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Re: [ARSCLIST] AD converter vs. Outboard Digital recorders
Hi Peter:
Here's a quick story of a slightly different road taken. I first experimented with digitizing my
somewhat large collection of records and tapes back in the mid 1990's with my first Toshiba laptop.
It would record 44.1/16-bit audio fast enough to do one song at a time before the hard drive would
exceed its write cache -- and the song would need to be less than 6 minutes or so. I wasn't serious
enough to go out and buy a DAT machine plus it was clear by then that the format had issues and was
not long-term. CD recorders were also costly back then so I just put the whole thing off for a
couple of years.
Around 2000, we upgraded computers at work and I had a spare and known-workhorse Pentium II-450 box.
I upgraded the hard drive ($300 for a 10 gig drive back then -- but this motherboard could only do
up to 3.2 gig anyway so that's what I did) and put in the Ensoniq audio card that was from another
late 90's computer, based on reading recommendations of those cards. I was very quickly up and
running ingesting music into the computer and turning out CD's. The final piece of the puzzle was
getting a Plextor (12x -- and it was expensive back then) CD burner to replace the POS LG one in the
computer. I should mention that I knew Soundforge from a few years earlier -- mid-90's -- when I did
audio editing for a start-up company (part of my payment, aside from worthless stock shares, was a
copy and license of Soundforge 4). This was pre-Sony days for Soundforge, I think Sony has massively
improved this software over time. Of course, one I started transferring my collection, I started
hating my playback equipment.
It took years of finding and buying equipment, restoring it and figuring out how I wanted to put it
all together, but by 2005, I was satisfied with what was taking shape. I've been mostly out of the
buying mode since then and started taking outside transfer work. As Richard points out, once you
start doing this for pay, workflow becomes important but it's important in any situation where your
time has value. At first, I set the studio up to do both recording and transfer, but I decided
musicians were somewhat difficult to work with and too often didn't have 2 nickels to rub together.
Transfer clients have tended to be very nice, very easy to work with (easy = they know what they
expect and can express it in a way that I can achieve it within budget so everyone is happy) and pay
their bills. So now it's time to rebuild the studio, making it more transfer-oriented and less
multi-purpose. But, I recently did a couple of voice-recording gigs, so I'll keep set up for that,
and also for mix-down and overdubbing of a select few musicians (mostly just friend or known friends
of friends).
Anyway, my method has always been to feed into the computer. The Ensoniq card served me just fine
for 2 years and then Art Shifrin turned me on to the CardDeluxe. I also really like the Digigram
VX-Pocket 440 PC Card interface for my laptop, which I use to do a second ingestion stream
sometimes. But that only goes to 48K/24-bit, so it's not appropriate for all jobs. One thing it's
great for is digital-to-digital transfers of DATs, for instance, but the A-D and D-A in the Digigram
are not slouches, in fact the laptop is my default CD player in the studio because I like the sound
of the D-A converter so much. The laptop is also the default playback machine for audio streams
(call me picky, but I like to D-A an audio stream, tweak the EQ some to make it sound less metallic
and fuzzy, and then record to at least CD resolution WAV for storage -- and I don't even bother with
crapola digi-swishie streams like most radio stations' live feeds).
But there's one twist. After Richard mentioned having a CD recorder around, I bought one last year
to see if it was a more efficient way to do CD-resolution transfers. In some cases, it is. For
instance, one client wanted all his mix tapes from the 80s made into personal-use-only CD's because
he didn't have a working cassette player anymore. We came up with a very good arrangement -- low
enough cost for him and low enough effort for me -- using the CD recorder. He's happy as a clam now
(so am I to be rid of Ah-Hah blaring in my studio). He's actually double happy because his cassette
player had been pretty dead for a while and he was thrilled the cassettes still sounded so good when
played back on my Nak deck. This job would have taken too long in the computer because of slicing
the songs up, burning CD's, etc. The only thing we used the computer for was to make a duplicate of
each disc for backup. Now, recording "live" to CD means you have to pay attention to things like
putting in "new song" markers (with material from LPs, I find the "cut when xx seconds of xx low
level" doesn't work because ticks and pops happen between songs, too; with homebrew mix tapes, this
doesn't work because some people faded or direct-cut between songs). But that's easier than doing
the transfer and then working a couple more hours on the computer before finished product rolls out.
This job and two others similar justified buying the CD recorder, and I find it handy for some of my
own collection. It's also nice to stay in practice for the old art of making a mix tape -- knowing
when to hit stop and record with no option to go and trim the beginning or end like is second nature
in a computer.
Your method, Peter, is actually not so mad at all. If the Marantz has high enough audio quality for
your tastes, and you have two flash cards to rotate in and out, you have the potential for a very
efficient workflow: record program material at the same time you're unloading the other flash card
and burning CD's in the computer. I believe one of my fellow transfer guys does the same basic MO
with his Tascam flash recorder (transfers going at same time as computer work by rotating flash
cards). This works particularly well for at least one of his jobs because he's also contracted to
write all the metadata, so this time-consuming process can be done at the same time as the next
transfer takes place.
Richard's point about proper monitoring is really key. You've got to have trustworthy speakers to
tell you that the digital is as transparent as possible. And of course you have to use the best
analog playback equipment you can muster. Then you'll be happy with your work and won't have to
repeat it and your music collection on older media will be unlocked for enjoyment in the iPod world.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard L. Hess" <arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2006 3:36 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] AD converter vs. Outboard Digital recorders
Hello, Peter,
Workflow is a very subjective issue. For the first several years of my work (1998-2003) I ingested
audio to a pair of Panasonic SV-3800 DAT machines and later to a pair of Sony CDR-W33 CD writers,
using the good-sounding internal A-Ds in the machines. I didn't trust a 333 MHz Windows 95
upgraded to 98 SE PC even though it had the Zefiro Acoustics digital audio card in it.
I don't know what people think of the PMD 670's converters. I have no opinion.
When I got a competent Windows XP machine and an RME Multiface, I started ingesting everything
into the PC directly. I now routinely do music as 88.2/24 or 96/24 via the (now pair for 16
channels) of RME Multifaces.
The aux computer in the studio also has a MOTU 828 MK II connected to it -- I bought that
initially to use with my laptop, but now I can run a second background transfer with that. This
works via a firewire interface while the RME Multifaces require a dedicated host card. If I had
started fresh today, I might consider an all-FW solution such as RME's FireFace 800.
I think it's important to be able to monitor your main audio workstation on your main monitors. In
fact, the monitors (5.1) controlled through a Blue Sky Bass Management Controller are normally fed
from outputs 1-6 of the first RME. I've already done enough A/B tests to know that I can't really
hear the RME's footprint, so I don't worry about A-Bing analog to digital unless I hear something
I don't like, and then I patch.
There is nothing wrong with your solution if you like the PMD's A-D converters and you can monitor
what you do on the computer properly. I especially enjoyed -- and it eased the transition for
me -- of digitizing to DAT as I could back up and restart a section of transfer more easily than
in the early software. It was intuitive as DAT worked more or less the same as analog tape from a
functional perspective.
No matter what you use (within reason) it's important that we all do our part to chip away at the
50 Mh of recordings out there that need to be digitized. There's no right or wrong answer IMHO,
just what works for you.
Cheers,
Richard
At 02:48 PM 11/4/2006, Peter Hirsch wrote:
I have been following the discussion of the advantage AD converters have over PC sound cards and
get the gist of what it is about, albeit from my non-audio-engineer background. Due to issues more
related to the layout of my apartment than anything else, I have been recording from analog tapes
and discs to a Marantz PMD 670 and then plugging the memory card into a USB reader attached to my
PC where I listen to and/or edit the files.
I have now shifted things around so that it would be possible to record directly on the PC and
eliminate the Marantz, but I am not sure that this would be an improvement over my current
arrangement. Is there anyone that would like to comment on what might be the pros and cons of this
approach vis a vis connecting the playback to a decent AD converter and on to the PC?
Regards,
Peter Hirsch
Richard L. Hess email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.