2. pc-audio
  3. 1015569629

burner with s/pdif RCA or balanced imputs ?

I have a Dell computer with 1.6.Mhz P 4 ,512 Meg ram ,48X speed cd,250 Meg zip drive and a card deluxe sound card and a creative labs sound blaster live value to make the beeps. I want to record My records to cd for the girlfriend . My first question is playing vinyl take the line level output from My preamp to the analog input of the card deluxe this than goes to the hard drive I think . Can I send this back to the card deluxe to be sent out in a S/pdif or balanced format to a burner that will take a balanced or s/pdif imput? Or do I have to use a USB port to output the signal from the computer to the burner ? What is the sound quality of a USB output to a S/pdif or balanced output of the card deluxe ? I also would like to know if I can take the balanced or S/pdif output of My theta jade transport to the digital input of My card deluxe and then take the output of the card deluxe S/pdif or balanced to a burner or does all this stuff have to be done with a USB cable or not, thanks for any help . What kind of burner should I be looking for and try and keep costs in the real world for the burner. I will not be using the cd in the Dell computer as I know the quality of same that is why I want to use external eq. . All the imputs and outputs on the card deluxe are on the back again thank you for any help with this.
lake513
buckingham
333 posts
 
I tried using my computer burner for some stuff and it just wansn't good enough. If you're serious about making copies on CD-R's, get some Mitsui Gold CD-R's and a good CD-R machine to plug into your sound system. Computers are havens for EMI and those budget CD-R drives don't do justice to the original. Since you'll be going from analog to digital, you should look at something with a good A to D converter. Wadia makes an outboard A to D unit, but all cd-recorders come with internal converters... Depends on what kind of quality you're looking to get.
gboren
143 posts
 
I have a card deluxe and I've been copying vinyl with very good results (though certainly not as good as the original vinyl.) In answer to your first question, as you suspect, you will go from your line level out to the analog in on the card deluxe. I assume you have some software to run the thing. You copy directly onto your hard disc, usually into a .wav file. Then, using cdr burning software, you copy onto a cdr in redbook format. You can get decent computer burners for under $200 and they almost always come bundled with the necessary software.

If I understand your second question, while I believe you can copy the digital stream from your Theta to a wav file on your hard drive, you cannot go directly to the cdr for a variety of reasons. But once you have the wav file on the hard disc, you can then copy to the cdr. Of course, if your goal is to duplicate a music cd, why not just put the source in your cd-rom drive and copy directly to the burner using the bundled software?

I know this can be controversial around here, but bits is bits and it won't matter what your transport or cabling is when copying digital to digital.

good luck!
buckingham
333 posts
 
Yes, but let's not forget about jitter and the offset of the inexpensive CD burners and readers.
gboren
143 posts
 
Jitter is only a factor in d/a or a/d conversions. When copying digital to digital, expensive and inexpensive will do the same job.
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