Newbie with simple A/D question??

  • Thread starter Thread starter fishrising
  • Start date Start date
F

fishrising

New member
Hi All!

Can someone please help me?

I've been trying to do as much reading as possible on home recording (this site was great!), but I can't find an easy solution. I want to take my 600+ hours of Grateful Dead and Phish shows and convert them to CD-r. I have already done this by finding and trading MP3s and SHNs on the net and burning them. But I want to put my tape collection on CD. I have read about Lexicon Core 2, Darla 24, Midiman Flying Calf, Terratecs, etc.....and I can't decide....

Can anyone help me? I believe I just need a high quality A/D converter? Any suggestions? Do I want an external like a Midiman Flying Calf and plug it into my digital in on my sound card or do I want a whole new sound card with a breakout box like the Echo Darla 24?

Please shed some light for me, I have about $300 budget, and my goal is to transform live cassette recordings and a few DATs to cd...

Thanks to all!!!
 
Welcome,

You won't need the highest quality converters on the market with breakout box, 24/96 quality and the whole shebang, as your source is regular tape. You may want to look into soundcards with digital input if your DAT player has a digital output (which I presume most have). Also, as you only need a stereo input and 16/44.1 quality, you have lots to choose from. I don't know if you're planning on doing any noise reduction etc., which could call for a better soundcard. Not necessarily though, depending on the quality of your tapes.

I'm sure that you can find some suggestios for soundcards if you search this forum. $50 should go a long way.

What's your present soundcard (you mentioned the digital input, SB Live?) and do you have any recording software?

Good luck

/Ola
 
Thanks for the quick response....

I currently do not have a sound card that supports digital in (sorry for misleading above), but I had assumed that I could buy a SB Live with digital i/o and then buy an external A/D converter, and also plug my DAT straight in. I also have an old reel 2 reel that I need to record some stuff off of.

I have an older SB 16 PNP, I havent upgraded yet because I had to find out what I really should get. I just built an Athlon 800 machine.

In my readings it seems that sound cards dont have high quality converters unless you buy a card designed to do so...

Most of my tapes are pretty high quality, mostly straight from the sound board. So I am not afraid to spend my $300 on a card with excellent a/d converters, if I won't be able to hear any sound degredation.....But if a $50 sound card will do the trick than so be it.....I may decide to "play" with noise reduction to see what happens....

Thanks for your help and any other opinions would be greatly appreciated!!
 
The SBLive! will do a good job with the digital I/O, and ART makes a 24/96 converter for about $100.
 
I've heard good things about the SBLive! but I know of one "problem" - the sample rate is fixed at 48kHz so one must convert all recordings to 44.1kHz to make a CD. Lots of programs does this but it an additional step before the finished result. I don't see the reson for an external A/D converter though. If you want better quality than what the SBLive! offfers, get a better soundcard. I like the Hoontech DSP24 cards and got mine here. If you want 24/96 quality, get the MKII version of the DSP24. The converters have gotten good reviews and Hoontech is good value. It is bundeled with some SW but I have not tried it (I got mine before the bundeling).

An external A/D converter and an SBLive! may yield as good results but I don't know how good the ART converters are and how easy it is to get them working together with an SBLive! though.


/Ola
 
The sample rate is fixed @ 48 khz only on the digital output of the Live!, the input is selectable. - But I agree with Ola, You may want to look into a better card that can do both digital I/O & good onboard conversion - I don't have any recommendations for you though...
 
Thanks all, I appreciate your help.....

I have been talking to many people, and the m Audio Audiophile 24/96 seems to have some good reviews...and will do what I want to do...

I am still looking though....giving myself another week or so, otherwise I will be looking forever....

Any opinions will still be valued, thanks again!!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top