[mdlug] Vinyl to digital

[Morris, Tim]

Why are we having this conversation? You know you're not supposed to rip
your [purchased] records... You should just go out and BUY CDs!!

(then rip those ;) 


--  Tim Morris - UGS

-----Original Message-----
From: mdlug-bounces at mdlug.org [mailto:mdlug-bounces at mdlug.org] On Behalf
Of Aaron Kulkis
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 4:11 PM
To: MDLUG's Main discussion list
Subject: Re: [mdlug] Vinyl to digital

Ingles, Raymond wrote:
>> From: Paul
> 
>> 	Ratshack used to sell a phono pre-amp for not much, if you
really 
>> dont have a home amplifier with a phono pre-amp. Recording such a low

>> signal would I imagine, reduce the real dynamic range of the signal, 
>> (eg. if you are sampling at 16 bits but your highest sample never 
>> gets above 8 bits, you are essentially recording in
>> 8 bit quality) and then dramaticly amplify the floor of whatever 
>> noise exists in the path thru the card.
> 
>  I would have thought so, too, but the resultant files have sound 
> about as good as those records ever sounded. Sometime in the next few 
> days I'm going to do some experimenting and see if things get any 
> better. I'm not expecting miracles from source material that's over 20

> years old in some cases. :->
>

Brand new vinyl typically has 72 dB Signal to Noise Ratio.
Digital is 6 dB SNR per bit, which means

8 bits => 48 dB SNR
12 bits => 72 dB SNR
16 bits => 96 dB SNR

Therefore, your ideal sampling size is 12 bits at >= 2 x f(hi) where
f(hi)is the highest frequency which is both reproduced on your recording
and hearable by the human ear.
(this is referred to as "the Nyquist frequency")


Typical human hearing cuts off at 20 kHz, which is why 44 kHz is chosen
for the Nyquist Frequency for CD's.. it gives f(hi) of 22 kHz, which is
comfortably above the 20 kHz upper limit of human hearing.




>> 	Btw. AFAIK libsamplerate aka Secret Rabbit Code is the best
thing 
>> for resampling out there. Ive heard that sox uses more primative 
>> techniques. (maybe that has changed)
> 
>  Well, I used the highest-quality SOX resampler for my tests with 
> Gramofile. I'll play with libsamplerate next time, too.
> 
>  Sincerely,
> 
>  Ray Ingles                                             (313) 227-2317
> 
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