On 03/07/14 12:24, Carlos E. R. wrote:
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Snip that bit Absolutely correct.
In fact, the limits in vinyls depends a lot on your hardware: the frequency response of the needle, and the conversion curve of the pickup assembly, which is not linear neither in amplitude nor frequency. The pre-amplifier could compensate. Then you also have to consider that the arm of the pickup could be pivoting from a holding point (and the radius differed on each model), or on a perpendicular tracking system, quite expensive: the result was that the response varied from the start of the record to the end (even on perpendicular arm, because the record maker could have taken in consideration a standard pivoting arm).
All or most of which has been solved. Any pickup arm I've ever used (going back to the 70's) is attached to the TT at a fixed point, the radius is not nor has ever been in my experience variable. I may have misunderstood what you mean by radius. I assume by perpendicular you mean a tone arm that is set up to be parallel to the record's surface. Any properly designed pick up arm is designed so that the user can adjust the vertical tracking angle to suit the needs of the phono cartridge relative to the record's surface. I am unfamiliar with record makers designing their products to cope with any of this. Any competent phono preamplifier is and has been for decades, designed to process the signal from the phono from the non linear RIAA curve into a linear signal.
Then the pickup arm had to compensate for weight, and... I don't remember the name, even less in English. Related to the centrifuge force. You actually needed lab equipment to properly calibrate those things.
All properly designed pickup arms can be set up to properly adjust the playing weight needed by the fitted phono cartridge. All you need to to is check the cartridge specs and apply the correct settings. To do any of this you only need a simple tracking force gauge and an alignment protractor (a simple cardboard thing) to check that the cardridge is properly aliened relative to the arm. Nobody needs lab equipment to set up these things. If it sounds wrong readjust until it's right, ears are the most useful tool.
Then there was the "RIAA equalization".
Exactly implementing this is close to impossible, you only approximate it as much as the expertise of the designer allows, and the available money allows. Analog filters are complex in math, and more so in real hardware.
Rubbish, its been in existence since then vinyl lp was invented. Competently designed equipment doesn't any problem
All that is distortion, different from machine to machine, and from record to record.
The vinyls some times were "undulated", the plastic could bend, depending on storage and quality.
Then there is dust, unavoidable. There is wear, also unavoidable: it could be reduced a lot (proportionally to money spent). Nowdays you may have a laser "needle": there is no actual wear, but the laser may instead pick imperfections on the surface that previously could not be detected. I guess that they employ analog filtering - don't tell me they employ digital filters, because that means that they digitize the signal and work on it as on a CD. It would kill all the "enjoyment" of a vinyl.
Laser pickups were available in the 70's they didn't work. Wear is utterly avoidable if you play vinyl with properly designed and set up equipment
That is, even on silent periods, you could hear the vinyl. And to me, this kills it.
Again on properly designed equipment with records kept and maintained properly that is not an issue. Dust is an issue but unless you live in a cobwebbed attic is hardly insurmountable, a very cheap stylus brush can cope with any build up on the stylus, and record cleaning and storage isn't exactly hard.
What about CD's? Well, they have limitations, but if the thing is properly and inexpensively implemented, the signal is always the same for everybody, no distortion whatsoever, no noise. It does not get better, but neither worse.
I could go on about this, but cd was designed as a convenience medium (the basic spec was a and is set too low) and so the record companies could persuade us to replace our vinyl for knew shiny "better" stuff. I have 700 or so cd's I have them encoded in lossless quality (flac) onto my pc. I play them through a high end sound card connected to a pretty decent (but by no means expensive) hi fi system. I find that the same material in direct comparison sound better to me on vinyl. But that is just me and my preference.
snip I would like to convert my collection to digital, but I don't know what to use and how expensive it is. In my case, I also have a lot of 78 RPM disks I'd like to convert.
And I would like to do that in Linux.
How good are these "analog-to-digital" vinyl players?
Is the digitizing done on the player or the computer?
Software requirement? Ie, I do not want to do it in Windows.
I have been researching this, the good news is that you can do it in Linux You might start here http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/recording_with_usb_turntables.html How good are analogue to digital players ? I don't know never having used one, but there are plenty of reviews out there. How expensive ? As in all things that depends on your own budget, you can do it the cheapest way or spend more money, only you can choose. At the very least given that you want to convert 78's you need a turntable that will play them. Without knowing your budget I'd look at something in the upper range of usb turntables, but it all depends on how good you need the quality to be. The digitising is done on the computer, in other words the usb turntable has an inbuilt dac, you then feed the digital output from that to the pc, record it onto the pc with audacity and the edit it according to your needs. Mike -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org