Recording vinyl at 24-bit 96khz

[Tikevin83]

I received a USB turntable (the Ion Profile Pro) as a Christmas gift. The one thing that I was hoping to do with it was rip vinyl at 24-bit 96khz. This has proved to be somewhat difficult. On windows, the maximum rate that the driver will let me pick is stereo 16-bt 48khz, which almost defeats the purpose of recording from vinyl. On linux, I don't even know how to get it to record stereo. My sound card on my motherboard supports up to 24-bit 192khz (realtek alc892). Would someone please explain how to be sure that I'm recording at stereo 24-bit 96khz? Either through Windows or Linux - doesn't matter which. Thanks in advance.

[Trebor]

I was hoping to do with it was rip vinyl at 24-bit 96khz. This has proved to be somewhat difficult. On windows, the maximum rate that the driver will let me pick is stereo 16-bt 48khz, which almost defeats the purpose of recording from vinyl.

Can you hear above 24KHz ? ... http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 153#p81153

CD quality is 44100Hz 16bit ...

16-bit Linear PCM sampled at 44,100 Hz.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_ ... tandard%29

[Tikevin83]

First, the first chime sounds slightly higher pitched. To me they do sound slightly different.
You're right about CD quality. However I'm not trying to achieve CD-quality. I thought the point of listening to vinyl recordings is that you get better than CD-quality, and I could then put the rips on my iTunes home share and listen to them throughout the house. If that isn't the case then oh well.

[billw58]

We could get into the whole debate of whether or not vinyl "sounds better" than CD, which boils down to a subjective judgement.

IMO:
- vinyl is unlikely to contain frequencies above 20 kHz
- the cartridge supplied with the ION is unlikely to reproduce frequencies above 20 kHz

Do you intend to put the 24 bit/96 kHz files into iTunes? Will iTunes play them? If you intend to convert to MP3 in iTunes it will likely downsample to 44.1 kHz anyway. I'm sure you're aware of the losses encountered when converting to MP3.

-- Bill

[Tikevin83]

iTunes will not only play 24-bit 96khz audio, it also will reencode it into ALAC, so you save about 40% filesize losslessly. It will also do 192khz, but that's definitely overkill.

[billw58]

Have you ever done a double-blind A-B-X comparison of 16/44.1 versus 24/96? What matters is if you can hear the difference. If you can, then it's worth it - for you.

It's probably the ION that is limiting you to 16/48 with its built-in A/D converter and USB interface. For 24/96 you'd probably want a high-end stand-alone turntable fitted with the best possible cartridge, feeding a high-end phono pre-amp and then into a converter that supports 24/96.

-- Bill

[Tikevin83]

Bill - no because I've never had access to 24-bit 96khz audio or a friend who knows what the heck I'm talking about to do the study with.
I bet you're right about the Ion. Thanks for the help. At least I can still circumvent the loudness wars... remasters are such a joke. Usually they're more like DRC on mixes with every instrument and vocal turned to 11. I've even seen CDs lately with clipping as if someone straight-up amplified the whole thing and forgot about DRC.

[billw58]

... remasters are such a joke. Usually they're more like DRC on mixes with every instrument and vocal turned to 11. I've even seen CDs lately with clipping as if someone straight-up amplified the whole thing and forgot about DRC.

On that we can agree!

There's a great comparison on this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war of successive "re-masters" of the same song, showing increasing compression and loudness.

-- Bill

[mardukes]

Unlike some, let me address your question. I have an ASUS board with ALC892 and VinylStudio reports that, while it is capable of 192/24 output, the maximum recording sampling depth is 16-bit. Creative Audigy cards will record at 96/24. For much better quality M-Audio has a couple of cards under $100 that should do that. You can certainly go up in price from there. And the improvement of 24-bit depth over 16 is evident.

[steve]

Unlike some, let me address your question. I have an ASUS board with ALC892 and VinylStudio reports that, while it is capable of 192/24 output, the maximum recording sampling depth is 16-bit. Creative Audigy cards will record at 96/24. For much better quality M-Audio has a couple of cards under $100 that should do that. You can certainly go up in price from there. And the improvement of 24-bit depth over 16 is evident.

I doubt that the original poster will receive your message as you are replying to a topic that is nearly a year old.