Any views on A to D cards for PCs?

M-Audio, Echo, Terratec, Tascam are all reputable brands

Do you need more than 2 channels?

Level of budget?

If no and cheap, then the M-Audio Audioplhile 24/96 often comes up well in comparative tests.

I have used Echo and Ego-Sys (now ESI) products to good effect for this.

I think the view is that PCI and fireware connections give better resul;ts than USB/USB2, but are not as flexible.

DS

Has anyone made any observations about the sound quality of vinyl digitised in this way compared to CD or the original analogue?

Regards
Steve M

Friends tell me my home produced CDs from vinyl sound better than the commercial CDs of the same album.

A little bit of careful sound editing to take out the needle hitting the groove and any pops etc, and you have a decent recording.

The only thing that is a bit tricky is putting in track markers in long continuous pieces of music, like live albums where the applause continues between tracks without any gaps.

DS

I've done a fair bit of this using my SoundBlaster Audigy with superb results. On the odd occasion where there already is a CD version of stuff I've converted my own has generally been at least as good. Obviously a lot depends on the condition of the source vinyl. Cleaning up a noisy, worn album is an extremely labour intensive job and frankly I don't do that much of it now. I got quite obsessed with a knackered old folk album from the late sixties that never made it to CD and spent so much time on it (best part of 5 nights per track, 12 tracks) that by the time I had finished I couldn't really bear to listen to it!

A good piece of processing software like Sound Forge is worth getting.