Vinyl recordings - best methods

I have an old Nakamichi cassette deck. It doesn’t come close to touching a DSD128 recording.

Just curious- which deck and when was the last time it was serviced?

I used to maintain a pair of Nak decks for making cassettes for my truck; haven't done that in years and still have the decks knocking about. Both need a serious amount of service (essentially all new rubber parts and some new parts sprinkled through the electronics) in order to come close to their original spec.

It’s a BX-300 that I bought in the late ’80s to make tapes for a custom Alpine and Boston Acoustics system that I put into a Lotus Turbo. It broke once in the mid 90s (the cassette deck that is; the Lotus broke many times) and was repaired and last serviced then with a Factory update to the motor and capstan IIRC.

I’m planning on the same one day. I’ve heard good things about the M2Tech Joplin Mk2 (~$1.6k). I think this is what Michael Fremer uses in his system. In the under $1k category, the RME Babayface Pro has received positive comments.

If I had unlimited funds, I'd go with the Channel D Pure Vinyl software and Seta L or H (depending on your cartridge type). Looks like the ultimate recording system plus you end up with a world class phono stage. I've heard that doing the RIAA in the digital domain is unbeatable for accuracy compared to passive components resulting in digital recordings that sound better than the vinyl. I'm guessing that RIAA in the digital domain also would give you most if not every RIAA option, very useful if you are archiving pre 60s discs.

I did a lot of tries with several combinations. The final satisfactory system is as follows:
- A good turntable with an accurate pitch control if you want to have a duration consistent with the one announced of the LP. Mine is a quartz controlled Hitachi HT-800 (motor only). There is a HT-840 with a plinth and tonearm. Very rare now.
- A cartridge having good specs. Your recording cannot be better than the source. Mine is Benz Micro ACE SL for stereo and Audio-Technica AT-MONO3/ LP for the Mono (my turntable has three arms). This latter must have a load of 100 ohms to prevent harsh sound on DECCA ffrr recordings.
- A good phono pre-ampwith RIAA. Mine is Ray Samuels F117 phono stage. A REAL KILLER better than higly priced phono amps.
- The front end for AD Conversion is the Apogee Duet 2. There is a flaw in this hardware that have a very good sound in the A/D stage; however I have a turn around (If you are interested let me know). If you have more money the Benchmark ADC1 is a very good option.
- The software to capture the flow: IZOTOPE RX5. This software is the top to do the job of declick, denoise, de-hum, de-hiss and more. The Standard edition is OK. The Advanced edition is not required for the job. This software allows also to cut the recording in tracks. The Batch Processing function which allows to concatenate several processing tasks saves a lot of time because you can run these overnight. The declick process is OUTSTANDING; never saw something so performant.