Grandmother Diva on the Wheels of Steel.

[reddragdiva]

Two years ago, redcountess and arkady gave me a USB turntable for Christmas. I have finally found somewhere to set it up.

It works.

\o/   :-D   :-D   :-D   \m/

First results: "Neon Rainbow" from 5 Great Gift Ideas by the Reels. I have two copies (and Liz has one too); I used the one more like a frisbee for testing. No doubt there's considerable cleanup work could be done.

Of course, I played it the first time at 33rpm rather than 45rpm.

Currently recording at 16-bit — not much point going higher, noise floor seems to be around -50dB. Might up sample rate to 96kHz. Save all results as FLAC for further processing. Ideas? Further software suggestions?

Must set up the old G3, or finally get the G4 out of the younger teenager's room. (A Mac Mini or similar would be perfect, but my budget is zero.) And obtain a tiny LCD screen (12" 1024×768 would be perfect, 14" okay). And somewhere to put the printer/scanner hooked to it as well.

drpete's old cassette deck can be plugged into the turntable so its sound goes through the USB as well. Must rip those tapes. And the VHS pile. Terabyte FireWire disks are on the shopping list.

Comments

curious

[vicki-t-veg.livejournal.com]

Does the turntable have many settings? i.e does it work any different to me plugging an audio cable from my hi-fi to the audio in on my pc? Did it come with good software for noise removal?

Re: curious

[reddragdiva]

There is a volume control for the USB audio output. There's also a plain RCA phono output, straight off the cartridge, just like we used to use in the olden days.

It doesn't work any differently to that, no - if you have a good sound card, you might as well do that.

It comes with copies of Audacity, which is a slightly elaborate but pretty good sound recorder, and instructions on how to use it. Audacity has various ways to process sound - great for home recording podcasts, etc. I haven't played with the noise removal.

[phelyan.livejournal.com]

Don't overdo the postprocessing. It's actually nice to have both the analog softness and the occasional dusty clicks. Lovely.

[reddragdiva]

I plan to keep raw rips unaltered. A terabyte FireWire disk or two is on the shopping list.

Next: rip all the VHS tapes to H.264.

[(Anonymous)]

I see no reason not to pull as many bits and kHz as the kit claims to provide. (I'm ripping in 96kHz/32bit through a more conventional rig, normalising amplitude, and then throwing away the bottom 16 bits because that that point they're definitely worthless.) FLAC is my friend too.

All my music (including the CDs) is now on One Big Server; that makes life _much_ easier. OK, so it was only a few hundred CDs to rip.

My "hi-fi" PC is hooked to the projector, but for playing music I have one of these (http://www.pertelian.com/) and a USB remote control (both come with dubious Windows software, but I've written my own). Software on request.

-- random Firedrake, no longer in East London

[echo-echo.livejournal.com]

If you are getting a noise floor of -50db I'd upgrade your soundcard because that is very very noisy.

[reddragdiva]

The sound card is the crappy USB sound card built into the turntable. I should get an RCA to 3.5mm adapter and just use the turntable direct output, really.