Comment by unfocused | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unfocused | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com