Recording vinyl to CD

I would have thought that a stand alone CD recorder would be better. Less in the way of electromagnetic interference, and the circuitry (including the analogue-to-digital converter) would be better designed.

Regarding the best recorder to buy, I'm not entirely sure. Maybe the NAD recorder. I reckon we could all do with a CD recorder from a respected flat earth company (and NAD is as good as it gets at the moment) including Naim, Linn, Creek, Rega etc.

As for hard disk recorders, I personally think they're a bad idea. I've mentioned it before and so have others, that the limited storage space, reliability problems and lack of portability of hard-disks virtually kill the medium.

Andrew

Andrew Randle
"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid." Frank Zappa

Is definitely easiest.

Using a PC you've got to record the music, edit and split into tracks, then write the CD - a real pain. Good for recording long radio boradcasts though.

The stand-alone is like using a tape deck, pretty much, and probabaly better sound quality, unless you get a really good sound card (i.e. not Creative etc.).

A>

I've tried both through a PC and using a standalone CD Recorder. Generally the PC route offers advantages of being able to reduce heavy transients like clicks and pops which can push the recording into digital clipping (yikes!)although in both cases you get a kind of "worst of both worlds" scenario.

Frankly, I'm still getting the best results by recording onto cassette tape on one of my Nakamichis. Believe me, I'm no analogue fogey, I just trust my own ears....

Of course, the best way of reducing the clicks and pops is to get a better turntable

Andrew

Andrew Randle
"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid." Frank Zappa

I use my Roland VS1680 16-Track "Studio in a box" recorder... A bit expensive for simply transcribing vinyl to CD, but since I've got one already...
As far as levels and pops and clicks:
Levels are absolutely critical with digital recording as an "over" is clipping, not warm distortion/saturation like on tape. Good and fast metering are critical unless you are content with recording at -6 or -10dB to be sure...
And the big pops will result in overs. You can't limit once they're in the digital domain, you'll have to have some sort of drop-out to repair this, even if it's some automatic function. My point here is you can't perfectly "fix" this stuff, but you can make it sound somewhat better.
Myself, I put up with recording at -3dB and my system is quick to recover from pops, both at the LP12 side and Naim pre-amp and at the recorder. So, I don't go in a try to "fix" the pops and clicks. They're part of the charm of playing vinyl on a good system anyway...
The "pro-sumer" recorder I have makes editing intros, combining tracks and LPs, track numbering and insertion etc. a breeze. And I can usually get 2 LPs on one 80 minute CD!
It is really nice to hear recordings of my LP12/Naim preamp in the car. A bit of "flat earth" on the "open road"... And it may fit a loose definition of flat earth since it is (in a way) source first, thought the downstream gear (Car CD player and environment) is quite awful!
One last thought: The A/D converters in a PC sound card are very cheap and very poorly implemented. It nearly can't be helped if you are trying to convert inside a very noisy PC environment with a PC power supply, etc.
The converters in my recorder aren't much better, but they're implemented in a "pro" audio way which is somewhat better than a PC card plugged into an available slot...
I doubt many of us could afford a CD recorder that would be up to Naim's usual surperb implementation... But I'd sure want one!
David

Thanks. I had thought of one of the new 'Portastudio' devices with built in CD burner. The prices of these are dropping fast. I doubt if I would use any multi-track facility any more as all the bands I play with now are also old men like me with more cash than time, so we tend to just book a studio with an engineer to indulge ourselves. This machine would be strictly for vinyl transfer.
I guess the hi-fi type recorder will still be the better value option if I only want two tracks.
Forgive my dimness, but can CDs be recorded one track at a time on any of these machines, or does the whole 70 minutes need to be stored in some memory first then 'burned'.

A standalone CD writer is best.

I use a studio Marantz CDR630 rewriter, which gets past the 'audio only' CD price premium bollocks, so you can use data CDs.

The rewriter in the PC is good, but does not get as lifelike as the standalone - less electronics in the way I guess.

But if you want to do a lot of editing, removing clicks, noise etc. then PC is the way to go.

DS

OTR - Front Row

...and if he so much as say "but if you want to do a lot of editing, removing clicks, noise etc. then PC is the way to go"...

...then I'd say "Slater!!!... No!!!... You can't go around processing out the music of great masterpieces from Hendrix and Joplin on your shiny new Pentium. That just isn't way it's done around here!"



Andrew

Andrew Randle
"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid." Frank Zappa

Nope no processing required, that is what the turntable is for, just the ability to make compilations one track at a time.

I use a chord Cobra 2 interconnect from my pre amp to PC via tape 2. This works fine for party compilations or even the car. When you record it may be better to record to the HD and then knit your compilation together. I use audiograbber to record and magix audio cleaning lab if I need to tinker (very rare).

The results are reasonable with a built in sound card. I have heard that Philips make a good card at around 80 pounds. Otherwise it's into serious money for the high end stuff.

Regards

Milan

I would say

Randle No No and thrice No!

I haven't got a Pentium, but an Athlon XP, so it is much more musical. (Trying to start insane thread about which PC processor has the sweetest top end?)

But seriously folks, if all you can get hold of is a second hand copy of a treasured record with a bugger of a scratch, then a PC editing program can get rid of it and repair the damage to get it on the CD.

I can also use it then for sampling and looping as well.

DS

ITS - Novation Super Bass Station, arppegiated from a Korg Z1.