I guess audacity will let you know. Been doing needle drops for decades. Every solution up until the sugar cube and waxwing was just a convoluted mess in terms of setup and execution. These two devices make digitising vinyl a joy. It also tells you everything you need to know whilst just listening. I can see how the app is a little cumbersome. Let’s see how it evolves.
I find operation easy due to the explanations in ean setting. I do like the settings, ever buy a LP that sounds flat as if it's a bad mix. I find by using feature it takes me 30 seconds to use warmth, air and other EQ to make 95% of poor recordings sound damn good. The others are just to far gone, KTel style, not much you can do with a bad mix on a thin album as boosting can't boost what the LP does not contain, no bass, can't boost bass in a audible way. I love the thing, so many lps sound so much better.
Analog output, digital output, it's all good.
If you can afford it, go for it. Parks Audio products are at the sweet spot between innovative and affordable. If you are a vinyl enthusiast with an open mind to digital it's almost a no-brainer to send a few bucks to this small but serious-about-hifi business and, in return, enjoy seeing how it works in your system.
Analogue out is absolutely fine. It’s a great performer.
Works fine - I used it that way to start with. Then I needed to move my turntable across the room and 10ft toslink is better than 10ft analogue - kills noise too.
Don’t let yourself try out the waxwing through a decent DAC…. You may enjoy it a bit too much…
The built in DAC is perfectly adequate. No external DAC is going to be audibly better - especially given the inherent limitations of the source (vinyl) which by far swamps any imperfections in half way decent DAC designs.
Just to be clear (and apologies if you’re already aware), the signal will be digitized whether or not you apply any additional processing.
Seems an odd approach to me though. The phone pre functionality (gain and RIIA) of the waxwing is excellent - what do you think you are getting by doing that externally?
Absolutely nothing other than the (purely psychological) satisfaction of having my source selector switch on “Phono” when using the turntable (I’m using the amp’s internal phono pre and switching the Waxing in via the tape monitor). I know it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t like the idea of my source being set to “Line 1” or whatever when the Phono input is right there.
Yes, I'm aware that there's no completely analog signal path in the Waxwing, and the purist in me is screaming.
Whatever you feed to the RCA inputs goes through the ADC, but that's the whole point of the device, really. I do appreciate you mentioning it though.IMHO, this is one of the best reasons I've seen on ASR for "why I do it this way".
Fair
