[78-L] Sorta speaking of LP sleeves

[Chris Zwarg]

At 22:13 08.10.2008, you wrote:
>  You could connect the tt directly to the computer through an amp/reciever or by using a pre-amp between tt and soundcard. Ron L On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at  3:39 PM, Swamp Daddy wrote: > Well, maybe the ones in Circuit City have no 78 speed; I've seen ones > that do with USB connections and built in preamp.   To me, this looks > like it may be an easy way to go on transferring 78 collections to > digital format.  I do it a slightly different way; I have a component stereo and an old Thorens (built like a tank) turntable I keep around just for putting 78s on tape.   I then transfer the tape to the computer (via a 2nd tape casette deck permanently attached to the computer).   However, were I in the market for new equipment I probably would get one of the USB turntables. Harry 

Urgghhh! Cassette tape has a slightly lower dynamic range, and MUCH higher wow and flutter (not to mention the phase instability especially when playing a tape back on a different machine from the one it was recorded on!) than a good 78rpm disc, so your digitizations will always be poorer than your source discs, which IMHO is not as it should be. Especially if you are experimenting with digital declicking and decrackling, this will NEVER work properly from a cassette dub because this "sound-quality bottleneck" will have dampened the short impulses that make up the shellac crackle in such a way that they are still audible, but no longer reliably recognisable by the decrackling software - in layman's terms, they become mixed up with the music more thoroughly and inseparably. In my daily work as an audio restorator, cassettes easily give the most problems on average among analogue media; the mechanics involved are just too much miniaturized to work precisely and reliably.

Neither record-players (no matter how sturdily built) nor computers are so heavy they can't be occasionally carried and set up next to one another. If space really precludes this in your case, you should try to get a long piece of audio cable to feed the output of the component stereo directly into the computer. A good-quality, properly grounded cable will probably not give hum problems up to 100 feet or so, as the soundcard input impedance isn't very high. Even if your record-player is in a different room and out-of-sight from the computer, you can easily start the recording software (your average harddisk will hold many hours of digital audio), then go to your record room and play the records you want to digitize, and finally chop the continuous digital file into separate songs. This is half the work compared to your current method, and will definitely get better results even if your equipment is not professional-grade in general.

An USB record player only makes sense if you don't already have a soundcard with analogue input on your computer.

Chris Zwarg