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Vinyl conversion to digital - because "ripping" just doesn't sound right.

AnalogSteph

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The funny thing is, fancy turntables even back in the day would go to great lengths to provide maximum isolation to minimize acoustic feedback as much as possible (e.g. subchassis mounting), as it could result in nasty resonance effects e.g. when flooring wasn't the most rigid. (You are also well-advised to open or remove the dust cover.)

I would very much argue that the flaws of subpar playback equipment are not "part of the sound" at all, unless you are nostalgic for that sort of experience. Moreover, the main differences between a top-flight deck and a good midrange one tend to pertain to vibration isolation, while the actual turntable drive and arm may be just as good (e.g. Dual 7xx vs. 6xx series and the like). Hence I would very much suggest ripping in silence, it potentially means you can save a good chunk of money.
 

rdenney

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Cartridges on turntables are microphonic. If the speakers are playing loudly enough, you’ll get acoustic feedback through the cartridge. You might not hear it at the time, because the loudness may mask the effect. The suggestion is that this feedback improves the sound, or is at least characteristic of the medium. That would be a matter of opinion.

Rick “makes needledrops at lower volumes, but yes the speakers are playing” Denney
 

Blumlein 88

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The particular time I became aware one might need to record with sound in fact was a friend with a Sota Star Sapphire, vacuum hold down, and Souther Linear tracking arm. Those isolate the TT from vibrations more than most TT setups you can find. My friend had me show him how to rip his LP's. He said they were awfully good, but just didn't sound the same, not quite. I went over and he was recording in silence assuming the cleanest transfer was the best. I had him turn up his speakers to normal and do a copy. He agreed finally it sounded right upon playback of the digital file.

He didn't believe my explanation. I had him put a disc he didn't care about on the table and set the needle in the groove without the TT spinning. I played a CD at normal volume and recorded the TT again. It was faint, but some of the sound was getting into the recording. I should have checked levels of that vs the signal to confirm it was probably an audible difference, but I didn't. I will note he had a vaccum tube phono stage and perhaps some of the feedback was from the tubes picking up sound. I forget now whether it was a Beveridge or a C-J pre he had at the time. Neither have the tubes exposed.

So either the pickup is faint and inaudible or it is audible and therefore recording with no sound is a different sound vs recording with speakers if you compare the result to listening to an LP itself. The transfer to digital is assuredly cleaner, but is cleaner going to be desired or not?

Actually one could record in silence, play that back while recording only the feedback to the TT. Then see if they could hear a difference in a blind test of the clean digital copy and the clean digital copy with the feedback file mixed into it.
 

gene_stl

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You also can cue the cartridge down and shout at the still LP and hear your voice coming out of the speakers. Not at a high level but audible.

The last time I did that experiment the gear was all vacuum tubes too.:rolleyes:

When I was in junior high school a friend of mine built a "microphone". It consisted of a "tin can" (Steel, orange juice can) with a piece of pretty stout solid copper wire soldered to it and leading to a "crystal or ceramic" phono cartridge , which was mono. The wire went into the cartridge where the stylus would have gone. It worked , not great but we were jr high experimenters. We liked it. We plugged it into a tubed "phono oscillator" that I had built. circa 1964
 
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board

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I also use a Focusrite Scarlet 2i2. My phono preamp is a Mofi Studiophono, so I just run a cable from the output on the phono preamp into the input on the Focusrite (phono on one end of the cable and jack on the other), and then run a USB cable from the Focusrite into my computer.
Before I bought the Mofi I used an NAD PP-4. This one also has a built-in A/D converter, so you run a USB cable directly from the NAD to your computer, although Stereophile tested the NAD PP-3 (an earlier model), and the A/D converter was unfortunately the worst part of the unit, which was why I bought the Focusrite. But I did do a blind test between the two converters and couldn't hear a difference. The NAD PP-4 is otherwise a very accurate phono preamp, although it doesn't have so much gain, which was the main reason for buying the Mofi.
I record in Wavelab, but I've tried recording in Audacity as well.
 

wgb113

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I’ve been using a PS Audio NuWave Phono Converter with USB out to my Mac and using VinylStudio to capture. I do it for convenience sake - to stream around the house to other setups, to load onto my phone for use at work, in the car, or at the gym.

That said, with the recent Apple Music announcements I’ll likely only do it when it’s something not in their library. If it is I’ll be fine with streaming via Airplay around the house and whatever the max ends up being for my iPhone. For the big rig I’ll just play the record.
 

magicscreen

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LPs are just lower fidelity. Maybe it is more enjoyable depending upon one's taste, but the fidelity of the medium isn't that great. Good digital or even mediocre digital these days is higher fidelity.

I am very tired of this fidelity baloney.
Fidelity to what? Nobody knows. May be the original sound engineer does. But, I bet, he has forgotten already.
Digital has better fidelity? Then why it sounds like crap?
Are you suggesting every record, default, has to be crap quality or what?
 

Frgirard

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I am very tired of this fidelity baloney.
Fidelity to what? Nobody knows. May be the original sound engineer does. But, I bet, he has forgotten already.
Digital has better fidelity? Then why it sounds like crap?
Are you suggesting every record, default, has to be crap quality or what?
Fidelity to the piano due to the inconstant pitch of the vinyl.
You cannot reproduce a piano with the vinyl.

Fidelity to the absence of the electronic comb filtering due to the bass in mono with the vinyl.
You cannot have a true and beautiful bass reproduction with the vinyl.

Fidelity due to the decentering of the lp.

The lp is the big Mac of the audio.

If the loudness war cd sound bad against the vinyl is only by a different mastering. The vinyl can not support the loudnesswar prerequisite.

A vinyl ripped in digital has the same sound thant the original.
 

rdenney

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Here was the original question: "Anyone here saving their vinyl disks to digital? What equipment do you use? Anyone just playing their pre-amp output into their motherboard line-inputs?" Asked and answered long ago.

There was no assumption of "fidelity", nor was their any reason to comment on it one way or the other.

Digital does not "sound like crap", or if it does, seek out better equipment or solve the gain structure or whatever problem that is causing it. My digital needledrops sound identical to the original record.

Vinyl is what it is. The fact that so many of us can enjoy deeply satisfying music listening from vinyl records demonstrates that whatever its flaws, they are not serious enough to prevent that. Some are unable to hear through those flaws, and for them there are other options, but most can listen through those weaknesses just fine.

The argument back and forth gets tiresome. It is not necessary to subdue the other side of the debate.

Rick "tired of everything having to be a battle these days" Denney
 

Jim Matthews

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I am very tired of this fidelity baloney.
Fidelity to what? Nobody knows. May be the original sound engineer does. But, I bet, he has forgotten already.
Digital has better fidelity? Then why it sounds like crap?
Are you suggesting every record, default, has to be crap quality or what?
If the original recording was made digitally (and that IS the norm since the Alexis ADAT in 1991), then digital is measurably better.

Preference, however, is an immeasurable matter of taste.

If you're listening to vinyl playback of a digital master, it has added noise from the medium and reduced dynamics (tracking limitations).

A very good analog recording with a clean pressing and top playback gear *might* generate dynamics above 75 dB - from quietest to loudest sounds.

That's well above the noise floor of even inexpensive digital audio and would certainly produce audible noise on playback.

If you're listening to digital reissues of analog recordings, it carries all the necessary compression and volume limiting from the original tape.

These often give rise to the notion that digital recordings are inferior. Most archive copies lose something in translation and analog to digital transfers are no exception.

Modern digital recording techniques and uncompressed playback yield excellent results. Garage bands and symphony orchestras never sounded better than today and at ever falling cost.
 
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Sal1950

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I can't believe how many hours I spent doing needle-drop recordings of my complete LP collection some 14 years back.
Since I got my first premium streaming account at Spotify I haven't listened to a single one
 

Robin L

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I can't believe how many hours I spent doing needle-drop recordings of my complete LP collection some 14 years back.
Since I got my first premium streaming account at Spotify I haven't listened to a single one
I've ripped a few hundred LPs. There's LP artifacts I just can't seem to avoid hearing. I remember getting the mono, all analog LP set of the Beatles, came out 2013 as I recall. Made the transfers very soon after getting the LPs. They all had various forms of nastiness the mono CDs didn't. One of the sides of the White Album was audibly off-center. Of course, there's lots of different transfers of the Beatles, four different analog to digital transfers in two cases. I do not hear this massive gap between the digital versions and the LP versions. The LP versions are always a little worse.

When I play back my needle drops, there's always a touch more distortion right from the start. I always hear it increase as the LP approaches the end of a side. I cannot understand how people don't hear IGD, how they can continue to buy new lps, almost all of which have a digital intermaster, and don't complain about the attendant distortion. In fact, one of the reasons I heap scorn on Michael Fremer is that he doesn't acknowledge the presence of IGD while claiming distortions in CDs that render the recording unlistenable. I really don't see the value of needledrops when a transfer of the tape source to digital is always better than the needledrop of the same. Yes, I used decent equipment, yes it was properly adjusted as regards VTA and overhang. Face it, LPs are distortion machines.
 

rdenney

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I can't believe how many hours I spent doing needle-drop recordings of my complete LP collection some 14 years back.
Since I got my first premium streaming account at Spotify I haven't listened to a single one
I listen to my needledrops in the car all the time. And if the LP is on the shelf upstairs, I'll play it out of the computer on my audio system instead, for convenience.

I don't like paying someone every single month to listen to a recording I already paid good money for.

Fortunately, I can listen through the flaws and not be bothered by them.

Rick "but that wasn't the question of the thread" Denney
 

Sal1950

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Face it, LPs are distortion machines.
AMEN, I've no use for LP's, hoped to be rid of them since the day I heard my first CD
Now I am thank God.
 

Jim Matthews

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I can't believe how many hours I spent doing needle-drop recordings of my complete LP collection some 14 years back.
Since I got my first premium streaming account at Spotify I haven't listened to a single one
Well, I heard a rumor that your beer keg is right next to your throne...
 

audio2design

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I am very tired of this fidelity baloney.
Fidelity to what? Nobody knows. May be the original sound engineer does. But, I bet, he has forgotten already.
Digital has better fidelity? Then why it sounds like crap?
Are you suggesting every record, default, has to be crap quality or what?


If you hear what comes off the microphones and what is being recorded comparing tape and digital you know that the digital is indistinguishable. You cant tell the live and digitized feeds apart. Tape you can tell. It is very close (or can be made that way). Buy you can tell. Vinyl is one step more removed. Now I don't discount that some euphonic aspects could be pleasant even softening of high frequencies can be pleasant and softened bass may stop your amp from being taxed. The increased crosstalk in a poor acoustic environment may help to center the image. It does not change that it is a inferior lossy recording medium.
 

Sal1950

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Fidelity to what? Nobody knows.
Really, are you positive of that?
I can promise you with 100% certainty that the master tape doesn't have any
Snap Crackel or Pops of the rice krispies type.
Doesn't have any of that grinding surface noise that sounds like dragging a rock thru a ditch.
Didn't have all it's bass mono'd till it was prepared for vinyl cutting.
Didn't make the sound of a piano warble with wow and flutter.

Fidelity to the master without all these ugly sounding distortions. ;)
 

MOCKBA

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Anyone here saving their vinyl disks to digital? What equipment do you use? Anyone just playing their pre-amp output into their motherboard line-inputs?
KORG DSDAC10R 1BIT USB DSD is pretty good for the job. It costs around $400 on Amazon. I assume you already have a phone pre-amplifier. Since editing DSD can be complicated, make sure your disks have little scratches and washed before recording.
 

MRC01

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I've ripped a few hundred LPs. There's LP artifacts I just can't seem to avoid hearing. ...
My pet peeve was always increasing distortion near the lead-out (inner groove). Even if your arm is perfectly aligned, there is no way to avoid it as the record is moving past the needle more slowly due to the smaller diameter. Of course this is near the end of each side, which means on many recordings, just as the music is coming to its final climax and you need SNR the most, you are at the point where the LP medium has the worst performance. My second-worst pet peeve is wow/flutter which can be especially noticeable in the decay/sustain on good piano recordings. But I also hear that in some CD reissues from the original analog tapes, so it's not necessarily all coming from the LP.

Anyway, to the OP's question: I recorded about 1,000 records to digital using a phono head amp I built myself from the DACT CT-100 kit, wired directly into a Tascam SS-R1 recorder. I used 44-16 CD quality for most of them, and 48-16 for the special ones (half speed masters, 200 gram, 45 RPM, single sided, etc.). That was on a Thorens TD-318 Mk II turntable with an Ortofon MC-30 Super Mk II cartridge. I'm very happy with the results, they sound like the LPs and when I analyzed the wave files to double-check my work (both on music files, and signals from test LPs), they measure well too.

If you have a high quality sound card in your PC (Asus Xonar DX, ESI Juli@, etc.), you can run the phono head amp directly to the line input and record using Audacity or similar software. I've done this too, with results similar to what I got from the Tascam recorder.
 

MattHooper

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The particular time I became aware one might need to record with sound in fact was a friend with a Sota Star Sapphire, vacuum hold down, and Souther Linear tracking arm. Those isolate the TT from vibrations more than most TT setups you can find. My friend had me show him how to rip his LP's. He said they were awfully good, but just didn't sound the same, not quite. I went over and he was recording in silence assuming the cleanest transfer was the best. I had him turn up his speakers to normal and do a copy. He agreed finally it sounded right upon playback of the digital file.

He didn't believe my explanation. I had him put a disc he didn't care about on the table and set the needle in the groove without the TT spinning. I played a CD at normal volume and recorded the TT again. It was faint, but some of the sound was getting into the recording. I should have checked levels of that vs the signal to confirm it was probably an audible difference, but I didn't. I will note he had a vaccum tube phono stage and perhaps some of the feedback was from the tubes picking up sound. I forget now whether it was a Beveridge or a C-J pre he had at the time. Neither have the tubes exposed.

So either the pickup is faint and inaudible or it is audible and therefore recording with no sound is a different sound vs recording with speakers if you compare the result to listening to an LP itself. The transfer to digital is assuredly cleaner, but is cleaner going to be desired or not?

Actually one could record in silence, play that back while recording only the feedback to the TT. Then see if they could hear a difference in a blind test of the clean digital copy and the clean digital copy with the feedback file mixed into it.

My high mass turntable sits in a separate room well down the hall from my listening room. Good vinyl sounds extremely clean and clear. Your posts make me wonder if it would have sounded different put in the listening room with my speakers.
 
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