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How low can you sink?

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Posted on March 5, 2015 at 02:44:38
Ryelands
Audiophile

Posts: 1867
Location: Scotland
Joined: January 9, 2009
 I've been digitising some elderly LPs for a friend. Because the box I'm using for the job runs XP, my Linestream+ ADC either works very well at 96/24 or doesn't work at all. (It's a driver issue; the device does all one could wish for Win 7 and up.)

SQ-wise, results are much better than I expected but my pal needs his data in 48/24 format. I have R8_Brain (free) but nothing antsy-fancy like iZotope. Given that the recordings and, in most cases the LPs, are half a century old or more, that they are jazz, not classical and that I'm going 96>48 rather than 96>44.1 (and not changing bit depth), can anyone with practical experience comment on how much difference the pro-grade program might make?

Thanks in anticipation . . .

Dave

 

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RE: How low can you sink?, posted on March 5, 2015 at 03:46:34
John Elison
Audiophile

Posts: 23900
Location: Central Kentucky
Joined: December 20, 2000
Contributor
  Since: January 29, 2004
 All you really have to do is conduct the down-sampling procedure with software you already own and listen for yourself. It's unlikely you will hear any difference. However, if you aren't satisfied, buy the pro-grade program.

Good luck,
John Elison

 

RE: How low can you sink?, posted on March 5, 2015 at 06:04:15
Ryelands
Audiophile

Posts: 1867
Location: Scotland
Joined: January 9, 2009
 All you really have to do is conduct the down-sampling procedure with software you already own and listen for yourself. It's unlikely you will hear any difference.

Thanks for the tip but my scenario is not as simple as that.

For the reasons given, I'm ripping with what I hope is the best possible setup of my ADC - 96/24.

Though I'm working on it, my DAC currently does the RBCD sampling rate only - when I play hi-res files, they are down-sampled in real time. Though I like the sound, I have no means of comparing the effects of altering the various parameters that some here suggest make a significant difference to SQ. Who knows? They might just be right so I thought I'd ask. Perish the thought, I might even learn something . . .

Best

Dave

 

RE: How low can you sink?, posted on March 5, 2015 at 09:05:48
Tony Lauck
Audiophile

Posts: 13629
Location: Vermont
Joined: November 12, 2007
 The better SRCs have a bunch of parameters that control how the conversion is done. I doubt this will be useful if you don't have the ability to accurately monitor the results.

If you friend "needs" 48/24 then he doesn't "need" top rate sound. I'd give him both 96/24 and 48/24 just in case. Let him throw away the higher resolution if he doesn't want it. However, this seems rather foolish when you consider that the cost in time (at the minimum wage) to do a vinyl transfer is 100 times more costly than the cost of storage to hold what was actually transferred.

There is a solid reason for preserving the original transfer. Should the desire arise later to do any post transfer processing, results will be better if the higher sampling rate is used. For example, the smear from vinyl ticks and pops will be less, making it easier to recognize these events and making it easier to do surgical removal.

Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

 

RE: How low can you sink?, posted on March 5, 2015 at 21:32:05
Jaundiced Ear
 Have you thought about posting in the music computer forum on gearslutz? A lot of music pros hang out there.

JE

 

Curious... Why 24/48?, posted on March 6, 2015 at 18:22:23
Archimago
Audiophile

Posts: 821
Joined: January 18, 2002
 Curious why your buddy wants 24/48?

Anyhow, IMO if we're looking at vinyl digitization, just digitize at 24/96 on your ADC and use almost anything to downsample to 24/48... I find that dBPowerAmp with its SSRC Resample DSP works just fine and fast and I've yet to hear of anyone noticing so long as the DAC plays 48kHz well.

These days with the maturity of the software tools, an integer downsample from 96->48 is straightforward.

Why not also have a listen at 16/48? For old ("elderly") vinyl I doubt it'll make a difference and save storage. A good viny wash/cleaning step will likely make more difference than what you do on the digital side...



-------
Archimago's Musings: A 'more objective' audiophile blog.

 

RE: Curious... Why 24/48?, posted on March 7, 2015 at 05:03:30
Ryelands
Audiophile

Posts: 1867
Location: Scotland
Joined: January 9, 2009
 Curious why your buddy wants 24/48?

Thanks for the various tips and, er, comments. I didn't say that the request was for 48/24 only. I understand my friend is preparing material for a musical education project but didn't feel it was my place to go poking him in the chest about file specs. As it goes, he's managed to enlist the help of a retired pro-audio chap to process the data so I'm off the hook once they are captured and formatted.

If you friend "needs" 48/24 then he doesn't "need" top rate sound.

Not sure that's a reason for not doing the work as well as I reasonably can. It goes without saying that the material will be archived as captured but the debate about whether 48/24 is so intrinsically sub-optimal that it is no good even for digitising LPs manufactured half a century ago belongs, thankfully, elsewhere.

 

RE: Curious... Why 24/48?, posted on March 7, 2015 at 07:04:06
Tony Lauck
Audiophile

Posts: 13629
Location: Vermont
Joined: November 12, 2007
 The only part of your post that I take exception to is the (implied) denigration of LPs manufactured half a century ago. There is little reason to believe that age is a factor in sound quality from LPs, assuming they have been played little and stored properly. Indeed, a case can be made that LPs hold their musical quality better than magnetic tape. Some of the finest recorded sound is to be found on these older LPs, at least in some musical genres.




Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

 

RE: Curious... Why 24/48?, posted on March 7, 2015 at 12:31:44
Ryelands
Audiophile

Posts: 1867
Location: Scotland
Joined: January 9, 2009
 The only part of your post that I take exception to is the (implied) denigration of LPs . . .

What I take exception to is that I asked what I'd hoped was a fairly straightforward technical question the likes of which I've answered scores of times here the years but found myself in some cases being not helped but "put in my place".

My conclusion - I stand to be proven wrong - is that those who brag of their expertise with this sophistico-filter and that non-linear gaphloonky at 100 million bits per odd-number leap year are not perhaps as competent I'd assumed. Pity, that.

There is little reason to believe that age is a factor in sound quality from LPs,

How many LPs do you have that were recorded, say, before the mid, late 1950s? IME, 78s (and compilation LPs made from 78s) recorded in the 1930s and 40s, whatever the genre, typically sound as good as, if not better than, LPs from the early 50s, track length restrictions aside.

D

 

RE: Curious... Why 24/48?, posted on March 7, 2015 at 13:13:28
Tony Lauck
Audiophile

Posts: 13629
Location: Vermont
Joined: November 12, 2007
 You mentioned LPs, not 78's, so I commented on LPs. You mentioned 50 years, so this means LPs from (approx) 1950-1965. There were high quality mono recordings from the early 1950's and high quality stereo recordings from the late 50's through 1965. This period was a golden age in stereo recording. Generally speaking, sound quality went down for some period later, at least for classical recordings. I blame this situation on the use of Dolby A compression, multiple microphone multiple track recording with subsequent mixdown, the use of early solid state amplification instead of tubes, and somewhat later the use of early digital recording technology. At the time these new methods were introduced they were billed as "advances" but that was not true as these technologies were far from being perfected. In many cases it is likely that a needle drop to hi-res digital will preserve these classic recordings better than a remastering from available tapes. Unfortunately, there are many potential problems with long term storage on analog magnetic tape, including self-erasure, print-through, sticky-shed and general deterioration of the media.

There are some record labels today that are using advanced recording technologies and producing sound that equals or exceeds the golden era recordings. Unfortunately, many of today's current classical artists aren't recording on these labels. In the early 1960's off the air FM broadcasts of live symphony concerts produced excellent results, as contrasted to today's execrable compressed garbage available today (at least in the US).

With respect to sound quality, older classical recordings are at least the equal, if not better, than more recent recordings and deserve being archived in the highest available resolution. We are fortunate that vinyl is a better long term storage medium than analog magnetic tape and that available LP playback technology has improved over the years.






Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

 

Nothing wrong with 24/48, posted on March 8, 2015 at 17:39:40
rlw
Audiophile

Posts: 3347
Location: Near West Palm Bch, FL
Joined: August 29, 2006
 24 bits and 48KHz is plenty good enough for the archiving of vinyl. And the file sizes it produces are much smaller than using 96KHz or 192KHz.

As Tony said in one of his posts, vinyl is a good storage medium and should be able to last a century or more. Then, for distribution, you can make a "needle drop" recording using 24 bits and 48/96/192 KHz. Providing the turntable and cartridge are of sufficient quality, the digital copies should sound very, very good indeed.

I made just such recordings about 10 years ago using a buddy's MoFi Beatles Box Set vinyl and the resulting digital files were indistinguishable (to my and his ears) from the original vinyl. This allows one to thoroughly enjoy that vinyl magic as many times as one likes without introducing additional wear and tear on the records themselves...
-RW-

 

RE: How low can you sink?, posted on March 10, 2015 at 18:30:51
wolfy
 I agree. My suggestion is to use the highest bit rate available. I have not tried 24/48 for digitizing vinyl, but unless one is looking for nothing more than a reasonable facsimile of the original artifact, the higher bit rate will get you closer to a "musical experience."

Having the opportunity to experiment with 24/96, which means the cd player has been ditched, I have more optimism these days that the digital medium is the way forward.

I guess my answer is not below 24 bits.

 

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