Topic: Converting vinyl to digital

[Fried Chicken Boy]

I don't know anything vinyl restoration, but I would expect there are techniques to flatten slightly warped vinyl.

Sandwiched between sheets of glass and baking them in an oven with low heat.  Maybe not the best thing for fidelity but it works.  Should definitely be practiced on throw-away records first so you get the hang of it.  I also remember using even lower heat than described in these links (150-175 F ??) but YMMV.

http://www.unplggd.com/unplggd/how-to-fix-a-warped-record-105604

http://lifehacker.com/5438737/repair-warped-vinyl-records-with-two-sheets-of-glass

[jb63]

A little late here...

When I was doing this, 10 or so years back, I set up my SBM-1 with the wal-wart and used that to get the boosted signal from the RCA jacks on the turntable to the Line In on the SBM-1, then ran the 7-Pin to my D8, eventually replacing that with a COAX mod SBM-1 so I could go straight into an R-300.

So it was all DAY back then, but today, I would probably do the same thing with COAX mod SBM-1 straight to a 661 or other device with COAX in.

I got great results with the DAT, and it was a good use of the retired SBM-1.

You could probably pick u a line mod one here pretty cheap, maybe even a COAX mod one. I found that the low levels of the turntables raw output matched the sensitivity of the line in on the SBM-1 perfectly, which is really the only reason I mention it here.

Its fun to do, so enjoy it. When you run out of records it gets kind of lonely!

[harimau]

The Audio-Technica turntable has rave reviews in Amazon.com.  It costs about $210.  A high-end turntable might run to $1,200 but Audio-Technica is made in the same Chinese factory as the $1,200 turntable with most of the features.

In a word, no.

It is the height of comedy to suggest that they are the same, made in the same factory, with just a different price.  Maybe Moke is actually building Lencos in China?  Who knew!

It isn't about features, it's about sound.  Most high end turntables have very few features.

There is a decent chance your line-out is coming through the digital circuit of the turntable.  If so, that would be much less than ideal.

Again, a real record cleaner will make a huge difference.

24 bit is the way to go - especially since you're doing processing on it.  Create a 16 bit version after all your tweaking.

So, someone in China has a contract to produce turntables for some Japanese company.  If they want to make a knock-off, why should they redesign anything?  That merely adds to the cost of production.  Better to just make knock-off copies and change the labels.  One would think that is the easiest way out. 

So, here is the Audio-Technica turntable that has a direct-drive motor.  No belts or pulleys to connect to the turntable.  Speed is quartz-controlled.  You would then think that speed accuracy is as good as any way-too-high-priced turntable in the market.

But I don't take that for granted.  I went and read up on turntables.  They say that direct-drive means that motor rumble would be transmitted to the turntable.  I suppose I should get a belt-drive turntable where the rubber belt would melt in the tropical heat of India!

Then I looked at the tonearm.  It has a pivoted tonearm.  I do remember the Bang & Olufson Beograms of the 1980s which featured the tangential tracking tonearms so I read up on them.  Seems that tangential tracking may mean zero skating force whereas pivoted tonearms create skating,  to counter which anti-skating force needs to be applied, except that the tonearm may experience resonance as it moves up and down the grooves.  One author went so far as to claim that a properly balanced pivoted tonearm is better than a tangential tonearm.

The next thing I looked at is the new-fangled pivoted-tangential tonearms.  Yes, you got that right.  It is a pivoted tonearm that has additional mechanical components that make it behave like a tangential tonearm.  One stereo magazine had a $86,000 set-up and claimed it was the ultimate.

Then I looked at moving-coil vs moving-magnet cartridges.

The final point is the phono pre-amp.  One would think that these phono pre-amps would be reduced to a single chip selling for pennies so there wouldn't be much savings in substituting one chip for another.   There are about 14,0000 articles on phono pre-amps and if you were to believe the TubeCad Journal, the only good pre-amp is one that uses triodes, meaning glowing valves!

The final thing is the stuff on which the turntable is mounted.  Someone said that it is not too much to spend a few thousand dollars on a granite base weighing 100 pounds to minimize any vibration as the user walks by.  And here I am, actually hitting the turntable intentionally to get the bloody needle to move on to the next track when it gets caught in a crack in the record!

I am glad I stopped reading all the HiFi magazines some 20 years back.  The level of snobbery is a bit too high for me.

I suppose I need a $250,000 set-up if I am to meet the high expectations of the HiFi snobs.  All to convert vinyl that may never have been maintained properly in the first place if the amount of cracks I encounter is to be believed.

Thanks guys, I learnt a whole lot from your suggestions which sent me off on all this reading!

[dlh]

 . . . and then there is this "must have"