HELP NEEDED to digitise two LP's

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Grumpytim
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Re: HELP NEEDED to digitise two LP's

Unread post by Grumpytim »

Apologies, in my obtuse way I was referring to the turntable/cartridge/tone arm/off board power supply/phono amp part of the equation. Basically unless you intend using the turntable post digitisation, then how much so you spend on upgrading it for what is a one shot job?

I have absolutely no doubt that the digital part of your set up is as close to optimal as it can be without spending bonkers amounts of cash.

As to data transmission rates I smile at that because on most forums the real techies will say that the data required for audio is 'trivial' yet whilst empirically this may well be true. 96/24 has exposed many weaknesses in our home network, which have been a real pain to fix.

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Re: HELP NEEDED to digitise two LP's

Unread post by Geoff.R.G »

Grumpytim wrote: Fri Apr 23, 2021 7:51 am Apologies, in my obtuse way I was referring to the turntable/cartridge/tone arm/off board power supply/phono amp part of the equation. Basically unless you intend using the turntable post digitisation, then how much so you spend on upgrading it for what is a one shot job?

I have absolutely no doubt that the digital part of your set up is as close to optimal as it can be without spending bonkers amounts of cash.

As to data transmission rates I smile at that because on most forums the real techies will say that the data required for audio is 'trivial' yet whilst empirically this may well be true. 96/24 has exposed many weaknesses in our home network, which have been a real pain to fix.
Anyone who thinks the data required for audio is “trivial” has obviously never tried using a 2011 MacBook with 16 channels of 16/48 audio! Even my 960Gb SSD couldn’t cope. It needs a much faster computer to record multitrack audio. Many forum users think only in terms of stereo, add channels or multitrack and it is a different story.

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Re: HELP NEEDED to digitise two LP's

Unread post by Grumpytim »

Ha maybe I was mistaken in calling them real techies!

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Re: HELP NEEDED to digitise two LP's

Unread post by Fretless »

Being a bit frustrated by the slowness of the little Asus Eee PC notebook that I am using for recording purposes, I spotted in a forgotten corner of a menu something called: 'Asus Super Hybrid Engine' . Googling this I saw that it is a hardware acceleration application specifically for Intel Atom processors and gets them to 'overclock', running at higher speed with greater efficiency.

Having installed a fresh version of this, now Audacity is running noticeably quicker, so I'm testing it with 'Suzanne Vega'. On some LP rips (Rickie Lee Jones 'Pirates' for one) I have been hearing an occasional digital 'bleep' in the playback and am wondering if that has been caused by the CPU struggling to keep up with the data-flow.

Image

Edit: definitely faster on converting the Audacity recording file to WAV format. Difference is a 30%-50% improvement in writing speed.

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Re: HELP NEEDED to digitise two LP's

Unread post by Fretless »

A few days later ....

Still noticing that digital bleep very occasionally, maybe once or twice per LP and then only one one stereo channel. A very distinctive electronic noise that lasts a fraction of a second. Hunting around on the web, I found a reference to an identical problem but then with someone using a different USB interface and different recording software - but it was on a Windows PC.

The advice he was given is that somewhere in Windows there must be an active program that is trying to send a notification or asking for attention. Looking at my own Netbook, my precautions are to disconnect the network link whilst recording, use no other applications, set the notification sounds to 'silent' and have speeded up the CPU, so what else could it be?

The security system, perhaps. I have the very excellent ESET security installed on this PC, only because it is a backup device that can be called on should one of my business-use computers fail. Despite the makers claiming that it doesn't put too much of a load on the system, I think the Intel Atom chip struggles with it. Checking ESET, I saw that it has a 'Gamer mode' which temporarily suspends high CPU usage and stops things like updates and scans. Switching this on it was like the netbook had a supercharger activated and ran much faster.

Will try it with this for a few ripping sessions and, if it helps, I might consider removing ESET completely as it does have a major impact on performance on this computer.

... and now, 'Adventures in Modern Recording' :

Image

The difference between hi-res vinyl rips and ripped-CD playback is astounding me, and I'm finding it hard to enjoy listening to 441KHz 16bit at the moment, when I can have luscious, vinyl-sourced playback that gets my foot tapping and me singing along. Then my mind went down a dark, mental side-alley and I thought 'What if I record directly from the DAC's analogue output? Then I can get a hi-res 96KHz recording from a CD.'.

No time like the present, so I gave it a try. Having just made a copy of Heart's totally wonderful 'Dreamboat Annie' LP, I then switched the NVA preamp over to the output from an Allo DigiOne streamer running into the Metrum Musette DAC. Playing the opening track 'Magic Man' as a WAV file from a Japanese SHM CD version and then recording that, real-time, in Audacity at 96/24.

Very interesting. Comparing the Audacity hi-res copy of the CD against the original 44.1/16 file, there is much more depth and detail, wider soundstage, fuller, more 'presence'. But then playing the vinyl rip, the sensual richness shows up a major difference in the character of the sources. You can feel the warm, weighty and slightly woolly sound of the vintage A&R P77Mg cartridge against the somewhat dry and clinical output from the Musette, which somehow misses 'soul'. This was why I prefer the Teradak Chameleon and Ares II over it - both of those DAC's have a far more emotionally-charged perfomance.

So the next experiment on these lines might be to put the Chameleon in place and see how that fares against vinyl. The major drawback is then that ripping a CD via EAC takes about 10 minutes (and I can do 2 discs simultaneously). Making copies in real-time means just that - about an hour per album. Worth it for LP's but then doing my entire CD-collection as well? No way.

Got Klaus Schulze '... live ...' from 1980 spinning on the TT now - did you know that side 2 'Sense' has a playing time of over 31 minutes! Could be the longest LP side ever pressed.

:ugeek:

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Re: HELP NEEDED to digitise two LP's

Unread post by Grumpytim »

I had much the same problem with Norton and ended up doing a clean re install of windows to ultimately fix the problem. As we know with windows machines they accumulate a lot of crap along the way and starting with a clean sheet worked for me. Even now I notice it will go off and do things at inconvenient times even if you think you've disabled most of the irritations, happily they don't seem to impact on my recordings now which makes me wonder if the Atom just being pushed that bit too far and you need a machine with a bit more grunt?

In terms of longest sides I bet some of those K-Tel compilations from the 70's top that :grin:

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Re: HELP NEEDED to digitise two LP's

Unread post by Fretless »

Just uninstalled ESET. Will see if it helps.

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Re: HELP NEEDED to digitise two LP's

Unread post by CycleCoach »

Fretless wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 8:29 am No time like the present, so I gave it a try. Having just made a copy of Heart's totally wonderful 'Dreamboat Annie' LP, I then switched the NVA preamp over to the output from an Allo DigiOne streamer running into the Metrum Musette DAC. Playing the opening track 'Magic Man' as a WAV file from a Japanese SHM CD version and then recording that, real-time, in Audacity at 96/24.

Very interesting. Comparing the Audacity hi-res copy of the CD against the original 44.1/16 file, there is much more depth and detail, wider soundstage, fuller, more 'presence'.
I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on what is actually going on here: clearly you haven't created "extra data" compared to the original digital file, so what is it? (A subtle "smoothing out" of jagged digital detail perhaps?) Really intriguing.

Keep up the good work. :grin:
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Re: HELP NEEDED to digitise two LP's

Unread post by Fretless »

CycleCoach wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:23 pm I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on what is actually going on here: clearly you haven't created "extra data" compared to the original digital file, so what is it? (A subtle "smoothing out" of jagged digital detail perhaps?) Really intriguing.
Been having a think about this and the jury is still out. Instead of getting the direct 44.1/16 data from the CD, attaching the analogue capture to the DAC output gives you the DAC's interpretation of the music - which can then be made into a hi-res 96/24 rip.

What you hear is the sound of the DAC, recorded, and then played back through a DAC again. If you see what I mean.

In the case of the Musette, it produces a wide soundstage with fine detail and plenty of punch, but the music sounds a touch cold and uninvolved, This brings me to my next problem - is that due to the DAC or the digital transfer from analogue to digital made in the mastering studio for the CD manufacture?

Being in the process of grabbing as many of the old favourite LPs from the 70's and 80's as I can, I can now compare albums that I have had on varying formats: vinyl, CD, remaster, etc.. I am just now making a copy of 'Oxygene' which I have on just about every remastered CD edition, then I will be having a concentrated listen to try to hear how the various digital incarnations compare to an original analogue version.

Most of the LP's I am getting are of albums that I have once had, then replaced with CD's which, in retrospect, I have never really been satisified with. Post-2000 albums are, in general, digitally recorded and specifically made for digital playback. The art of CD remastering has improved the SQ of many releases over the earlier CD versions and I don't know if I will be bothering with any LP's repressed from more recent digitally-sourced masters.

Tricky one. I think the answer lies in the sampling rate at which the analogue waveform is chopped up - higher sampling rate gives a more accurate waveform for more detail and musicality. Here I now have that under my own control but it is throwing up more questions than answers.

:confusion-questionmarks:
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CycleCoach (Fri Apr 30, 2021 9:34 am)

Upstairs:
Vinyl
Pro-Ject 1.2 + Grado Sig Jr + Cambridge Alva Duo
DigiVolumio PC + Kiss DP-500 + Sabaj A20d
NVA: P50sa - Cube2 - SSP - LS6+ Sabaj A10a (x2)
Downstairs:
Vinyl
Logic DM101 + Syrinx LE1 + Grado Sig MCX
DigiDenafrips Ares II + Volumio PC + Cambridge CXC
NVA: P50 - BMU+ Aiyima A07 MAX (x2) + Arcam One
HP: HifiBerry Digi+ PRO + Sabaj A10d
Office:
Allo DigiOne SIG + SMSL M300se + Douk G4 (x2)
Mission 760 + Monolith THX AAA 887
Headphones: German Maestro & AudioQuest

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