The fact of the matter is that there is a lot of music (out there) that isn't available digitally. Additionally, if you already have vinyl records, there shouldn't be any need of purchasing their digital versions if there's an option of conversion. Is there a possibility that such conversion can affect quality?
Wayne Parham Messages: 18756 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
There are lots of technical issues surrounding analog-to-digital and the reverse digital-to-analog conversions. Some are audible, others less so. Naturally, high-quality conversions give the best results, but require faster hardware and more bandwidth. Storage requirements are greater for larger higher-quality files too.
Study things like conversion types, e.g. successive-aproximation, delta-sigma, etc. And study the artifacts each can suffer from, things like aliasing, quantization error and jitter.
Are there any turn tables that can do such transfers? I'd be more worried about the loss of quality through such conversions. I think the technical issues surrounding such should make anyone invest in the necessary technology.
Wayne Parham Messages: 18756 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
You can buy USB turntables, but they are terrible. No point in talking about quality issues with something like that because they are bottom-of-the-barrel devices.
If quality is desired, use a good turntable and a computer with a good sound card; Sample the signal with a high resolution, e.g. 44K/16bits or more, and save the file in a lossless data format. Do not let the signal clip when sampling.
gofar99 Messages: 1940 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi, the lowest sampling rate I find that gives a copy that I can't consistently tell from the analog version is 24/96. This has actually become mid fi now. A lot of downloads are available in things like 24/192 to 32/384. They tend to be huge, but disk space is now cheap. I'll stick to 24/96.