Audacity Forum

One other piece. What was the Radio Shack part number of the unit you bought? 42-172?

Koz

kozikowski wrote:One other piece. What was the Radio Shack part number of the unit you bought? 42-172?

Koz

That's the one! I finally got off my butt this afternoon, unhooked and took the turntable out of the cabinet, so I can get going on this, but have been considering replacing the Shure M105E stylus that is in the TT with an upgrade stylus SHSM0105EE, before I continue recording my vinyls. I have no reason to believe that it is worn, other than it is the original one that I installed when I got the turntable about 20+ years ago. This new styus will cost about $62.00, but may be worth it to get the best quality for this project. What is your take? (I wouldn't be doing this if I hadn't retired early this month! Is a good project to keep me busy for the moment!)

Sally

Sally,

a diamond stylus is normally reckoned to be "good" for up to 200-300 hours of playing - it will last a lot longer, but will be a little worn by that time. The rate of wear depends on the quality of your groove, i.e how much dust and cr*p the stylus encounters in it's travels - and the fact that you never drop it or bang the TT while it's playing etc.). So a new stylus for this project would be a good investment IMHO.

Every time I look at that fragile little cantilever working carrying a tiny precision stylus - I wonder how it can ever work at all to deleiver such good music ........

Good luck with the conversion project.

BTW, if you do have a lot of clicks and pops on your records, you may want to consider buying Brain Davies' excellent ClickRepair software http://wwwmaths.anu.edu.au/~briand/sound/. It costs US$40 but does an excellent job - much better than the click repair effect in Audacity - and much quicker than doing it manually (with the Repair effect in Audacity 1.3).

WC

<<<What should I connect it to?>>>

I have two new preamps coming from Radio Shack. They have a feature where they will deliver to a neighborhood Radio Shack at no cost. Works for me.

I'm planning on putting together a whole system and measuring the result. I won't know where to put that ground wire until they deliver. I found the documentation on my old one and it had a terminal to connect the ground wire. The pictures on the R/S web site don't tell me enough.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:<<<What should I connect it to?>>>

I have two new preamps coming from Radio Shack. They have a feature where they will deliver to a neighborhood Radio Shack at no cost. Works for me.

I'm planning on putting together a whole system and measuring the result. I won't know where to put that ground wire until they deliver. I found the documentation on my old one and it had a terminal to connect the ground wire. The pictures on the R/S web site don't tell me enough.

Koz

Koz,

I found another preamp on the Internet that has a ground connection, and decided to go ahead an order it and return the Radio Shack one. I also decided to get a new stylus as well. Both should get here in a few days. Then I will be able to see how this works. I'll keep you posted.

This is the web site where I found the preamp with ground connection. I hope it's not a bum one!

http://www.phonopreamps.com/tc400pp.html

Sally

I suspected as much. All I was going to do was loosen one of the case screws and slide the little forked terminal under it. This looks like a better deal, tho. No screwdrivers.

I did read a web page that did an analysis of a bunch of these amplifiers. The R/S unit was among the top performers as far as following the RIAA recommendations, but didn't do so hot for sudden peak volume spikes (1812 as recorded on The Mall in Washington, DC with the cannons on Fort Meyer in Virginia) and overall distortion--probably because the original design used individual transistors and electrical components and not more modern technology.

The purpose of the review was to get compulsive, however, and I dare anybody to tell the difference between the majority of the preamps if for no other good reason that the vinyl is usually much noisier and more distorted.

The web site URL is on one of the other computers.

Another thing the review pointed out was the number of "different" amplifiers with the exact same insides. "We'll leave a large clear spot on the top and you can put your own company name up there."

Amazing what you find with a screwdriver.

Koz

Old transistor pre-amps can be excellent - I still use my old 1970's Sony integrated amplifier (with a pure transistor phono pre-amp - no IC's in sight), but just the phono pre-amp section, connected to my (much newer) NAD amp for playing records through the hi-fi. The sound is fabulous, noticeably better than using the phono pre-amp in the NAD (although the power amp section of the NAD is far superior to the old Sony).

BTW, the "Earthing wire" is only needed if you are getting a background hum. I don't use it on my setup as the background hum is only noticeable if I turn up the volume to ear-bleeding levels.

I only use the USB port on my computer. No hub.
I've still not had much luck with Audacity. No audio playthrough during recording (I follow waves, anyway) and already has crashed dduring one record.
Have gone back to EZ Tape converter software and SpinDoctor (comes with Toast).
Audacity looks promising, but gotta stick with what works!

<<<but gotta stick with what works!>>>

Since you're on a Mac, you could be a candidate for The Analog Method.

http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic ... 8840#p8840

<<<Old transistor pre-amps can be excellent>>>

My Hafler preamp is discrete and has distortion figures down in the .008 range, but you can't get them no more and the Radio Shack equipment is not generally associated with top quality audio. Still, it works better than crashing your computer every fifteen minutes.

<<<the "Earthing wire" is only needed if you are getting a background hum.>>>

I've never had an install where I could leave it off. That's why I was a little disturbed that they didn't include a ground strap like the original one had.

We'll see. I got a note that the preamps are in transit. I'm so excited.

Koz

So what you are saying is, Audacity requires much more forum searching to find how to get it to work?