Life after Squeezebox - any advice?

[Richard]

Stuart, I can see completely where you're coming from if you have most of your music on vinyl. Flacs on a hard drive are a very attractive option for the practical reasons you say. It looks like a time-consuming business though to transcribe them from vinyl in real time and your recordings which sound good now may not sound good in a future environment if they are just balanced by ear.

[Black Stuart]

Richard,
I don't understand what your saying -the recording engineers didn't balance everything, far from it. The final cut was the one they liked the sound of the best - they used their ears.

Sadly in the 70s' especially a lot were snorting Andean snow which resulted in many LPs that were far from balanced but sounded brilliant in the studio when they were coked out of their brains.

What I do know is that it is vital to use an ADC that has the facility to listen via cans to what is being transferred to digital. It is at this point that you can determine sound levels (different LPs are recorded at different sound levels). The classic device is the Burl B-to-B Bomber but this is used mainly in the studio, not cheap but has an excellent resale value, bass and treble can be adjusted to suit.

Obviously ripping CDs is a whole lot simpler, that's why I'm researching fully before committing myself.

[Richard]

Originally Posted by Black Stuart

Richard,
I don't understand what your saying

Obviously ripping CDs is a whole lot simpler, that's why I'm researching fully before committing myself.

Yes.

If you use your system and room to monitor it will be different to the LP mastering and CD mastering which are already available so why put yourself through it?

Mine isn't a huge library but I've got about 300 albums into flac from CD, ripped a few at a time at high speed in 1 or 2 hour sessions over several months, and still adding.

If you get a good ADC and software for the computer then learn how to use it, playing 300 vinyl albums alone in real-time would take 6 weeks at 40 hours a week. Add then cleaning and setting up, pre-playing to set levels, MP3 track tagging and images if you want to include, and it would be a long job indeed.

[Richard]

Just a thought Stuart, where are you with flac at the moment? Are you already using it as a source or is the whole thing a new venture?

[Black Stuart]

Richard,
it's a whole new ball game, I was going to jump in 7 years ago but life said - wallop, have some of this aka, ill health, so it all got put on hold until I got the all clear, that was July last year.So much conflicting data and yes the whole Rasberry Pi thing made it's appearance.

Everything has moved on apace since. You don't use the room, you use the deck (arm and cartridge) phono stage and of course the i/cs, all fed into the hugely important ADC, hugely important for vinyl that is. It's at this point that evaluation of the sound takes place via cans. At some stage in the future I can well envisage listening via cans only. Room correction takes place at the end of the chain.

I said in a previous post on another thread - I'm not interested in LP covers. itemising tracks, just whole LPs, separated only by genre. Probably Reggae first to go, then Jazz and so on. 2-3 years. If I can't achieve comparability or nearly so, what's the point. I do envisage spending serious money to achieve the end goal, most of which will be regained selling on.

[Richard]

Hi Stuart, I think I'd get flac replay sorted as first step. You can download all the free software you need to make flacs from CDs which would be a good learning curve and give you a few flac albums with which to evaluate the replay set up. Let us know how the LPs go and maybe some of us will be able to help if you have any specific problems.

[Greg.]

If you download dBpoweramp which is free, all files are ripped to lossless flac. It’s really easy to use, albeit this is with CD sources etc, however for me it remains the most user friendly system. For a vinyl rip, I certainly would be looking at free download audacity, referered to in the link I published. This is also a lossless system. I have several friends who have been using audacity very happily for years.

Furthermore, do a google on ripping LP to digital. You’ll get several links including the basic one I published. There are several more links that should be helpful, some of which give you a tutorial for audacity vinyl ripping. Audacity is not naturally intuitive. You need to spend a while learning how it works, but patience is the key here.

Personally I suspect the quality of any ADC unit is not that critical, assuming an intelligent approach to purchase. There are loads of good quality low cost items out there.

Really there is nothing to stop you getting on with it, Stuart, apart from the application of time and that, my friend, is probably the very arbiter of it all.

[Black Stuart]

Greg,
you really havn't researched in depth what is involved in a quality transfer from the analogue to the digital domain. Flac/Audacity that's the easy part, choosing the right gear to do that is not easy.

How you can say that the ADC Is not important . Many say that ADC/DAC conversion should be in integral not in separate boxes. Then there is the need to hear what is going on, so, a very good h/amp is nec. Equalisation, bass, treble, it is'nt easy. The RIAA should be digital not analogue. If I didn't have 99% of my music on LP I would'nt bother.

I mentioned the PS Audio Nu Wave Phono Converter but then there is the RME ADI-2 Pro - 3-in-1 piece of gear and so many ways to use it. Where I live and will be very soon - **** listening rooms but with the RME I can have an excellent h/amp and look to buy the rest of the gear to digitise my music. For those who are into active speakers, no need for an amp.

The end game for me is to free myself from the equipment needed to listen to quality vinyl replay without losing that quality - check out the Nu Wave and especially the RME.

There is simply no comparison between transferring CD/SACD and vinyl.

For those who are happy with CDs check out the Schiit Yggdrasil, not cheap but then neither is a really good vinyl t/t/tonearm and cartridge. If you have a big CD collection worth thinking about.

[Greg.]

Stuart,

You can if you wish speculate on what I have or have not done researching the transfer of analogue (LP) to digital storage. It will remain speculation.

So, CD ripping. dBpoweamp is completely fine and will satisfactorily record every 0 and 1 in your CD’s to faithfully supply them for digital playback. I am now using roon air into my Devialet 220 Pro core infinity. It works equally well through my microRendu. Playback quality far exceeds any CD player based source I have previously used.

I took the decision a while back that there was little point wasting hours/days/weeks/months of time ripping my vinyl. Reasoning being that the original vinyl playback with my current TT set up sounds better regardless of my current high end streaming capability. My vinyl sound remains, to my ears the best reproduction option. I use streaming all the time, but for a really serious listen, it has to be my vinyl. I will remain happy to get up every twenty minutes to turn over an album or to swap it for another. The convenience of it recorded to hard drive and the time it would take is considerably diminished when considering the time involved and the reduction, even when fine products are used, in sound quality. So I shall continue to use my vinyl as intended. End of.

My bigger issue actually (probably an issue for many of us) is what is to become of my LP collection when I die. My offspring will be inclined to skip it. I need to set something in place to prevent that and to ensure it and the TT are not wasted.

There you go. That is the causes and considerations of advancing technology coupled to an understanding that not everything new is the best or supersedes what was previously used.

[Black Stuart]

Greg,
if you read my posts thoroughly, you and I and I suspect most of us with advancing age came to exactly the same conclusion.

Where we differ is I think, I look further down the road. I don't think my hearing will deteriorate terribly before the end. What may well get far worse is my physical ability to - handle correctly the vinyl, the hassle of cleaning the LPs (I have an RCM) changing / replacing the cartridge, dealing with equipment problems etc. etc.

In the village 2.5K away I see in the super market car park, the old ones getting out of their cars, they can hardly walk and most definitely shouldn't be driving but they don't have any alternative - that could be you and I. I can see clearly that handling vinyl would be a nightmare for them and maybe for you and I in the future - that is what drives me to find a digital solution, which only involves pushing a button or two.

I think that with the right digital equipment, parity or near parity in quality reproduction is entirely possible with all the benefits of ease of play. Don't forget that to record vinyl properly, you have to use cans to listen to what is happening and adjust. As you record you are releasing vinyl for sale. I can't imagine that will be a hassle.

Whatever I have to spend on digital gear will be easily covered in what I get on selling (a) my LP collection and (b) on my analogue gear.

I also know that 10 years is about the maximum for the life of a hard drive, whereas vinyl if well cared for will go on for a long, long time. I did have someone to leave all my gear to but he turned the light out on his life at 22. I do however have the daughter of my cousin who inherited her mother's love of music. You have said and I totally agree with you that your offspring wouldn't want the hassle of LPs and all the gear nec. - but they would I'm sure like to inherit a hard drive, which can be renewed/replaced at intervals.

When I was an awful lot younger and went to work in mainland Europe - wouldn't it have been a beauty to have a small silent PC, a h/amp and a pair of cans to listen to music. I did get my system over there but what a hassle to get back and living in a house that 'wobbled' when a heavy vehicle went by.

If Angela goes before me I would have no hesitation in decamping to a quality camping car/van with my music in small compact digital gear - for me a second reason to digitise.

Check out the RME ADI-2 Pro. I'm almost certain to pop for this and listen through cans as a first step. What I do know is that this conversion cannot be done cheaply as neither can listening to vinyl - the only cheap part is the software to do it.

That's my rational take on digital conversion.