[ale] OT:Digitizing my old vinyl

[Sean McNealy]

Fundamentally, you're sampling an analog signal somewhere and
digitizing it.  Your sound card is made to do this with a line-in or
mic plug and sends digital data over PCI or however it's connecting.
A USB turntable does this in the turntable and sends the digital data
over USB.  So in the end, you gain nothing from one method over the
other.  It's all about the quality of the A/D conversion hardware,
like sampling rate.

Where a good recording might matter:  You can run equalizers and other
filters, like trying to remove hiss or clicks, over your recording.  I
never found this really useful in toying with it, the original
recording sounded better with what I was trying.  Maybe someone here
can point you to something better.

Where a good recording does not matter:  You're probably converting to
MP3.  Your sound chip that came on the motherboard, while it's pretty
bad, is more than enough to make a good MP3.  Anything more gets taken
out to compress the file.

Just to make sure you know, your current turntable outputs the same
analog data your computer's line-in jack reads.  It's just a matter of
getting (or making) the correct wire.

As a note, your sound card and probably most USB turntables, record in
stereo, so you're losing any quadraphonic data.

-Sean

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 4:18 PM, Scott Castaline<skotchman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, any audiophiles on the list? Looking to replace my old turntable
> with something that will work both as a regular turntable hooked up to
> my stereo amp (which does have a phono input) and that will also allow
> me to plug into my PC for recording through Audacity. I was looking at
> USB turntables, then I ran into a link for a DAK setup that includes a
> mixer/preamp and turntable that allows plugging into the Line In on a
> sound card.
>
> http://www.dak.com/reviews/2020story.cfm?Ref=G&PM=LPCD&type=GSrch&Srh=turntable_with_USB&gclid=CKP9wqOCs5wCFSBN5QodYVr9mw#in
>
> Am I better off using this type of configuration or does USB work just
> as well?
>
> Anyone have any experience with this site?
>
> Looking for opinions
>
> TIA
> Scott
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