Optimum settings for recording LPs with further editing (sample rate and bit depth)

[Craig Maier]

Hi,

Yes, the test would be very interesting. But keep in mind that you really need a flat preamplifier to do this else the EQ curve of the RIAA preamp will get in the way of your results and substantially distort them. Do you have one?

Craig

[Dan McDonald]

Hey Craig -
Yes, I have a flat preamp. I just need a little extra time to get the experiment done. I've got a few 45s around that I don't need, some 78s and a few lps.

Dan

[Craig Maier]

Hi,

I am guessing that playing an LP at 45 will probably track ok. Not sure what happens when you try to play an LP at 78. Actually, it may be better to transfer the LP at 16 RPM since that will definitely track ok and the bandwidth of your equipment (cartridge and preamp) will have no issues. Actually, if you are using the flat preamp that I designed a long time ago (sold by Tracer), it is flat to 150 kHz, so you should be fine (CTP-1000). The cartridge will become the limiting factor if you do a high speed transfer. I suspect that you will get the best results with fractional speed transfers like 16 rpm because the cartridge frequency response requirement will be halfed (although the bottom corner frequency will be increased by a factor of 2 also - - - probably not a big issue with most LP recordings).

Craig

[Dan McDonald]

good idea. It would be interesting to see if 16 is actually better for lps anyway!

Dan

[Craig Maier]

Yeah, I think it would be interesting to transfer a 33.3 LP at 16 RPM via a flat preamp using a 96 kHz sampling rate and a flat pre-amp. Next, I would correct the speed to 33.33 rpm via the speed change filter. Then, I would apply the correct EQ curve via the Virtual Phono Preamplifer (usually - RIAA). Then, I would try to de-click the result of that process. It would be interesting. The sound quality could be quite good, but I am not sure.

Craig

[Marc Hildebrant]

Interesting mix of idea's and experiments.

For the record (punny eh?), Wooly Bully is on the outside, first song on the Sam The Sham Record so it has the highest speed during playback.

I am still struggling to get my 45's to clean up. The one by "Taco" called "Puttin On The Ritz" is a real bear so far.

My current theory, is that the bulk of the noise on my vinyl LP's is small, dust caued pops, where as the 45's are real big pops caused by lots of wear.

The jury is still out on 96KHz vs 44.1 KHz for the LP's as I tend to change many things between my experiments.......

Marc

[Craig Maier]

Hi,

My general overall experience with 45s is that distortion is the dominent noise component. I think that there are several reasons for that. Many 45s were over-modulated in the mastering process to make them sound louder on low cost playback equipment (especially during the 60s). Adding to that is the fact that they were often played a zillion times by the teen-age consumers of that time, often using worn out styli. Also, I think that the real popular stuff used stampers well beyond their useful life because their audience just did not really care about distortion. Add to that the fact that 45s played on turntables optimized for 12 inch records do not track optimally. I note that the CNF operating in "Artifact Suppression Mode" does clean up some of that 45 RPM record intermodulation distortion.

Craig

ps - I recall that it was "Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs" right? Wooly Bully was my High School girlfriend and my "Our Song". Most couples picked some real mushy stuff, so we went out of our way to be different. Hey, Sue, remember that? LOL!

[Marc Hildebrant]

I'm holding that Album (in my formally nictotine stained hands) and it clearly shows "Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs", so Craig you are correct !! With regard to "our songs", I keep trying to get my wife to agree with me that we should pick "Red Hot" by Sam The Sham ("My Gal is red hot...your Gal ain't dodally squat") , but I haven't yet had any sucess.......

By the way, I ran a test with a 3 stage impulse filters....the 44.1KHz setting produced some distortion due to the impulse removal, where as 96 KHz didn't have any distortion. So, the extra information does help the filters to make "good" decisions.

Also, I have tried boosting the high frequency signals before the filters (reverse RIAA) and then adding the low frequencies back at the end (RIAA). It seems to help.

Marc

[Craig Maier]

Hey, Red Hot would be a great "Our Song" - - - your wife should be flattered by the idea of that!

On the technical note (no pun intended) I know that the impulse filters are capable of using ultrasonic signals to help discriminate between noise and signal (it is in the code). So, I guess it comes down more to the performance of any given set of system hardware (phono cartridge, preamp, soundcard performance).

I wonder if there is a difference between what I use (mostly 48 kHz) and 96 kHz. There should be, but I have not A-B compared results. There should also be a difference between 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz; not sure where the law of diminishing returns occurrs (except I do know that that law will occur above 96 kHz). I sometimes use 96 kHz on a really good record album, but have not compared results with the use of 48 kHz.

Craig

[Lord Theo]

I record 24/96 with an M-Audio Delta card & a flat preamp. The impulse & cnf filters seem to respond better than 16/44.1

[eddie the eagle]

Wow - goldmine of information

Hi All,

Just wanted to say thanks, but not to stop this one from going. A goldmine of information out there.

Please keep the discussion going - amazing.

Regards,

Andrew

[Marc Hildebrant]

I'm going back and forth on just what is the best setting. The 96 KHz uses up a lot of space, but then again storage is cheap today.

Marc

[Craig Maier]

Good point - I recall seeing 2 TByte Hard Drives recently for around $100.00. Given that, it would be hard to recommend using anything but 96 kHz transfers these days.

Craig

[Dan McDonald]

Back over the holidays (Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's), I picked up 2 2TB hard drives for $59 each. Iomega drives, which have been working great since I got them. The week before I had gotten a 1TB for about $80, so I was happy to see these. At this point, I've got about 8 backup drives at various spots on my desk and am trying to figure out how to consolidate them. I need a rack or something.

Dan

[Craig Maier]

That is a pretty amazing price - - - very compelling for the argument being made here for 96 kHz transfers. I would recommend that some of your hard drives be kept "off premisis" just in case. When I began our digital archive, the media was PCM encoded onto NTSC video tape. It was a cumbersome media prior to the advent of DAT and real large hard drives were not even to be considered back then. Most of my digital archive was transferred between 1988 and around 2005, so the media has changed alot since then. I wish I had available then what is available today in those regards.

Craig

ps - btw - we transferred the very early Video based PCM files to .wav format on Hard Drives just before the tapes were no longer playable. If one tries to play them today, they are loaded with digital drop-outs. We got lucky on that one (the Edison Lateral Cut Archive was originally transferred to PCM digital between the years of 1988 through 1994). I transferred my own archive to digital some time thereafter.