Vinyl to 24 bit FLAC - low budget

[bluesman]

3 hours ago, jzahr said:

 

I don't know about your specific Asus motherboard, but most mic inputs in motherboards are mono. Also, a mic input, as opposed to a line input,  expects a low voltage level. If your motherboard has a line-level input (which btw always are stereo), then your best chance is to connect a tape output from the Denon to this line-level input in your motherboard.

If your motherboard doesn't have a line input, your best chance is something like the Nad device mentioned in a previous post, directly connected to the PC via USB.

 

As I recall, your mobo has very good onboard audio with a line level input.  It’s not up to a serious ADC, but it’s better than almost any PC’s OEM and does 24/192.  If I were you, I’d just download Audacity and rip one album using the line level outputs on your receiver into your computer’s line level analog input. Your only investment will be an adapter from dual female RCA to a TRS 1/8” male plug, and you’ll find out if the SQ is acceptable to you.

 

You may well have to experiment a bit to optimize your captures.  Tape outputs on receivers are typically fixed level, so you’ll have to attenuate with the record level slider in Audacity to avoid clipping.  Audacity’s a bit labor intensive for vinyl ripping, but it works great and the files sound wonderful if the source feed was high quality.  It works on a Raspberry Pi, so you should have no problem with it on the Sabertooth with any compatible CPU.  Detailed instructions and tips can be found all over the web, and I’ve seen very little nonsense in this area.  You’ll be ripping to wav files that you can then convert to flacs when you save them.  

 

If you don’t like the SQ you get this way, the next step up is a phono stage with a USB output.  The ART Phono+ is a great little box that probably sounds better than the phono stage in your receiver - and it’s only $100.  Its ADC is also very good and almost certainly sounds better than the one on your mobo.  I had a Rega USB phono stage and returned it because it was noisy and didn’t sound that good to me.  I use a Parasound ZPhono USB that I really like - but I also have ART preamps that I like about as much.  I’ve used an ART regularly in live performance for years and never had a failure or other problem.

[bluesman]

53 minutes ago, ChuckM6421 said:

Thank you. I have Audacity. I dread Audacity.

To be honest, it’s an excellent program that does its job very, very well - it’s just a bit tedious to use for ripping vinyl.  Once you get used to it, set up as you want it, and learn the few manual steps required, it’s easy.  And while Vinyl Studio is great software, it too requires the step of splitting the captured record side into tracks by identifying the sonic lulls between them.  It’s not that much faster or easier than Audacity once you get the flow down, except for adding track names - but you have to be careful with tags to make sure your rips are recognized and indexed by your music management software if you use Vinyl Studio to name tracks from lists in internet dbs (which can be ordered differently from your pressing because there are so many digital versions of most vinyl out there now and they differ in the order and inclusion of tracks).
 

Vinyl Studio has a lot of features that you’ll find in Audacity as well, like normalization and EQ.  Its depopping/declicking  function seems no better to me than Audacity’s.  If what it adds over Audacity is worth $30 to you ($50 for the “pro” version), it does work well.  But for a dozen albums, it hardly seems worth its cost to me.

[bluesman]

1 hour ago, ChuckM6421 said:

 ~50 years after buying my first record album (Chicago's 2nd), having to jump up every 20 minutes or so to flip and clean a disc has lost its romance.

I have about 2000 albums, dating from my grandparents' single side 3/32" thick Philadelphia Orchestra recordings circa 1920 through all of their 78s to my parents' collection of 78s and LPs plus about 1200 of my own LPs (of which I bought the first ones in 1959, when I was in the 8th grade).  I have some wonderful classics, like early pressings of Kind of Blue, Dark Side (EMI), many of the bebop jazz giants, masters of swing like Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall with Charlie Christian etc, plus classical greats, broadway show albums, soundtracks, my father's Nat King Cole collection, etc etc.  They're all pristine and sound great on my Thorens TD125 / SME.

 

When I'm in the mood for the vinyl experience, I choose an album, set it up, sit down with the jacket and a suitable beverage, and revel in the whole thing.  This happens a few times a month at most.  The rest of my listening is digital, which is almost constantly playing somewhere in our home.  But when I'm in the mood, there's not much to rival the joy of a complete vinyl encounter, from selecting and handling the record to sipping a fine scotch while listening to my favorite music, enjoying the album art, reading the liner notes for the 500th time, and just forgetting about everything else for a while.

 

I've ripped some of my vinyl, but to be honest it was easier to just buy good digital versions of those I listen to often.  So the thrill ain't gone, but it has a rival for my affections 😄

[bluesman]

2 hours ago, StephenJK said:

I've always had a much better than average turntable and cartridge and have all the tools to do a proper setup. 

That’s one of the keys to preserving the grooves.  Everything from basic arm and cartridge alignment to tracking errors to wrong stylus pressure to a worn or dirty tip will cause groove damage.  Using stylus pressure below the range recommended by the cartridge maker was a very common practice because of the erroneous belief (and associated bragging) that lower was always better.  But the minor tracking problems caused by slight bouncing of the stylus over heavily modulated areas caused damage even though most people didn’t hear the effect at the time or didn’t know what caused it.
 

Despite the widespread belief that properly cleaned records played on good equipment that’s well set up will remain exactly as pressed, there’s a lot of info on the basic science of vinyl record stock (which is actually a PVC) about how it ages and how it changes from repeated vibration, flexing etc.  These changes can and sometimes do affect SQ.  Read about the use of classic test records like the CBS Labs STRxxx series.  CBS and professional users would only use those discs about a dozen times because accuracy suffered measurably even on the best recording lab equipment. I still have my original STR100 - these are amazing tools, with the test frequencies recorded from sine wave generators direct to the mastering lathe to eliminate as much distortion and other artifacts as possible.

 

The material is incompletely viscoelastic - any deformation takes a little time to return incompletely to its pre-deformed state.  It work-hardens from vibration and other causes of flexing.  There are many different vinyls in records, and each formula contains different plasticizers, stabilizers, and other additives that affect how it ages.  I was a bit disappointed in the SQ when comparing several of my vinyl rips to good Redbook versions - not all records remain pristine at the level of the grooves if played a lot.  Colored vinyl is often more prone to wear because of the added pigments.  Translucent vinyl is similarly more prone to audible wear.  I have some translucent red LPs (eg Clare Fischer Pacific Jazz discs) that show this very clearly.

 

Viva vinyl!

[bluesman]

1 hour ago, davide256 said:

I can't say the thrill is gone... its just that I balk at paying over $500 for a cartridge where 1 unexpected sneeze during a track change can make $$$ go up in smoke.

That's what the scotch is for......

 

[bluesman]

9 minutes ago, StephenJK said:

Why, I might even pull out the single malt instead of the everyday blended stuff.  

My wife & I also love amari for this purpose.  She prefers Montenegro on ice & I crave Strega.  Fine food and drink complement the joy of music by adding modes of sensory pleasure.  We put the hedonist in audiophile!