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Comment by unfocused | Hacker News Reader

I have Vinyl records, but my goal is to digitize them. They're my Dads from 1940s, 50s, and many are 78s, so I had so search Kijiji ads to get a player that plays that speed. Dual 1009 was what I settled on.

As for DVDs/Blu Ray, I only buy things like Planet Earth or other docs. Sure enough, just yesterday I tried playing Planet Earth II on UHD 4K Blu Ray on an Xbox Series X, albeit I still have a 1080p TV (bought used) and 1080p Receiver (bought used, Sony STR-DN1000 that I paid $50 for) and it was glitching. sigh Time to hit up Bit Torrent and download a ripped version of the Documentary that I already paid for. Argh.

Both Blu Ray and Vinyl are susceptible to one day not being playable. By ripping them into digital, we can hopefully keep the content playable well into the future.

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> many are 78s, so I had so search Kijiji ads to get a player that plays that speed. Dual 1009 was what I settled on

Many modern turntables, including cheap ones, support 78 rpm. (Quick search finds 11 new 78 rpm-supporting models at Best Buy in Canada, starting from $80. An $85 Sylvania that supports 78s can also digitize directly to USB storage.[1])

Did you mean 16 2/3 rpm records, which the Dual 1009 supports and most modern turntables don't?

[1]: https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/sylvania-src831-3-speed...

No, they are 78s, but the quality was so-so. I was able to buy this one for about $120! For the price difference, I didn't want to get an average one, and I can easily resell the Dual 1009 and get some money back as I didn't want to keep it forever.

If you're digitizing them anyway, could you play the record at whatever RPM your turntable supports, then resample?

I thought about that, but I didn't want to fiddle too much with various tweaks as I'm not an expert in this area. In fact, I'm actually thinking of buying a Tascam DR-05X, https://tascam.com/us/product/dr-05x/top and just connecting that to the amplifier, and having it produce the digital files for me. No software, no computer. Just record player to amp to Tascam.

I can then repurpose it as a microphone for Zoom/MS Teams or whatever is used.

I have a NAD C715 that can record any input, and record it straight to MP3 at 160kbps, but I'd rather record at a higher bitrate. I've yet to find ANY receiver that can do that. It's still cool that they had that, where the FM signal is converted via ADC and straight to the CODEC for mp3 on the chip.

If it gets the project done, then it sounds like a great tool!

While you're doing the analog-to digital-conversion, I would suggest sticking with 24-bit 96Khz wav, and focus purely on maximizing the quality of the analog signal. i.e. dialing in levels and stuff. Each time you play a record it degrades a little bit, and it needs to be done at 1x speed, so you don't want to be futzing with compression settings.

Once you have the uncompressed wav files, you can experiment with different codecs and bitrates until you're happy. Figuring out the software to do that isn't difficult.

You could then also keep the uncompressed wav files around on the SD card in your drawer (or losslessly compress with something like flac). If a year later you realize you made poor compression choices, you can easily fix it. Maybe you eventually become an "expert" and decide you want to do some frequency filtering or something. If the SD card dies or gets lost, oh well! :-)

Thanks for the tips! I'll keep that in mind and do 24-bit 96Khz wav. I think converting digital to digital, i.e. WAV to FLAC or mp3/aac will be straight forward, but given that I may not have that many records to convert, I'll try and keep them lossless.

I've also managed to get a working Sony STR-6800SD receiver for $200 CAD. That should help in getting a good analog phono signal.

> ...By ripping them into digital, we can hopefully keep the content playable well into the future...

Yep, this is my preferred direction, and of course an offline-accessible though digital edition may be less prone to issues of wonky players, or warped physical media.

You might check archive.org, there's a huge number of 78s already ripped and remastered. Might save you some time and hassle.

I’ve been wanting to play my grand mother’s vynil collection for some time.

Are modern turntables reliable? Or is a vintage one preferred?

Why would modern ones not be reliable? They’re fantastic! Having said that, for your old vinyl collection, you will find the quality of the player mostly irrelevant. The age of those vinyls will make them sound like a 32kbits/s mp3 file!

Have fun and good luck!

Agreed. I've now realized some of these old records are just not salvageable. So many scratches :(

Modern ones are reliable. However, I only went with an older "vintage" one as it came up on Kjiji for a good price, and I could resell it once I was done. I don't plan on listening to Vinyl forever. We are now so used to digital music and asking Alexa to play playlists and songs and radio stations is soooo convenient.

Btw, the Dual 1009, which is from 1964-66, maintains the speed REALLY well. I also have an Onkyo CP-1200A (got for free, someone put in the garbage), and the Dual was actually better at maintaining the speed!

You can download an app on your phone to measure the accuracy of your record player.

I have a special test record that has sine waves recorded on it, just for testing the quality of your turntable.

Modern good ones are great and reliable, but there is a lot of cheap trash out there.

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