War on Analogue Recording?

I still record off FM on a NAT 01 onto a Nakamichi CR7 E or a Tanberg 3014 A.

Get brilliant results.Never got into streaming at all.Although I do stream off YouTube useing a 3.5 mm to 2 phono socket lead with good results off an I Pad.Theres loads of bootlegs on YouTube to discover and enjoy people's play lists with music I love

of course analogue recording still has huge sonic benefits to my ears, but I suspect once Rob Watts ADC converter based on his Pulse Array technology and huge processing 760 cores (!)  FPGA is released, digital will catch up (hopefully very close) ..... It will be called DAVINA... and I really hope it will make analog tape redundant.

Eh?

For casual use like recording something from the radio it no doubt depends primarily on on the facilities someone has, which I expect to range from old analogue tape and cassette, possibly to using video recorders, to digital where people have  DAT or minidisk or portable solid state recorders, to digital using a computer or laptop to save to disc or even make a CD.

When it comes to something a bit more serious, like, say singer songwriters in home studios, I suspect that many are now using digital, with inexpensive an good-sounding kit having been readily available for some time now, as a visit to any music store selling home recording equipment will reveal, and very often with computer editing facilities aimed at helping e user produce a finished listenable recording that can be burnt to CD or output on any digital medium.

As for professional recording, I have the impression that these days it is virtually all digital, with only very few specialist professional recording services use analogue - and most LPs produced for some time now have been from digital masters.

Analogue recordings may theoretically be best for music, however at a professional level once transposed from the original high speed master tape to a consumer marketable product like an LP, the associated compromises can degrade the sound more than high resolution digitisation and reconstruction, while at an amateur level the facilities for digital have made it so easy, especially when it comes down to editing, that it has simply taken over.

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SongStream posted:

Eh?

The maker of the astounding Dave DAC is working on an ADC of comparable quality for the recording end, as that -and matching the filtering at thevtwo ends - is wher the biggest limitation to sound quality now lies. (Ignoring limitations post- 'source')

Innocent Bystander posted:

SongStream posted:

Eh?

The maker of the astounding Dave DAC is working on an ADC of comparable quality for the recording end, as that -and matching the filtering at thevtwo ends - is wher the biggest limitation to sound quality now lies. (Ignoring limitations post- 'source')

Ah.  Thanks.  Does that not mean that the recording will have be made for each specific DAC?  Or at least the DAC will have to be matched to ADC?  Could this be the dawn of a new hardware standard that all manufactures will implement like Redbook CD?  If it's a success the next nDAC would probably include some kind of Chord Licensed DSP / DAC arrangement.

THe principle is great, but I have to say I'm not sure how it would work in practice. My understanding is Davina itself would only be aimed at specialist usage, however a multi-channel spin-off would then provide the potential for wider recording studio take-up, but to me it would seem unlikely to become mainstream, even if that would be the ideal (at least for Dave owners and Chord fortunes). 

NickSeattle posted:

In the old days, you could record for hours off of FM using a brilliant Revox or Tandberg, etc., at very high quality; and, if it was for personal replay, you could live it up.  

What are people using these days?  Portable digital boxes seem not quite the same.

 

I tried my hardest to kill music by home taping as a teenager, but it didn't seem to work.

The only digital equivalent that springs to mind is the TuneIn radio app, which allows you to record whatever you stream on it, but that's just going to be crappy MP3.

If anything, I would use my portable digital recorder - Tascam DR (forgot which number). It will handle 24 bit, up to 48 kHZ sampling rate into PCM WAV. Newer modesl will go up to 96 kHZ/24 bit.

ChrisSU posted:

I tried my hardest to kill music by home taping as a teenager, but it didn't seem to work.

 

Me too.  I was a "pirate" in junior high school in the early 1970's.  Taped my friends' records.

A few FM tuners have digital outputs. Otherwise you could use an a/d converter.

Thanks, all.

I suspect Adam's Tascam DRn and Richard's Sony portable digital recorder (PCMD100?) are the answer.  

I recently bought a used Nakamichi CR-3A which I like a lot -- always wanted a Nak.  But good blank tapes are getting scarce, and are too short for my purposes.  Tried using an M-Audio ADC into a Mac, and the AudioHighJack app.  Both of those approaches have usability issues, compared with the Nak, which has some its own, of course.

Nick

Tascam is available via pro-shops - it's a very neat little thing, which we use non-stop with our band to record rehearsals. It has built in microphones, accepts balanced and unblanced line and mike connections. And it records up to 4 tracks at the same time

Recording is done onto a an SD card.

Bart posted:

ChrisSU posted:

I tried my hardest to kill music by home taping as a teenager, but it didn't seem to work.

 

Me too.  I was a "pirate" in junior high school in the early 1970's.  Taped my friends' records.

Aye Bart, there comes a time in most men’s lives where they feel the need to raise the Black Flag. I say give me freedom or give me the rope, for I shall not take the shackles that subjugate the poor to uphold the rich! 

On a lighter note, you know much a the pirate will pay for an ear piercing?  A buccaneer.

Arrrrrrgh (and ATB).

C. Hook

Nick, if you don't want to mess around with a computer, decent ADC and associated software then the best of the pocket recorders can be surprisingly fine, and great fun too.  As previously posted, I have a Sony PCM-M10 which is a cinch to use and records at up to 24bit 96kHz to WAV files.  It looks and feels good too - Sony mastered this sort of thing with their high end Walkmans like the DD, DC2, D6C, D3 etc.. - and has good meters, monitoring  and handy line-in and line-out sockets so you can use it just like a tape deck of old.  It's best if you avoid the auto level control and set levels accordingly with the side mounted control - just make sure you don't exceed 0dB.  There are red LEDs for each channel that will flash when you hit 0dB and it indicates "over" when this is exceeded (a bad thing as you get nasty digital distortion). The internal microphones are pretty good but are omni-directional so best for recording a big orchestra or ambient concert rather than direct voice.  You can attach an external microphone though and I have used my old ECM-909 that I used with my Walkman Pro to good effect.   And lastly, it's powerful enough to drive headphones of the calibre of the Sennheiser HD600, and good enough to make using them enjoyable too.

It looks like the PCM-M10 is now discontinued but a quick search shows it still available from the usual places. There's a bigger and perhaps better model out called the PCM-D100 that will record at 24/192 and DSD.  It's twice the price but looks like it could be rather good for the money.  I'm not in any rush to trade my PCM-M10 for the PCM-D100 though.  Well, not yet anyway.

Hmmm...

Thanks, Richard.

I also note the Sony ICD-SX2000 "High-Resolution Portable Audio Recorder" and wonder what it might be missing.  $229!

(Ahoy!  Hook!)

Nick

We use several Tascam DR-100mkII portable recorders at work to good effect. We need phantom power and decent microphone preamps in a portable package which is what the Tascam delivers. There is now a mkIII, but I haven't used it. On occasions I've also been able to use a Tascam to take a feed from the soundboard at some concerts, where they have also been excellent.

From time to time we also use the Apogee Duet, but generally find the Tascam units offer better quality recordings.

Regarding computer based sources Audio Hijack works great. For YouTube, youtube-dl is generally the best tool imo. It's an open source YouTube downloader that also offers audio only options. I also use it when I want to keep/archive a YouTube video. [@mention:1566878603896366] consider trying youtube-dl. It's a lot faster than recording in real time.

Good stuff, Greg!  Thanks.

NickSeattle posted:

Thanks, Richard.

I also note the Sony ICD-SX2000 "High-Resolution Portable Audio Recorder" and wonder what it might be missing.  $229!

(Ahoy!  Hook!)

Nick

Yes, I saw this and unfortunately it doesn't look like much of a PCM-M10 substitute; Quite part from a cheaper looking build, no line out, and no easily adjustable rec level.  It looks like it has been aimed at the more casual consumer rather than the pro market. The 40Hz cut-off also indicates that it's aimed more at casual recording. 

I download the BBC hidef programs. I use a Roland R05 for recording my LPs as 9624 ...and in theory Radio feeds if I felt the need.

M