to know the best gain setting to record my vinyl digitalization and for recording in general. Ive read on the web, to use -12dB as a guide. That is also what the Sony manual says. But Ive also seen recs to record up to -6dB. So what is the difference in SQ in recording up to -6dB versus -12dB?? What parameters should I use?? [There is a graphic display on the Sony that I can use to guide the gain setting- here is a link to see the Sony -dB scale: https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/styles/news_large/s3/imagelibrary/s/sony-pcm-d100-03-front-panel-WYj1nMbo2dATSkIPkpA3feOSXzZFh0YV.jpg Different albums/ CDs have different gain as well, so that is another factor. Ive made some test recordings of -12dB and up to -6dB, sometimes a difference in SQ, sometimes not. I understand that the -6/-12dB choice partially depends on the actual recording, as most things do in audio, but what about specifically for vinyl? or in general? |
