what are you doing about the quality of your sound
bozak
334 Posts
I am curious to what ends strutters are going to preserve sound quality when recording your records into your computer for archival, mixcd, microwave purposes.I recently had a conversation with the mastering engineer John Dent (bob marley, grace jones, zero 7, many more) about analogue and digital. I am now much more concerned about getting the most sound out of my records as possible. I am exploring ways to improve my signal pathway leading into my computer and wonder what you all have done to maximize your results.
Comments
Talking to John got me interested in everything from alternative cartridges for purely listening and recording use, the internal design of my mixer (rane ttm-54), cables (like you said), alternatives to the 1200, and most interesting to myself, quality a/d conversion. The element I am most likely to change soon are cables and cartridges but I do need a new mixer as well. I am looking into findin an old bozak actually. I have read the sound quality on those is second to none.
Shitty TT with $$$$$ Monster Cables = shitty sound.
I am not an audiophile but I do notice some of my rips sounding a bit crapp-esque.
I do not have a lot of bread to invest however... what are some cost-effective solutions on the mixer, table, needle level?
But they preserve the shitty.
Absolutely, top notch shitty preserver cables.
Yes well there's a lot of things that I need to do. My 1210s are still in perfect working condition but they're also 15 years old and I would like to get new wired installed in them. Also I'm looking at getting the TTM-57, which I think has pretty good sound - it's no Allen & Heath, but it's good. Mything now is that I run everything through a Behringer Eurorack MX2004 which is good but not GREAT. I have a Mackie board in the mail (I don't know what one, it was free) so hopefully that will be better.
Other than that, i just try to do other things, like basically keeping everything OUT of the red.
AI mentioned Allen and heath. That xone 3d looks like a f*ckin beast. If money grew on trees thats the joint I would cop. Excellent sound/ built in sound card/ plus midi controls for my production softward. I wonder if there is some way its controls could be assigned to microwave?
anyone know of any great sounding turntables/tonearms? If I were to go out and buy something today stressing value what should I pick up? how about carts?
speaking of rewiring 1200s/1210s. I recently got mine redone. I talked to these guys (who really know there shit) about hooking up the cables with some real audiophile shit and they told me its not worth it. They instead recommended coax cable as its really durable and should last a long long time. I needed one table hooked up but I ended up getting all three of my tables rewired to keep the quality the same across the board. I must say these cables are made to last.
Whatyouknowaboutthat?
keep in mind I am no authority here on a/d conversion.
yes sound cards have internal a/d conversion as they take your analogue signal and at the end of the chain you wind up with a digital version of that.
A good A/D converter makes that transition with the least amount of deterioration to the source signal, and it will do it without the addition of any artifacts imbeded into the signal that are created by the process itself.
I would assume that a delta 44 card that costs...lets say 300 bucks....and does everything for you ( has pre's, internal a/d &d/a conversion, a headphone amp, etc. etc.) has to cut corners to meet that price point. the signal to noise ratio may be a lil lower then ideal, it may not be able to convert at the highest possible levels (24 bit/192 khz), it may have limited bandwith, and leave its footprint on the sound.
A quality a/d converter on its own that costs the same amount or more will be able to do these things simply at a higher level of quality because you are not paying for anything other then the quality of conversion.
some companies that make good converters are apogee, benchmark, RME, universal audio, just to name a few.
This info comes from a days worth of looking through a sweetwater catalogue so id say google a/d conversion for more insight.
ONE QUESTION:
did you have your external converter synched to a clock? a lot of external converters really need this to be done in order to eliminate the jitter that can occur during a/d conversion. The bad sound you experienced may have been related to jitter.
i think :P
I heard a microwave DJ the other night and the sound quality was horrendous. Nice selection and great deck skills, but all in vein.
any experiences with that? cause i need new needles asap.
Re: A/D Conversion - No, I didn't synch to a clock wit the external. That could have something to do with it. Who knows. Either way, I have another question. If you use an external unit, do you output from the AD Converter to a USB drive and bypass the soundcard altogether? What would the soundcard most likely do with the already converted signal from the A/D converter if you did run it through the card to the comp?
they are good.
They've been out for a few years now. Not a single person of everyone I know who's tried them liked them.
your a/d external is your sound card. once you go thru that stage, there is no need to go into[/b] another soundcard (you can output thru your internal soundcard if you want).
think of it this way. analog signal is sound at its purest form (are air waves considered analog...? havent even thought of that). the analog signal is like this
its really REALLy intensive on a computer to understand and recreate a continous stream of that osolating waveform. so what the a/d does is its takes thousands of moments of the waveform (slices, points, or snapshots), and stores them as little moments of time. (incidentally when you playback these moments your sound card does D/A conversion.. it basically does math to recreate the original wave from).
your comp can understand sound in this way because its all 1s and 0s after the A/D stage. once the waveform is translated in this way, there is no need to pump it through another soundcard or A/D process.. its already digitized.
that being said, the A/D is really one of the most crucial stages in maintaining high fidelity and thats why people shell mad loot for high end converters.
that being said, digi convertors are garbage unless you use their HD systems. the mboxes, 001, and 002 lines are no better than comsumer/comsumer-pro garbage. ive hurd amazing things about the motu traveler, but ive never used it. but all in all, appogee seems to be the best (at least from my expereience). they use crystals to do the conversion. F*CKIN CRYSTALS!!!
regarding sound cards - the manufacturer of the sound card really makes no big difference. there will be one digital signal processing chip inside which will do all the A to D convesion and that should be your point of interest. i know the mackie a/d cards for their mixers use the TI C6713 chip. i personally use the C6713 chip for one of my DSP courses and it's highly regarded in the field.
only thing i can suggest is do your research. all the soundcard is doing is feeding your signal to the chip which does the bulk of the work. once the signal is encoded digitally, there's not much the card can do to screw up considering the channel is wired and transmission is within a short distance (see: very low probability for error). of course, you should consider the computer software the manufacturer provides to interface your computer with the soundcard, but this is merely for the sake of convenience and compatibility with OS updates and your music software. m-audio has a fairly good track record for providing driver updates.
if you get into cards with built in pre-amps that's a whole different story.
they probably use quartz which has a very precise frequency of oscillation which depends on the thickness of the cut. this would enable sampling at the exact frequency required. fyi - your wristwatch does the same thing to count seconds.
for best quality, when you're sampling, use as high a value as your computer and your soundcard can process. this will reduce noise and distortion. 96KHz is a good benchmark.
I have the same experience. All my friends that bought them sold em after a month or so. I tried em and I just couldnt see why they were any better then the m447. they even tracked worse.
i had them for almost three years and sold them, but cause i planned on buying ortofons instead. I use 44-7s at the house/clubs, when i was doing clubs, and used the white labels when i was doing radio. Not bad, but not horribly impressive, and but didnt seem to sound significantly better than the 44-7s. Skip a little more than 44-7s, not as loud, but easier to track where your laying down the needle compared to 44-7s with the guard, which probably gave it the only advantage when doing radio.
im yet to buy the ortofons, which will happen one day or another