In An Analog State Of Mind, digital recording

any one have any experience with digital recording? i just got a fostex mr8 digital recorder for personal recording for future website samples and demo's. so far the manual is just a wee bit confusing....lots of new terms. i am stuck with an analog mind in a digital society...... is there anyone out there whos brain i can pick if i get perplexed?

Not me! I thought this was going to be about recording old vinyl to CD's...I am looking for info on that technology.

Check this out. http://www.celticradio.net/php/forums/inde...?showtopic=4507

tried it and it lacked the quality sound that the original recordings had... I am looking for CD quality sound from vinyl recordings... I even have some wax recordings I want to preserve!

Shadows: I can help there. I've done it. What most people expect from a CD you won't get from an analog source unless it's first generation and was just recorded. There are things that can be done to get rid of some artifacts and the like, but there is a different feel between Analog and a pure digital recording. Since the CD and computer don't know the difference between the music and the noise, both will be recorded. (I'm trying to get noise out of a mic recording for recording rain atm).
Main thing to help, is keep the cables as short as possible while recording, and as far from other cables or electronic equipment as possible.


Dundee: I'm starting to look into this myself. I'm not feeling too very lost. Main difference I've found is the number of tracks that can be easilly handled. Although in digital you also have to worry about sample rate and bit depth which drastically effect how much you can store, and the quality of the recording. Here are some numbers for a baseline:

9000 Hz @ 8 bit -- good for voice only, like audio memos or a phone conversation. Wouldn't use for much else)

22kHz @ 16 bit -- Approximately what HR is broadcast at

44.1 KHz @ 16 bit -- Compact Disk Digital Audio PCM streams are at this setting

48 KHz @ 16 bit -- DVD Video

96 Khz @ 16 bit -- DVDA Stereo track

PCM -- Pulse Code Modulation. The standard digital format for most uncompressed digital audio.

Sample rate -- how many times per second that a sound sample is taken and a numeric value determined

Bit depth -- the size of the number used to represent the sound in a given sample. larger numbers allow more values, and greater accuracy in recording and reproduction


Hope this helps, maybe you already knew. Personally though, namely because of the data loss in converting to a sample rate of a given bit depth, I'm thinking Analog would be better for first generation. Then convert to digital.

Analog doesn't lose data between samples, and doesn't rely on a sample depth to determine how accurate it is allowed to be. However, digital is not as easilly altered by the environment, so what it does capture, will stay clearer. small ammounts of noise won't effect it as is the case with analog. Digital won't develop extra sounds with age or use, although it loses some of the wave form when it's first recorded.

Thanks Aae most of this I already knew... my vinyl records are pristine... I bought them and recorded them to reel to reel and never played them again. I have over 350 lp's I want to convert to digital CD... I have over 1000 hours of tape I also want to convert... some live recordings of "YES" and a few other well known bands of the 60's and 70's. I just have not been happy with the quality from patching I have achieved... they sound nothing like the original recording.

Perhaps the input levels in your comuter are wrong for the source? One of the first things I learned when doing this was how to properly use a VU meter. Audacity doesn't have one, but the waveform works just as well. play or record a sample while watching the VU meter. it should dance right on 0db. If it's too low, the digitised audio will sound flat and lifeless. if it's too high, it'll peak out and sound like someone is tearing paper. If you're using something like Audacity where you're watching a wave form to set levels, you want to fill the wave form as much as you can without pegging it. The waveform pegging is what makes that tearing sound I spoke of earlier. I generally try to get the waveform using about 75% of the avaliable display space (about .75 on my gauges in Audacity, but you may not have that)

Also, if your source output has a volume control on the signal you're feeding into the computer, turn it up as much as you can without getting any of the tearing. Not likely you'll be using anything like that for archiving though.

Phonograps will probably require you to turn up your record levels more than a tape deck will. (unless you have a pre-amp on it)

No I do not have that, but I do use the VU meters on my audio equipment ( I have studio recorders and multipliers that are/were state of the art in mid `70's ) to moniter the input and output... I have been making recordings analog since 1965 and do know what I am doing there ( I have made demos and full track recordings for many a band )... it just seems not to have the quality I need to produce CD's from what I have... maybe I need to look for other software or transfer devices to make my computer work well.

Aaed.....

well ye did clear up the recording base line numbers... i knew the
44khz was Cd quality..... but had nothing to compare 22 khz to
my machine does both 44khz and 22khz... 22 gives me twice the recording time
(records to compact flash) as i am listening to barleyjuice now doing whiskey to the sea.... it sounds very good @ 22..... i am sure i will be learing more as i play around with it........

thanks

sláinte

Ok, you're probably more skilled than me in most of this then. Since the first piece of computer equipment the sound hits is the sound card, probably good to start there. For most people, the low end sound cards on a mother board are fine. But not for us I don't know what you run, but I do fine with my SB Live!. Creative is still using the same Emu10k1 chip in their latest Audigy series too. I will say that if you want better hardware than that then you'll have to look at professional grade cards.

Playing with it is the best way to learn. There is a difference in how 22 and 44 sound. For some people it's enough to matter. Just keep in mind though, upsampling won't stand to improve things much since the data just isn't there to begin with.

Higher sample rates are always better (just like higher resolution on pics), but 44100 Hz is so pervasive because that is what's on CDs. I see little use in using resolutions higher than 44.1 if you're trying to make a recording for a CD. I kinda wish my sound card could handle faster than 48000