🚀 go-pugleaf

Insect wrote:

> I understand I can plug a turntable through a preamp into a soundcard, and
> then record to a PC based CD-R.

Yes you can.

>
> 1.  What soundcard is recommended?  One alternative is the Soundblaster Live
> Value or Soundblaster Live - what is the quality for my purpose?  Do I need
>

SBLive is definately recommended (value or regular) same
chip, you do not need the SPDIF for this purpose.

> to step up to something like a Gina card?  What other cards would be good?
> Is it true that the SB Live samples at 48KHz, and I need 44KHz

Well the SBLive would be good for this purpose and for
the price.


> to record to
> CD, and will therefore get a sound degradation?
>

You will not get a sound degradation - at least you won't
hear it.  What I recommend is you sample everything at
48Khz.   Since the CD-A standard uses 44Khz16bit PCM WAV
you will need to downsample.  You would use EMU's src
(source rate converter) it's a small program, it's fast and
is better than the one on the sblive.


> 2.  What minimum spec do I need for the A/D converters?  Does anyone know
> the specs on the A/D converters on the SB Live? (e.g. 16 bit, 18 bit, etc)?
>

Speaking out of lucky guess here but I think that anything
below -80dB S/N is good.   The SBLive is well into
quality specs for LP to CD conversion.


> 3.  What software is recommended?

I personally use Cool Edit Pro 1.1 - There is also SoundForge.

> 4.  What turntable/cartridge is recommended?
>

I use Maranz, which are good.

Make sure though that your turntable is plugged into your
tuner/amplifier and that your turntable is properly
grounded to your tuner/amp.

Then, to remove the pop, hiss, and crackle I recommend
Algorithmix SoundLaundry with its set of plugins - it works
realtime previewing, and faster than realtime conversion
and the quality is excellent !  I have rendered some
scratchy records to almost CD quality.