Sound card for record transfer

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Autochthon

Limp Gawd
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I was going to transfer some old record albums to CD's for listening in my car and wondered if there was a specific hardware setup that was better suited to this process. I'd considered getting a X-Fi card but I've read that they do not play nice with AMD and NF4 chipsets. Will the onboard sound of my DFI NF4 do a decent job? Is there a guide that would clue me in to some specific tricks and pitfalls to connecting a turntable to a soundcard?

thank you
 
You are going to need something that has a RIAA equalizer in it or the recordings are going to sound like crap.
Unfortunately there are very few sound cards that have such a feature and as such you will need a phono pre amp stage.
Assuming you have software that can deal with the clicks and pops... yeah your onboard solution can give you near CD quality performance @ 48khz
 
Thank you for the information. I have a rather obscure question. I have an old H.H. Scott 222b integrated tube amplifier that apparently has quite a nice phono stage. The problem is the outputs are specifically for 8 or 16 ohm speakers I don't recall it having anything like an RCA aux out. Is there a safe way to transfer this signal to my sound card input? I could be wrong and perhaps there is recording circuit that allows a low power signal I don't have the system in front of me and I haven't used it in some time.
 
My apologies for reviving this topic but I had a few more issues that you all may have advice about.

It turns out this integrated amp (H.H.Scott 222-c) does have a tape output circuit for recording and from what I've been told a very good phono stage among the best ever made available in an integrated amp. That being the case it sounds like a good candidate for my record transfers. I did some test transfers using Audacity 1.3 for capture and cleanup it appeared to work but as to quality I haven't passed judgment yet.

I had hoped to to transfer as accurate a copy of these albums as possible (maybe up to 96khz) to a hard disk then burn cd quality (48khz) copies for use in my car. I figure this to be a reasonable plan as I only have about 100 albums and they should fit on a single 250gig disk. My question is where the weak link in the process will be? Is the software inadequate? Will my sound card introduce noticeable noise or distort the recording? Will the background noise from the computer do the same? Would I be better off using an external usb2 or firewire400 sound card? Am I worrying about things the human ear can't detect anyway?

thanks
 
Autochthon said:
My apologies for reviving this topic but I had a few more issues that you all may have advice about.

It turns out this integrated amp (H.H.Scott 222-c) does have a tape output circuit for recording and from what I've been told a very good phono stage among the best ever made available in an integrated amp. That being the case it sounds like a good candidate for my record transfers. I did some test transfers using Audacity 1.3 for capture and cleanup it appeared to work but as to quality I haven't passed judgment yet.

I had hoped to to transfer as accurate a copy of these albums as possible (maybe up to 96khz) to a hard disk then burn cd quality (48khz) copies for use in my car. I figure this to be a reasonable plan as I only have about 100 albums and they should fit on a single 250gig disk. My question is where the weak link in the process will be? Is the software inadequate? Will my sound card introduce noticeable noise or distort the recording? Will the background noise from the computer do the same? Would I be better off using an external usb2 or firewire400 sound card? Am I worrying about things the human ear can't detect anyway?

thanks
Click to expand...

A Pawn shop, EBay or a Fle Market can solve your problems. Look for any older Receiver with "Tape Monitor" and "Phono In" connections. I like the way the EMU 1212 or etc... records.

You can do it many ways but your final recording should be at 44.1KHz, not 48KHz.
 
Donnie27 said:
A Pawn shop, EBay or a Fle Market can solve your problems. Look for any older Receiver with "Tape Monitor" and "Phono In" connections. I like the way the EMU 1212 or etc... records.

You can do it many ways but your final recording should be at 44.1KHz, not 48KHz.
Click to expand...

I think I have that part covered my integrated amp has an excellent phono stage and the tape output jacks on the amp output a signal within the signal range of my sound card input (though I do have to turn the software input gain down to nearly 0 in Audacity to avoid clipping). My concern is making certain I get as clean and accurate a copy of my albums as is reasonable. I was curious if an external sound card would make for a significantly cleaner recording .

I'll remember about the 44.1KHz for CD's. I somehow thought 48Khz was the standard but then I may be the only person left in America to have never purchased a stand alone CD player and I think I purchased 1 CD in my entire Life :)
 
I have been converting my LPs to digital files with an M-Audio Revolution 5.1 soundcard with very good results. I use the tape out of a receiver connected to the line in of my soundcard using a RCA to miniplug adapter from Radioshack. I ground the receiver to the computer case. For recording software I used Nero wave editor but Audacity also works.
 
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