Wiim Amp Ultra with Turntable

[dpaqu313]

Running a wiim amp ultra with my Kenwood LT-1100 with a AT VM540ml through a fosi x5 phono preamp. Salk Sound towers. Lots of this is from me reading this site around Black Friday last year and randomly later inheriting my parents record collection. All causing what was to be a simple garage streaming setup to morph into a basement 2 channel experiment.

How much is the wiim in this analog scenario introducing distortion? Other than being sacrilegious am I leaving alot on the table by not having a more traditional analog preaemp+amp setup?

I see that the test shows it not performing nearly as well digitizing a analog signal and converting it again as it can converting a digital signal to analog. I personally think it sounds okay. I have it set to 96khz and 24bit sampling but it could go higher...im not hearing a difference but I can't hear above 16khz and may not be utilizing the right source material. I can say if I leave the EQ flat that in general I prefer records to the way my Spotify lossless sounds but it's hard to get the volume exactly the same.

Thanks in advance for any help/thoughts. Love the knowledge base here.

 

[staticV3]

Vinyl as a medium has noise and distortion several orders of manitude worse than even the WiiM's modest ADC, so you're leaving precisely nothing on the table.

In fact, the WiiM's Parametric EQ (if used well) will improve playback quality more than any analog chain ever could.

 

[Chrispy]

Your Wiim is more than up to the task and exceeds what the vinyl can do.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

There is no turntable + arm + cartridge + phono preamplifier + LP ever made anywhere in the world at any time in history that performs as well as your Wiim.

 

[dpaqu313]

More playing around with the settings last night. One thing I can say about going from sampling at 44.1/16 to 96/24 is the definition on the snaps and pops went up noticably. I'm not sure where everyone on here lands concerning the value of high rez audio but there ya go. Wish I knew how to create those spectral graphs some of y'all post.

 

[HalSF]

More playing around with the settings last night. One thing I can say about going from sampling at 44.1/16 to 96/24 is the definition on the snaps and pops went up noticably. I'm not sure where everyone on here lands concerning the value of high rez audio but there ya go. Wish I knew how to create those spectral graphs some of y'all post.

You seem to be in a bit of a FUD loop in mentally seeking out distortion and noise caused by the WiiM in your actually very good system setup for your vinyl source. A setting of 24/96 instead of 16/44 is not going to amplify or increase the prominence of pops and clips coming from the vinyl.

I’d alvise a period of less anxious mind-quieting serenity and just listening and enjoying for awhile. Hi-fi playback is about music and pleasure.

 

[NTK]

You seem to be in a bit of a FUD loop in mentally seeking out distortion and noise caused by the WiiM in your actually very good system setup for your vinyl source. A setting of 24/96 instead of 16/44 is not going to amplify or increase the prominence of pops and clips coming from the vinyl.

I’d alvise a period of less anxious mind-quieting serenity and just listening and enjoying for awhile. Hi-fi playback is about music and pleasure.

Does the Wiim has proper anti-aliasing filtering (i.e. analog anti-alias filters before the A/D conversion)? If not and the pops and clicks have contents above Fs/2, they will be aliased back into the audible band. With Fs = 96 kHz, the problem is hugely reduced, as it will take components of the pops and clicks >76 kHz to alias back to below 20 kHz.

[Edit] Found out that if you use an "oversampling" ADC (sigma-delta ADC), you may not need an anti-aliasing filter, as the actual sampling will be done at the sigma-delta modulator input sampling rate, which is much higher than the Nyquist sampling rate. A big benefit of sigma-delta ADC. (source)

 

[Redacted]

With ADC from vinyl, it's a waste of time and disk space going beyond 16/44 FLACs.

And there a bit of an art to getting the best recording with an ADC.

Frankly, turning the data into 320kbps MP3s (or some would say 256 VBR) is probably as good as you need for vinyl, much as the idea grates with me. Bear in mind vinyl bass is mono, so the MP3 process will have more of the available 320kps to improve detail - it's all about limiting to a data-rate more than simply removing data to achieve the required compression.

 

[Petrushka]

I’ve digitized hundreds of old garage sale records. The one essential device is a competent record cleaner.

I made my own vaccuum cleaner, and it removed nearly all crackle, and about 90 percent of clicks and pops. Even from records that looked horrible. The remainder can be cleaned up with software. The cleaner the record, the less chance the software will audibly degrade the music.

Soundforge has a way to sample silent tracks and build a noise filter that can be applied to the music tracks. I have 200 recordings, and no one suspects they were vinyl.

 

[dpaqu313]

You seem to be in a bit of a FUD loop in mentally seeking out distortion and noise caused by the WiiM in your actually very good system setup for your vinyl source. A setting of 24/96 instead of 16/44 is not going to amplify or increase the prominence of pops and clips coming from the vinyl.

I’d alvise a period of less anxious mind-quieting serenity and just listening and enjoying for awhile. Hi-fi playback is about music and pleasure.

I've had this 3-4 months and have cycled through about 90% of the records I inherited. These old moving boxes haven't been touched since the mid 90s when we moved as a family and never setup the big stereo again. Lost my parents decades ago and the boxes just got moved from their basement to my brother's. Now I have them and I am discovering things I didn't know they were into or had completely forgot about. It's been emotional honestly. Records of children's songs I vaguely remember from when I was very young, my mother's favorite house cleaning albums, I've even seen fingerprints on them.

Buddy who is into tubes (somewhat opposite of me in this regard) visited and was impressed but caused me to wonder if my setup could be optimized. Initially I just wanted to listen now I've joined this forum and am asking questions.

 

[antcollinet]

More playing around with the settings last night. One thing I can say about going from sampling at 44.1/16 to 96/24 is the definition on the snaps and pops went up noticably. I'm not sure where everyone on here lands concerning the value of high rez audio but there ya go. Wish I knew how to create those spectral graphs some of y'all post.

Seems unlikely. 44.1/16 can already capture everything you can hear.

 

[Chrispy]

More playing around with the settings last night. One thing I can say about going from sampling at 44.1/16 to 96/24 is the definition on the snaps and pops went up noticably. I'm not sure where everyone on here lands concerning the value of high rez audio but there ya go. Wish I knew how to create those spectral graphs some of y'all post.

You're playing vinyl, not hi res audio.