Backing Up Vinyl

[Kimberly Egan]

Hello all,
A non-soundie friend of mine asked me what would be the
best/easiest way to back up his rather substantial collection of vinyl
records. I imagine he's looking for a nice player with some kind of
USB hookup and a fairly simple interface to get all the tracks off his
records and onto a hard drive. He's pretty precious about audio
quality, and will spend the cash, he just doesn't know what to get and
also wants something simple for the non-professional. Are there any
audiophiles out there with advice I can give him?

--
Kimberly Egan
Freelance Sound
+1 425-458-8147
8408 NE 122nd St.
Kirkland, WA 98034
U.S.A

[Richard B. Ingraham]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: theatre-s...@googlegroups.com [mailto:theatre-sound-
> li...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Kimberly Egan
> Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 5:43 PM
> To: theatre-s...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: [theatre-sound-list] Backing Up Vinyl
>
>
> Hello all,
> A non-soundie friend of mine asked me what would be the
> best/easiest way to back up his rather substantial collection of vinyl
> records. I imagine he's looking for a nice player with some kind of
> USB hookup and a fairly simple interface to get all the tracks off his
> records and onto a hard drive. He's pretty precious about audio
> quality, and will spend the cash, he just doesn't know what to get and
> also wants something simple for the non-professional. Are there any
> audiophiles out there with advice I can give him?

There are several turntables out there that have a USB connection on them
and they appear as an audio interface on your computer just like any sound
card would.

I bought an AudioTechnica model for my father a few years back and he loves
his. I never really paid all that much attention to its audio quality but
it seemed to work well to me. I would suspect there are probably some
similar units that have higher quality cartridges than what came with this
unit.

But it makes it pretty easy to use and I just got a light version of Sound
Forge for my father as it was better than the junk software that came with
it and I like Forge a lot better than the free audacity, but Audacity would
work just as well.

Richard B. Ingraham
RBI Computers and Audio
http://www.rbicompaudio.20m.com

[Drew McCarthy]

On Nov 10, 2009, at 5:42 PM, Kimberly Egan <kce...@gmail.com> wrote:

> A non-soundie friend of mine asked me what would be the
> best/easiest way to back up his rather substantial collection of vinyl

> records.... He's pretty precious about audio quality, and will

> spend the cash, he just doesn't know what to get and also wants
> something simple for the non-professional.

Most of the USB turntables I've seen and heard won't satisfy someone
who is "precious" about sound quality...

If he already has a nice turntable/cartridge/preamp, he's probably
better off getting an interface. But getting an interface, host
computer, and editing software to play nicely together isn't always
easy.

On the Mac side of the fence:

I've got a friend who has been happy using an Apogee Duet with Pure
Vinyl software on a Mac.

That's a little spendy for me... I've been using my old Technics
deck, Grado cartridge, Yamaha receiver jacked into the built in audio
input of PowerMac G5.

The surface noise from the less than pristine platters in my
collection was distracting. I can heartily recommend ClickRepair
processing software for this. Works a treat!

HTH,

Drew McCarthy

[Kimberly Egan]

Thanks Drew! I'll point him in the right direction.

Sent from my iPhone

[Ray Gibson]

It's probably a little out of the price range, but I recall seeing
this a couple of years ago:

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2006/02/12/wheels-of-light/

Reading grooves with lasers? The manufactures site seems to be down
but the Google cache was current so it's probably temporary.

Ray Gibson

[TimmyP1955]

The most important thing is that he has a good turntable. If he's got
bucks, I favor the Linn LP12. If he's frugal, the Rega models are
good choices, or the discontinued Linn Basik or Axis. Then of course
a good phono preamp. There are a number of ways to get from there to
the computer.

[Nat Koren]

Money no object? I'm not into hifi, but he should get the best
turntable he can find. Then the finest phono preamp he can get.
Then the finest A/D converter: Prism, Benchmark, etc. Don't forget
the interface between preamp and converter. Then an excellent sound
card that will interface with the A/D converter, whatever the
converter spits out: S/PDIF, AES, Lightpipe, etc. etc. RME and Prism
make some excellent external units.

if it's a PC: Sound Forge to capture the audio to WAV, then CD
Architect to make CDs.

If it's a Mac: use boot camp and run the above.

Most of all, find the time to convert the collection. I wish I had
that kind of time.

Nat Koren
San Francisco Opera
Sound Dept.
Local 16, IATSE

[Steven Devino]

On Nov 16, at  Nov 16, 2009 1:34 AM, Nat Koren wrote:

Then the finest A/D converter: Prism, Benchmark, etc.  Don't forget  
the interface between preamp and converter.   Then an excellent sound  
card that will interface with the A/D converter, whatever the  
converter spits out: S/PDIF, AES, Lightpipe, etc. etc.  RME and Prism  
make some excellent external units.

if it's a PC: Sound Forge to capture the audio to WAV, then CD  
Architect to make CDs.

If it's a Mac: use boot camp and run the above.

Or if you have a Mac you could just get a Metric Halo ULN-8 with it's 2 hi impedance DI's and built in RIAA Curve and possibly even better performance than the Prism. Phono -> ULN-8 -> Mac much cleaner. :-)

Steve

[Nat Koren]

Aha! So elegant, so simple, and it's for a Mac too!

--Nat

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[mackerr]

On Nov 16, 9:17 am, Steven Devino <sdev...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Or if you have a Mac you could just get a Metric Halo ULN-8 with it's 2 hi impedance DI's and built in RIAA Curve and possibly even better performance than the Prism. Phono -> ULN-8 -> Mac much cleaner. :-)
>
> Steve

If you are going to the trouble and expense of getting a good
turntable and cartridge you should get a good phono preamp as well. It
may be convenient that the ULN-8 has DIs built in, but they are not
the way to hook up a good phono cartridge. It is not a very high input
impedance that the cartridge wants to see, but the CORRECT high
impedance. Most phono cartridges want to see 47kΩ, as a load. The
response of the cartridge will be effected by the load impedance.
Spend the extra few bucks on a proper preamp.

Mac

[Steven Devino]

On Nov 30, at  Nov 30, 2009 10:56 PM, mackerr wrote:

If you are going to the trouble and expense of getting a good
turntable and cartridge you should get a good phono preamp as well. It
may be convenient that the ULN-8 has DIs built in, but they are not
the way to hook up a good phono cartridge. It is not a very high input
impedance that the cartridge wants to see, but the CORRECT high
impedance. Most phono cartridges want to see 47kΩ, as a load. The
response of the cartridge will be effected by the load impedance.
Spend the extra few bucks on a proper preamp.

The nice thing about the ULN-8 approach is you can use Spectra Foo and a calibration record to determine the best match for the cartridge. i.e. Since the input impedance is so high on the ULN-8 you can put any resistor the cartridge wants across the inputs to achieve a good match. Using Spectra Foo (which works with any Mac interface) you can then tweak the RIAA curve or another EQ to match even better.

Steve