CD Recorder Recommendation

[lini]

How did you hook up the hand held recorder? , or is it just a microphone and you stood there the whole time holding it?, which conjures up all sorts of images, lol.

Depends on the particular model. On most of the small ones the line-in is a 3.5 mm stereo jack - in some cases dedicated, in other cases combined (for both (external) mic & line). For example, the aforementioned Sony PCM-M10 and Roland R-05 both have separate 3.5 mm stereo jacks for the line-in and the (external) mic-in.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[xanalog]

I'm going to give the Tascam SS -R1

May I ask why you are wishing to stick with vinyl>FLAC>CDR for your music library?

Since, I think you are saying that your vinyl are already (being?) converted to FLAC (before to *.cda > for burning CDRs)?
Have you considered a NAS library? Or, have you considered a DAP? Or, have you considered a small DAC dongle?

I hope you are aware that the some of the audio qualities associated with vinyl provide much less 'fidelity' than CDs,
I also hope you realize that vinyl conversion to digital -using a less than stellar performing turntable and improperly aligned cartridge- will further degrade the results (whether FLAC or MP3) and possibly make the outcome less desirable.

 

[Chrispy]

I hadn't seen a cd recorder in ages so tuned in. Interesting alternatives. I just don't find the process of using vinyl and converting it to be worth the time to begin with....I'll just play the vinyl if that's what I want to listen to was my end result. I used a computer with the ART PhonoPlus stage that convert to digital.....but doing a temporary disk doesn't even sound attractive. Easy to put my laptop near the audio gear for sessions, it was just the sessions themselves I found not worth the time at all no matter what gear was being used. I'm not trying to archive my vinyl particularly, but these days generally have access to digital versions of most of my vinyl collection otoh.

 

[xanalog]

I hadn't seen a cd recorder in ages so tuned in. Interesting alternatives. I just don't find the process of using vinyl and converting it to be worth the time to begin with....I'll just play the vinyl if that's what I want to listen to was my end result. I used a computer with the ART PhonoPlus stage that convert to digital.....but doing a temporary disk doesn't even sound attractive. Easy to put my laptop near the audio gear for sessions, it was just the sessions themselves I found not worth the time at all no matter what gear was being used. I'm not trying to archive my vinyl particularly, but these days generally have access to digital versions of most of my vinyl collection otoh.

I think it has already been suggested, to OP, to seek used CD versions of his vinyl music; much cheaper, much better audio, less BS&T... and less BS too!

 

[MRC01]

I think it has already been suggested, to OP, to seek used CD versions of his vinyl music; much cheaper, much better audio, less BS&T... and less BS too!

Sure, where possible. My vinyl collection had some records that were not available on CD. And others where the CD or digital version was a remaster that was crushed with dynamic range compression.

 

[Chrispy]

Sure, where possible. My vinyl collection had some records that were not available on CD. And others where the CD or digital version was a remaster that was crushed with dynamic range compression.

That was sort of my start, but those vinyls are few and not something I listen to frequently in my case at least. Most vinyl had crushed dynamic range to some extent, too.

 

[xanalog]

Sure, where possible. My vinyl collection had some records that were not available on CD. And others where the CD or digital version was a remaster that was crushed with dynamic range compression.

Then there was Pink Floyd's DSotM, I must've gone thru 3 LP versions.
So, when the "digitally mastered" CD version was first released: I had to have it.
I dunno!
It was like a true WTF moment, before WTF was invented!
There was content in the CD that we had never heard from the LPs.
It was such a sensory overload that I only listened to that CD twice and before giving it away.
end of story.

 

[Chrispy]

Then there was Pink Floyd's DSotM, I must've gone thru 3 LP versions.
So, when the "digitally mastered" CD version was first released: I had to have it.
I dunno!
It was like a true WTF moment, before WTF was invented!
There was content in the CD that we had never heard from the LPs.
It was such a sensory overload that I only listened to that CD twice and before giving it away.
end of story.

LOL sensory overload. Any multich versions?

 

[MRC01]

That was sort of my start, but those vinyls are few and not something I listen to frequently in my case at least. Most vinyl had crushed dynamic range to some extent, too.

Then there was Pink Floyd's DSotM, I must've gone thru 3 LP versions.
So, when the "digitally mastered" CD version was first released: I had to have it.
I dunno!
It was like a true WTF moment, before WTF was invented!
There was content in the CD that we had never heard from the LPs.
It was such a sensory overload that I only listened to that CD twice and before giving it away.
end of story.

Of course, the CD medium is technically superior and most CDs sound better than the corresponding LP. But not all of them. The digital format is sometimes abused by engineers and ends up sounding worse. LP is also abused but less often, and less severely, because its technical limitations limit the amount of ham-fisted abuse that can be done to a recording (overwhelming bass, peak levels, heavy DR compression, etc.).

 

[Chrispy]

Of course, the CD medium is technically superior and most CDs sound better than the corresponding LP. But not all of them. The digital format is sometimes abused by engineers and ends up sounding worse. LP is also abused but less often, and less severely, because its technical limitations limit the amount of ham-fisted abuse that can be done to a recording (overwhelming bass, peak levels, heavy DR compression, etc.).

One can screw up anything if you put your mind to it

 

[xanalog]

One can screw up anything if you put your mind to it

That is more expertly achieved by a gaggle of ignoramus [the plural of which is a no-op for me].

 

[Subob]

May I ask why you are wishing to stick with vinyl>FLAC>CDR for your music library?

Since, I think you are saying that your vinyl are already (being?) converted to FLAC (before to *.cda > for burning CDRs)?
Have you considered a NAS library? Or, have you considered a DAP? Or, have you considered a small DAC dongle?

I hope you are aware that the some of the audio qualities associated with vinyl provide much less 'fidelity' than CDs,
I also hope you realize that vinyl conversion to digital -using a less than stellar performing turntable and improperly aligned cartridge- will further degrade the results (whether FLAC or MP3) and possibly make the outcome less desirable.

Whoaa!.... just remember, you did ask, lol.

I'll give a full answer here at some point, but I warn you, I ramble, so you'll be wanting to sit comfortably before I begin!

In other news, after kindly being pointed in the direction of the Tascam recorders here, I watched every video I could find on the Tascam SS-R1 and related models yesterday. I put in an offer on a new Tascam SS-R1 on Ebay yesterday and today it's been accepted, so I'll be playing with that when it arrives and see how I get on.

Thank you everyone for the responses on this thread, I'm finding it very interesting. I've learnt plenty and I'm excited to try a new, but similar direction, with the Tascam.

 

[Subob]

One recorder (the Tascam DR-05) has a line-level 1/8" input. I used that recorder the most. I have an interconnect with 1/8" stereo plug and a pair of RCA plugs on the other. I would use the tape output of my receiver and connect that to the recorder. I used that more than the Tascam DR-40 recorder, which has external microphone/line level inputs that can use XLRs or 1/4" plugs. The DR-40 also has phantom power. FWIW, I've made recordings directly off a mixing board using the DR-40.

One more thing—when I was making LP transfers to digital formats, I used software called "Click Repair", fairly effective in reducing surface noise. I suspect there are more sophisticated ways of reducing surface noise from LPs these days. I also had access to an ultrasonic cleaning service at a record store. That helped to reduce surface noise a little but not really all that much. Most of the records I was working with weren't in particularly good shape. I made a lot of what I called "Needledrops" for people who wanted to hear their old records, sometimes very old records on some very weird formats, like home recordings on 78s that ran from the inner groove to the outer groove. Had to be pretty alert with those to avoid having the needle fly out of the groove.

Fantastic stuff!

On a side note, we have a famous country house near us that has an old gramophone on display, and usually there's a volunteer there that'll fire it up for you to hear the wax cylinders. What a sound that is! Utter garbage of course in terms of modern day sound quality, but as a little snapshot of history, it's a truly wonderful thing!
I also learnt from that demonstration where the term 'put a sock in it! 'comes from. To turn the volume down, they would literally put a sock in the speaker to muffle the sound, lol.

 

[wwenze]

I would buy a flash-based recorder since the PC can be hiccup-ty at times

And then you can do whatever you want with the .WAV file, like burning to CD-R at 24x

 

[Robin L]

Fantastic stuff!

On a side note, we have a famous country house near us that has an old gramophone on display, and usually there's a volunteer there that'll fire it up for you to hear the wax cylinders. What a sound that is! Utter garbage of course in terms of modern day sound quality, but as a little snapshot of history, it's a truly wonderful thing!
I also learnt from that demonstration where the term 'put a sock in it! 'comes from. To turn the volume down, they would literally put a sock in the speaker to muffle the sound, lol.

I worked at a store—Ray Avery's Rare Records, Glendale California—had Edison cylinders and playback devices for the cylinders, lots of 78s, all sorts from early acoustics to early vinyl, also lots of rare LPs and 45s. There was another store in Glendale, had a beautiful acoustic 78 player, big brass bell, long curved neck. Made a surprisingly beautiful sound.

 

[Subob]

May I ask why you are wishing to stick with vinyl>FLAC>CDR for your music library?

Since, I think you are saying that your vinyl are already (being?) converted to FLAC (before to *.cda > for burning CDRs)?
Have you considered a NAS library? Or, have you considered a DAP? Or, have you considered a small DAC dongle?

I hope you are aware that the some of the audio qualities associated with vinyl provide much less 'fidelity' than CDs,
I also hope you realize that vinyl conversion to digital -using a less than stellar performing turntable and improperly aligned cartridge- will further degrade the results (whether FLAC or MP3) and possibly make the outcome less desirable.

Ok, here goes.

Lets get some fundamentals out of the way before I ramble about my musical journey.

1) I'm fully aware of the 'fidelity' when comparing vinyl to CD/digital. No need to convince me there at all. Vinyl is no longer my preferred format, and hasn't been for many years.

2) I'm not burning my vinyl onto CDR's. I'm ripping it to CDRW's, converting to FLAC, rinse and repeat. I don't listen to CDR's.

Now's the time for TLDR merchants to bail out, btw.

I grew up in the vinyl and cassette era and had built up a reasonable vinyl and tape collection before CD's came into being. My vinyl collection is 90% Reggae. As well as playing my vinyl, I used to record it to cassettes to play in the car, share with friends, and later do mixtapes. I also used to record the very very few Reggae shows on the radio then onto cassette, and also buy Sound System tapes (it's a Reggae thing).

Forward onto the birth of CD's. I was a slow adopter for a couple of reasons. In the early days, a lot of music I wanted wasn't available on CD. Once more and more of it was getting released onto CD's I was faced with two 'problems'. Firstly, they would give you a couple of bonus tracks on a CD album compared to the vinyl. I resented that at the time as it felt like manipulation to convert people onto CD (I later realised it was as much to do with more space available on CD as it was to do with manipulation) Having then caved into buying CD's, I had decided I didn't like the 'clinical' and 'cold' sound of digital compared to vinyl. Yep, been there, got the T shirt, lol.

As the years passed I was buying less and less vinyl and more and more CD's, especially as I was now buying more and more Jazz and 'World Music' and other genres (still no Rock & Pop) and less and less Reggae. I was also beginning to realise two things around sound quality, too. Digital recordings were much 'cleaner' than my vinyl and basically now sounding much more satisfying to my ears. Sitting down listening to music, I was now sold on CD's as the way forward. I also realised a lot of Reggae, especially of certain eras, wasn't necessarily recorded too well, but that's a whole other subject.

Forward onto streaming. Just before lock down time, I eventually bought myself a Yamaha network amp and an annual Deezer subscription. Wow!....revelation time! This has felt in many ways like a having a record shop in my front room, and on the go. I can search for stuff I've heard on late night Radio 3 for example, and nearly every time the album will be there. With my Reggae vinyl, a lot of it is on Deezer, but certainly a fair percentage of it isn't.

So why am I bothering to rip my vinyl to Flac?, and do I have a NAS library or DAP?...

Firstly, I've begun the process of very slowly selling off my vinyl, beginning with the stuff I'm no longer as excited by, and some of the more expensive stuff. I thought I'd sell off the whole collection at one point, but soon realised that there's stuff in there I don't want to part with. Instead, I'm slowly working through it, cleaning it all up and ripping as I go. The stuff I have sold has been 'reinvested' into a variety of new headphones and iems. The collection that's eventually left will be nice and clean and there as my legacy when I'm gone. It should still be worth a few bob and one of our kids knows what she's doing with vinyl

I have a few DAP's, my favourite being the ibasso DX300. I often listen to music on it with a varied collection of headphones and iems so as not to disturb others in the house. I have my entire CD library ripped as Flac files and my vinyl collection is being added as I go. I can listen to it all on my DAP's. It's backed up on various old laptops and external hard drives. As for a NAS?...I also have a Wiim pro going through the hifi and can access my entire library via the Wiim app on an Android tablet with an external sd card, as well as access Deezer. In short, I have multiple ways to listen to my vinyl and CD collection, as well as Deezer streaming. I listen to a lot radio, too, so I'm really spoilt for choice these days! Archiving my vinyl collection is time consuming and can be labourious, but it's also nice reaquainting myself with it and bringing back old memories.

I appreciate your questions and take them in good faith. I like giving a detailed response. One of the minor faults of this excellent forum for me is a little bit of, otherwise well intentioned, scientific arrogance, for want of a better term. Examples being... why listen to vinyl when it sounds rubbish compared to digital?...why waste money on a DAP when an old phone and dongle gives the same, if not better, results?. I appreciate these type of questions and responses are given here in an attempt to help people get the best technical performance and bang for their buck, and that's nice. However, we should also remember that music appreciation and the gear that goes with it is a hobby motivated by love, and love takes many and varied forms and is most often ruled by the heart, not the head. There's a thousand and one use cases, and everyone will likely have their own little set up that works for them. This is my set up, and it works for me.

 

[Subob]

I worked at a store—Ray Avery's Rare Records, Glendale California—had Edison cylinders and playback devices for the cylinders, lots of 78s, all sorts from early acoustics to early vinyl, also lots of rare LPs and 45s. There was another store in Glendale, had a beautiful acoustic 78 player, big brass bell, long curved neck. Made a surprisingly beautiful sound.

Now that to me sounds like a dream job!

 

[Robin L]

Now that to me sounds like a dream job!

Nearly—my dream job came about ten years later, working at "The Musical Offering" in Berkeley California, 2430 Bancroft Way, directly across the street from UC Berkeley. You could see Sather Gate from the windows of the booths up front—The Musical Offering was half Cafe, half CD store, specializing in Classical music. More to the point, The Muscal Offering was a world center for "Early Music". The manager of the CD side of the shop, Joseph Spencer, was known throughout the world as a promoter of Early Music, hosting his "Chapel, Court and Countryside" show on various Pacifica radio stations, being in charge of the San Francisco Early Society Society for many years, co-creating a Biannual Early Music Festival in Berkeley and having his own record label; "Wildboar Records". Getting the job was pure, undeserved luck, and it led to me becoming a "recordist (I'm nobody's engineer, just know how to lash gear together and where to situate the microphones) and hosting my own radio shows on KPFA, Berkeley's Pacifica outlet. Lasted about eight years before it all came crashing down. But while it was happening my job was just a few blocks away from Amoeba and Rasputin's, the two best record stores I have encountered for everything but Classical titles. Back then I was collecting a lot of Soukous, so I suspect I understand where you're coming from. A lot of the discs I was collecting were transfers from 45s to LPs, so the sound would be dodgy to begin with.

In any case, that was my dream job. The Musical Offering folded its tent last year.

In closing, I understand all you wrote about the hows and whys of you transfer of vinyl to digits. However, I would suggest bypassing the CDRWs and record straight to a SD or Micro SD card. This would reduce the number of steps in your transfer of music from one format to another.

 

[lini]

I would buy a flash-based recorder since the PC can be hiccup-ty at times

... and not everyone has the talent or/and patience for taming various operating system, driver and control panel settings.

And when integrating some sort of computer-based recording system into an existing HiFi/AV system, one may sometimes also be confronted with hum problems caused by ground loops, which may be more or less easy to exterminate. That's another reason, why I really like good, energy-efficient portable digital recorder models like the Sony PCM-M10 or the Roland R-05, which can record for quite a lot of hours on battery power (= a single set of AA alkalines or (LSD-)NiMHs in case of both the PCM-M10 and the R-05).

(...) This is my set up, and it works for me.

A good attitude, I'd say.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[Subob]

Update:

The Tascam SS -R1 flash recorder arrived already from a fantastic seller on Ebay. He included a CF card so I've had a play around already. Very easy to master the controls as it's pretty self explanatory.

Just recorded both sides of a 10" single as two wav files first to see how it all goes. All smooth and my old laptop reads the CF card no problem and I've saved the files there.

My next step, when I get the time, will be to seek out and play around with an Audacity alternative for Linux so I can do any editing and converting to Flac there.

A big thank you especially to @MRC01 for specifically recommending the Tascam SS -R1. Thanks to everything else who's chipped in here, too.

Here she is...