Vereina;377649 Wrote: > 1. What is regarded as a reasonable word length and sampling rate for > making nice quality copies of records? (I am thinking that 24 bit / > 96kHz FLAC files would be a good starting point, but have no idea if > that is correct.) LPs have limited information content. Even the finest LP, pressed on heavy vinyl, is lucky to achieve a S/N ratio of 70dB, and that's on a good day with a following wind. That equates to less than 12 bits of resolution. 16 bit recording is more than enough. That said, if you plan to do massive amounts of post-recording processing (eg. lots of EQ/filtering/noise reduction/etc), then the rounding errors can build up. But even then, you'd have to do dozens of these kind of DSP operations before the quantisation noise built up enough that it would fail to be masked by the vinyl surface noise.
As for sample rates: although some sort of signal above 22kHz does sometimes come off a vinyl LP, it's overwhelmingly noise and distortion. I can't see any point in going above 44.1 or 48kHz. Vereina;377649 Wrote: > 2. What audio interfaces would be good for this purpose, to go via my > Mac to the NAS? (I will be using a reasonably well spec'ed LP12, and > would like something of comparable quality.) Is USB or Firewire > connection a sensible option, or is an internally fitted card better? I'm not up on the Mac, but my understanding is that the built-in audio interface in most Macs is pretty good. It may well be that you needn't bother with a separate device. The first thing I'd try is make a recording via the Mac's own audio input to see if it's up to scratch. If it's not, then a USB or Firewire based interface is the obvious way to go. (I'm assuming Macs still all have Firewire?). Check out manufacturers such as M-Audio, Echo, E-MU, Terratec. Vereina;377649 Wrote: > 3. Recommended ripping software (for the Mac) that is well suited to > handling the input from LPs? Sorry, can't help you there as I don't know Mac software. However, in principle all hard disk recording software for a given platform will do basically the same thing: instruct the soundcard to deliver audio samples at a defined rate and word length, then simply write those samples to a file. So assuming the Mac comes with an audio recording utility, it should do the job as well as any other. Vereina;377649 Wrote: > I'm quite new to this computer audio stuff (having been a rather > old-fashioned hi-fi guy for several decades ....), so I'd be most > grateful for any advice or recommendations! I'll offer one last observation. It may be that all you want to do is transfer your LPs to digital, without trying to do any clean-up (eg. declicking, decrackling, etc). If that's the case, then your intended route using a Mac should be fine. However, if you fancy trying your hand at a bit of restoration work, there are a stack of packages out there that can help, but the bad news is that the vast majority of them are Windows applications. In other words, if you plan to do restoration, using any platform other than Windows cuts you off from a large selection of potentially useful tools. Eric Seaberg;377796 Wrote: > One other thing to really think about. The ONLY reason I'd want to > record/encode from an LP is if the CD weren't already available. Other > than that, you're looking at a lot of work and time to accomplish > something that's, most likely, going to have lots of surface noise, > ticks and pops. There are tools for noise removal, but you're quickly > passing the purchase price of CD replacement. On the face of it, this is good advice. It's much easier to just buy the CD. But there are a couple of reasons why buying the CD might not be acceptable: 1. Far too many CDs are mastered with extreme dynamic range compression these days. In many cases, the original LP will have MORE dynamic range than the modern CD release. 2. Sometimes albums get remixed, edited or otherwise modified when prepared for CD release. In those cases, if you want the original performance, the vinyl is the only choice. -- cliveb Transporter -> ATC SCM100A ------------------------------------------------------------------------ cliveb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=348 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57431 _______________________________________________ ripping mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/ripping
