[jsaliga]

I'm sure everyone on the forum is already doing this. I just crawled out of my cave, learned a little about it, and am just getting started.

Today I recorded my first DVD-A from vinyl (Red Garland - Red in Bluesville), and I am listening to the disc right now on my universal player and I think it sounds damned good.

My recording setup consists of the following:

24" iMac running Windows Vista Ultimate
M-Audio Firewire 410 Mobile Recording Interface
Adobe Audition 3.0
DiscWelder Bronze DVD-A authoring tool
Good quality analog interconnect cables and a pair of Phono-to-1/4 mono adapters (for the M-Audio FW 410).

I bought the M-Audio Firewire 410 mainly because I found it for a bargain basement price from J&R Music. I was aware that there are only beta drivers for Vista for this device, but I also have a laptop that is running Windows XP Professional that I could have used if the Vista drivers were a bust.

I cleaned the record on my VPI 16.5, then adjusted the input levels on the M-Audio mixer, and away it went. The beta M-Audio drivers for Vista seemed to work pretty darned good after all. I recorded a single file in 24-bit/96KHz PCM for each side of he album and then cut it up into individual tracks. I monitored the recording on my headphones and made note of two clicks that I heard during playback and used Adobe Audition to remove them. After that I was ready to burn a disc with DiscWelder.

A few minutes later I was putting my home spun DVD-A into my Denon universal player. So far so good. I think I am going to have a blast with this setup.

--Jerome

 

[bigshot]

There's no advantage to capturing in 24/96 if the source is an LP. The only thing that will benefit from the added resolution is the bed of surface noise down at a low level where you can't hear it anyway. Capturing this high makes applying filters slow and increases the opportunity for hard drive underruns.

Capture to 16/44.1 and burn to redbook, and it will sound exactly the same.

See ya
Steve

 

[grawk]

LPs potentially have data above the 22.05khz that 44.1 is limited to, so there is potential gain from 24/96. The 24bit won't help, but the 96khz sample rate could.

DVD-V can support 24/96 audio, tho, so you may want to record to that instead, as it greatly increases the flexibility for playback (and lets you use external dacs).

 

[jsaliga]

Guys,

I didn't start this thread to debate the subject. The technical merits are irrelevant. I did it as a project because I wanted to do it and because I thought it would be a lot of fun. I suppose I could have even more fun by making redbook CDs and DVD-As to compare. Perhaps I'll get around to that eventually.

But I think you both are missing the real point. Whether or not you see value in it doesn't matter to me. I see value in it. Sometimes it is not about which is best or what the advantages of this over that are. Sometimes the entire object of the exercise is to simply have fun.

--Jerome

 

[slwiser]

Noise floor level on a regular LP is about 65 dB whereas a digital CD is at least 95 dB. The advantage of the digitized LP to me is that you can still have the dynamic range of the LP while the compression war has about destroyed the CD dynamic levels to no more than 20 dB range even sometimes less than 10 dB during the music. This would allow the digitized LP to be a bit noisy between tracks while providing much more accurate sounding music.

 

[grawk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jsaliga /img/forum/go_quote.gif Guys, I didn't start this thread to debate the subject. The technical merits are irrelevant. I did it as a project because I wanted to do it and because I thought it would be a lot of fun. I suppose I could have even more fun by making redbook CDs and DVD-As to compare. Perhaps I'll get around to that eventually. But I think you both are missing the real point. Whether or not you see value in it doesn't matter to me. I see value in it. Sometimes it is not about which is best or what the advantages of this over that are. Sometimes the entire object of the exercise is to simply have fun. --Jerome

What point am I missing? I was just suggesting you burn them to dvd-v instead of dvd-a so you could use them in more players. 2 channel 24/96 is doable without the lockdown you get from dvd-a.

 

[regal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bigshot /img/forum/go_quote.gif There's no advantage to capturing in 24/96 if the source is an LP. The only thing that will benefit from the added resolution is the bed of surface noise down at a low level where you can't hear it anyway. Capturing this high makes applying filters slow and increases the opportunity for hard drive underruns. Capture to 16/44.1 and burn to redbook, and it will sound exactly the same. ).

Lps are not brickwalled and dynamically compressed by idiot mastering engineers the way CD's are. What the jsaliga is doing is bypassing digital's fault: incompetent mastering.

This will be more and more poplular as people who understand recordings are getting access to equiment that can make a good needle drop.

The advantage to using 24 bit is there is more leeway for not clipping when you set the levels. True you may be able to get it right with 16 bit but using 24 bit is akin to putting on a green with a 24" hole vs a 16" hole (actually the difference is bigger than that.)

 

[ADD]

Quote:

Originally Posted by regal /img/forum/go_quote.gif Lps are not brickwalled

Hi,

I call that the "pudding bowl haircut effect"

I love the sound of chopped off cymbals in the morning

CD:

LP:

 

[bigshot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jsaliga /img/forum/go_quote.gif Sometimes the entire object of the exercise is to simply have fun.

It's a lot more fun when it doesn't take so long to process, burn and back up your captures!

See ya
Steve

 

[bigshot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ADD /img/forum/go_quote.gif I call that the "pudding bowl haircut effect" I love the sound of chopped off cymbals in the morning

No argument from me about the lousy sound from CD hot mastering. But I bet you a dollar that the frequencies above 20kHz on that LP are due to harmonic distortion, not program material. (Unless it's a direct to disk recording.)

It really doesn't matter though, because unless you're a dog or a bat, you aren't going to hear anything above 20kHz anyway.

See ya
Steve

 

[ozz]

and if you are over the age of 35 most adults are lucky when they
have a hearing test could detect a 17khz note.

 

[grawk]

You can detect a lot of things you can't identify as hearing, and harmonics will impact frequencies in the realm you can hear.

 

[regal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ADD /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hi, I call that the "pudding bowl haircut effect" I love the sound of chopped off cymbals in the morning CD: LP:

Really sums it up. I hope people reading this understand that when you make a good 24/96 copy of the LP that it will look like the LP graph.

With a computer now you can basically exceed anything these hacks are releasing as remastered on CD.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot /img/forum/go_quote.gif Capturing this high makes applying filters slow and increases the opportunity for hard drive underruns.

Untrue. There are many reasons to capture and apply filters at a higher resolution than the final output and it's pretty difficult to make a hardrive underrun these days even with a fairly average computer unless you are talking about capturing uncompressed video or something

 

[hciman77]

Quote:

Originally Posted by slwiser /img/forum/go_quote.gif ...while the compression war has about destroyed the CD dynamic levels to no more than 20 dB range even sometimes less than 10 dB during the music.

Not on my CDs, I loaded up a random selection ,the 5 CDs I have in my office and did a spectrum and intensity analysis on the first 30 seconds of music for each. None had a dynamic range of less than 60db, all were modern recordings (relatively speaking) . This was classical music mind, of course when I did the same test on "Ignite" by The Damned the dynamic range was somewhat more curtailed.