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| quote: | Originally posted by antronx
Hey Harriz, Thanks for the Tread!
I've been interested in getting my vinyl converted to digital for a while now. I've tried couple of things and learned some things too.
At first I've used the Ortofon Night Club Spherical needle, Denon DN-X100 mixer with Balanced Outs into M-Audio Fast Track Pro interface via Balanced XLR ins and the 3 foot TRS to XLR Balanced cables.
First thing, I've noticed that less needle weight produced better and more pronounced highs as well as better lows. But too light caused distorted sound. So for every record I would pre-set the cartridge weight lightest as possible where its just about to hit distortion.
M-Audio Fast Track Pro supports resolution up to 48Khz 24bit. I used that setting while recording in Sony Sound Forge 8.0. I then saved my recording straight to 44.1Khz 16bit Wave. Right away I've noticed great reduction of highs and clarity of the track from the records sound. Thats where I discovered Resampling option with Interpolation Accuracy setting. When set to 1 it gave me the same shitty sound. When set to 4, the highest, i got almost no intelligible sound difference between 48Khz and 44.1Khz. Somewhere around the same time I found Bit Deph Converter. In the help file it said that High Pass Triangular Dithering mode and High Pass Contour Noise Shaping sounds best. I tried that and got a 44.1Khz 16bit file that had the same high and low level as the original, but the high definition of the sound became somewhat slightly dull and the track does not sound as open and fresh as the record itself. THe difference is miniscule, and everyone i showed the sound of the record and the wave, could not tell the difference. Maybe I hear there things cause I am listening on Mackie HR-824 studio monitors. But overall, doing high Interpolation accuracy and dithering with noise shaping is definitely better than not doing them at all, although I still doubt the importance of bit deph dithering and noise shaping in the outcome.
Later I've tried ARTcessories DJpre2 Phono Preamp. That thind definitely kicked Denon's ass in terms of the sound quality. It also has input capacitance switching. 100pf (picofarad) setting gave slightly more highs than 200pf setting with the Ortofon needles.
There was much more opennes and definition in the sound along with clarity than the Denon mixer. The reason is probably because I've eliminated a couple of preamp circuits within the mixer along with the EQ. I've used the TRS input on the M-Audio connected to the RCA outs on the Preamp, since TRS ins are unbalanced and high impeadance as well as the RCA's.
I am not looking into using any kind of pop removers and noise removing plugings, because I believe that the more you mess with the track, the worse it will sound. If you can prove me wrong, please let me hear before and after audio samples. I am still learning here and will appreciate the input.
My next improvement is going to be the better soundcard. While M-Audio is MUCH MUCH better than the Sound Blaster or any built in computer sound card i've tried, I think the Mackie Onyx 400F might be the next thing in line. http://www.mackie.com/products/400f/index.html
Also, I am looking for a better sounding needle as far as it comes to playback and not DJing. I have noticed that Elliptical tips give more highs than Spherical tips. I might pick up an Elliptical tip for the Ortofon. If anyone already done that, please let me know if it's worth the expense. |
That souncard looks nice!
If you want a cartridge for serious sampling you will have to find the industry standard shure v15xmr.
This is out of print so expect to pay 500$ for it.
From the cartridges still in production I would recoment the stanton 890fs
which boosts 35 db channel separation.It was specificaly desined for this purpose.
The x-cracle and x-noise add no distortion if used correctly. They have been used widely in the industry for vinyl remastering of vinyl records where the master recordings can not be found.
Companies like waves and tc electronics (who dominate the higher end hardware) literaly spend millions of dollars every year
to hire the best programmers to write the software.
The l1 ultramaximizer will bring out a lot of the detail in the highs that was lost in the press.
Trustme JAW DROPPING difference.
The only include it with their 3000$ diamond bundle.
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