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Hi, I finally have the means to transfer my records to a PC. I need some set up help if anyone has some ideas.I have a new Rega Fono mini A2D. This is a phono preamp with a level control and a USB interface and that's about it. I also have a nice Technics SL-20 manual turntable with a soon new Grado about 120.00, I forgot the color. My computer is about 2 years old and is a Dell desktop Intel Core 13. The instructions call for a line level amp input.Do I need an amp,preamp, integrated amp, or a headphone amp? My computer has a head phone jack but I have never tried it out. To get up and running I have a Dyna ST-70 tube amp, a Heathkit AA-32 integrated tube amp,and a Dyna PAT4 or PAS3 preamp,or a separate head phone amp called the Corda. The pre amps have the line level inputs for phono. Does anyone have a clue on a good setup? The Rega instructions are all on 1 page. The Rega is a small black box similar to the NAD and simpler than the Parasound for archiving vinyl.....thanks so much for any help,...sincerely, Mark Korda
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I mean why do you want to record LPs to digital? Really think about what you want out of this because it effects what you will need and what you will need to learn.I record to digital and I can tell you that it can be a royal PITA. If you want to record each LP and just play back your LPs as if they are on your turntable then you have a relatively easy job. If you want to break each side up into individual tracks and potentially record them to CD and/or DVD-A then it will be more difficult.
Like all things, recording to digital can be cheap and easy or expensive and very complicated. The easiest way to record to digital is to get yourself a standalone CDR recorder (if you can find one anymore) and plug it into your rig like its a cassette deck or RTR deck.
The standalone CDR recorder is the easiest way to record LPs to digital but you are restricted. The standalone recorder can do a very good job of making Audio CDRs but that's about it. Once you have the CDR your are done.
Most of them work like a tape recorder. You place the recordable media in the recorder, put the recorder in recording/pause mode, cue up the LP and start the recorder. Whatever is on the turntable will be recorded to the CDR. Along the way the CDR recorder will have a way to enter track markers via the remote control, so your job would be to sit and listen to the LP and hit a button on the remote when the LP reaches a space between tracks.
Once the CDR is done recording you have to finalize the CDR so it can be played on regular CD players but you are essentially done at that point.
There are also hybrid boxes, where you record to a hard drive in the recorder and then burn that recording to the CDR whenever you wish. Each of these has different capabilities and you have to ask what kind of editing and advanced features are built into the recorder.
There are also DSD recorders that record whatever is on the line input to DSD onto internal storage. Some of these are made by Korg and reportedly are very high quality recorders but again you are limited to whatever is built into the DSD recorder.
The most flexible way to record to digital is to purchase an A2D converter and record the output of the A2D converter to files on a computer. Once you have those files you can edit them, playback the files in the format they are recorded in or convert the files to alternate file formats.
There is little limit to what you can do with computer based recordings. The limit is imposed by the software you own and the format that the original file is in. The original recording should be made at the highest resolution that your A2D converter supports so you can then use that original file to create anything you pretty much want.
Again this is limited by your computer, the software you have and your knowledge of how all of this works. There are some limitations imposed by incompatible formats but if you purchase a good quality A2D converter and have decent quality recording software you will be able to do most things you can think of.
The down side with computer based recording is that it takes lots of storage space to store all of these very large digital audio files and it takes time to process the files into what you want to create.
The Readers Digest answer is you can go cheap and simple. That can give you decent results. Or you can go more expensive and more complicated like computer based recording. This solution will give high quality and highly flexible results but it will not be simple.
As far as I know you can't have both.
Ed
We don't shush around here!
Life is analog...digital is just samples thereof
Edits: 05/27/15
I do a lot of LP recording, mostly records that will never be digitized or occasionally something I want to take with my on my portable player.
You are on the right track. I would recommend checking out VinylStudio. It can use an ASIO driver, and will thus record at any resolution you wish (recommend at least 24:96), includes a few tools like de click (though not even close to what Izotope's RX3 does, oops I think the current version is RX4), it lets you spilt tracks, and will look up your album on the standard website databases to fetch your cover art and track listing.
Advice from experience, clean that album very well and check that the stylus is clean - otherwise garbage in = garbage out.
Why?
Sounds like a lot of hassle to me.
As far as recording goes, you have everything you need for a basic transfer - the Rega Fono will be connected via USB. Is your question related to the playback requirements?
In which case, the line level/headphone output from your laptop will not be especially good quality wise, but is all you need to connect to the line-level input of either an integrated amp (if you want to listen via speakers) or a headphone amp if you want to use headphones exclusively and your integrated amp doesn't have a headphone socket.
A better solution is to buy a USB DAC of which there are many on the market. The output of the USB DAC (some of which are the size of a small dongle) is either a 3.5mm stereo jack (in the case of the dongle types) so you need a 3.5mm stereo jack to RCA cable - which you would need anyway if you were connecting your laptop directly.
One suggestion for best results with recording to guarantee bit perfect transfer from the Rega Fono - I recommend using an ASIO driver (ASIO4all is a free one) with a suitable program that can handle using an ASIO driver such as Sound Forge Audio Studio which is USD48. Audacity may be free, but you can't use ASIO drivers unless you compile the source code yourself to enable the feature.
If you want to go the free route without ASIO, then make sure you set the record settings to match your Fono ie. set the SAME sample rate as the Fono and make sure the bit depth matches too. Otherwise Windows will do its own processing of the data before it gets sent to the recording software. Never NEVER let Windows do sample rate conversion!
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
Mark,
You will need a Phono stage - at a minimum
and depending upon the input sensitivity of the A2D - you may just want to use one of the Dynas as a preamp with the output to the A2D then in to the PC.
You will need some sort of software to receive these files - CHeck over at PC Audio for consencus...
Happy Listening
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