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Old 2005-03-06, 04:29 AM
h_vargas
 
Re: More on vinyl transfer/lineage questions

thanks, Five!

i try to provide useful (or useless) info and factoids whenever possible. i'm a geek that way.

e6003 - although it's easy to "get burned" by buying gear on ebay, it's not always a bad way to find equipment. one just needs to be smart when purchasing.

years ago, i bought a non-functional D7 off ebay so i could start taping concerts. included in the auction was a digital converter box; it had a 7-pin connector to the D7 as well as digital coax and optical toslink connectors for input/output. it cost me $100 (the digital converter box, at the time, was worth $50-100 by itself). no one bid on the item because it was being sold as a non-functional unit. so, i snagged it for $100 shipped with the digital converter box. i sent it to ProDigital, and paid $150 to get the D7 refurbished to new specs (turns out the unit would not power on, someone soldered in a wrong part electrical part). so i ended up paying $250 for a D7 and digital converter box, which at the time was a GREAT deal. point being, it's sometimes good to buy electronics like DAT players/recorders on ebay, when you can get them dirt cheap.

also, regarding using a DAT player as a "preamp," another nice thing about this method is that most "home" DAT decks have an analog volume input knob. this can help a GREAT deal in getting a nice input level while recording to the PC. btw, when doing analog > CDR conversions, it's always a good idea to go to the loudest part of the source material, and have it play to your soundcard/PC, and watch the levels. this way, you can adjust the input levels (on the DAT player analog input volume knob, for instance, and on the analog deck volume output knob if applicable). remember, you want a good signal... if possible, have the peaks hitting around -2 dB (this will give you a little headroom and help prevent any distortion), and the average peaks hitting around -12 dB to -6 dB. with input levels in those areas, the signal is hot enough to retain the dynamics of the original recording, but not so loud as to cause distortion.

another aside note (yes, i'm a wealth of useless info, at times). some Sony consumer standalone CD recorders have noise floors at -74 dB. although this isn't "great," it's enough to use for a decent quality analog-to-CDR transfer. but if possible, i'd advise against any transfer method that requires DAE (Digital Audio Extraction). there's just something nice about having DAE-free sources in lossless format.

oh, and since you're converting vinyl > CDR, it's probably a good idea to check out your needle. if it's in "so-so" condition, it's worth it to get a new one for your transfers. for more info on doing vinyl > CDR transfers, such as using the "play wet method," check out http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq03.html#S3-12 .
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