Tír Na HiFi

Greetings all ..
I hate the term vinyl for records but you know what I mean.
A friend wants to record his records and has a laptop so he needs an external soundcard. I used to know about this stuff and have an Echo Mia in my desktop computer. However I had a look at gear4music.com and it is not at all clear to me if the USB sound cards are just taking power from the USB or if they are sending the data to the USB. The expensive ones seem to just add channels (16-channel mixer, 32-channel mixer).
Ideally (for my friend) the spec is : 2-channel input, also digital (he might want to copy CD's from his CD-player).
Ideally I would like three recommendations
a) Something to try out computer audio (i.e. inexpensive)
b) Something to do it well
c) Sky is the limit.
Thanks
James

Cheapest way to do it is to just use the microphone input on any PC or laptop - standard RCA to 3.5mm jack will do it.

There are dedicated sound cards used in music production, but like you I'm totally out of touch. My last use of one of these was an ESI julia I think, and thats surely 10 years ago. What he's after here is an ADC rather than a DAC I think.

However, something that I did mess about with one time, and was mightily impressed with was a Zoom H2 recorder. Recorded directly as a wav file onto an SD card which you then could do your work on in audacity or whatever software he intends using for splitting tracks etc.

Lastly, can I just say, the whole process of doing this is tedious, and he might well find downloading or a subscription to tidal/spotify etc more than convenient.

fran

Thanks Fran,

I had a look at M-Audio USB cards but I am not sure if they will take an unbalanced input. Also they seem to have the sampling rate set to 24/48 and not sure if 16/44 is an option.

Other sound cards don't seem to have any input volume adjustment. This could be an issue when taking the output from the tape-out of an amplifier if it is too high or two low.

James

I'm sure there's a solution out there, its a matter of finding it. I know the esi julia I had doesn't have any kind of volume control, I'd say most of them are assuming you have something to set levels before that unit.

FYI, there is plenty of free and easy to use software out there to adjust sampling rates. XRecode is the one I use, but if you are using audacity for the clean up etc, then undoubtedly you'll be able to output a file at 16/44 in whatever format you want.

Fran

I copied all my record collection some time ago using my Linn Axis deck connected to the line in on my desktop computer. I took each side into Audacity, tidied them up and exported as flac files. These are now saved on my NAS and accessible through my Sonos system throughout the house. I didn’t spend the time chopping each file into individual tracks (I thought I might do it as a retirement project or more recently as a Covid project but there has always been something more interesting to do so it remains undone). One rule I did enforce was to do them all, and not to reduce the collection to only those I still enjoy. That’s why I have “The Pope’s visit to Ireland” from 1979 and a Barry Manilow album😥. I’m really glad I did it because although I still have the record deck, I rarely put a record on it. In fact the record deck might not survive the next room upgrade (another story entirely).
In relation to laptop, I’m not sure how it might work using a possible mic input, but I have a Zoom H5 which I must check out to see if it works. Happy to loan it to any careful members if they would like to try it out.

DNT

Don't be dissing Barry Manilow... ;-)

have the Creative Labs SB 1260 here which you can borrow. RCA to UCB and you can download the software - just tried it out on windows 10 and works a treat (previously used on old XP laptop). Has facility to clean up klicks / hiss etc.