I am going to fit a second tonearm to my turntable and have been looking for a reasonably cheap phono preamp to run this through. In addition, I want to start converting some of my vinyl to digital for playing in the car. It seems I can do both of these by using a Phono to USB pre amp with RCA's out. Not wanting to spend more than about £100, the two that seem to stand out are the Rega Fono Mini A2D and the ART Phono Plus. Are these reasonable choices and are there any others that I should consider?
If you already have a good pre-amp, there's no need for all that extra. Take RCA cables from your "tape out", and run them to any tolerable sound card's "line in" connector. Cable cost you maybe £5.
If you just need to record a few mp3's for your car, I would at most use a $30 Behringer UFO202. Or just use your existing pre with soundcard line in as stated by jplesset above. If you plan on archiving an entire vinyl collection (colossal waste of time imo), I would suggest recording at 24-bit 96kHz for several reasons. Note that the ART USB Phono Plus is limited to 16-bit 48kHz, I didn't see a spec for the Rega.
Also, what recording and cleanup software do you plan on using?
Also, what recording and cleanup software do you plan on using?
I don't have a separate pre amp at present, I am using an integrated amp. The preamp was to enable me to use a line level input on the amp. I do not plan to archive all my vinyl as I enjoy listening to them as vinyl, there a just a few I would like to hear more often. I have been using Audacity (via an M Audio interface) for some years now for recording songs I write (purely for my own enjoyment). I would use this for copying the vinyl.
Without knowing the details of your system, it sounds like you just need a phono preamp with RIAA eq between your second tonearm and the M Audio interface. The $50 ART DJPreII gets good reviews at Vinyl Engine and Audio Karma. In fact, one of our DJ's uses one with a Focusrite interface and iZotope RX3 to convert vinyl to wavs.
Note that unless it has been fixed, Audacity is limited to 16-bit on Windows machines - see the links below. It will allow you to select 24 or 32-bit float, but only records in 16-bit (sometimes with bad effects). There is an older ASIO compiled vers of Audacity that records 24-bit, floating around on the net.
Audacity Forum • View topic - Recording at 24bit appears to be 16 bits padded to 24bit
audacity-devel - 24-bit recording on Windows
Note that unless it has been fixed, Audacity is limited to 16-bit on Windows machines - see the links below. It will allow you to select 24 or 32-bit float, but only records in 16-bit (sometimes with bad effects). There is an older ASIO compiled vers of Audacity that records 24-bit, floating around on the net.
Audacity Forum • View topic - Recording at 24bit appears to be 16 bits padded to 24bit
audacity-devel - 24-bit recording on Windows
Most integrated amps have a tape/rec out that would allow capturing the signal of the internal phonopre.
As far as >16 bit recording in Audacity goes, you can use WASAPI in current nightly builds, which according to my testing does the trick as long as the input device is set up correctly. At first WASAPI would only provide a loopback device, but they seem to have fixed that by now.
As far as >16 bit recording in Audacity goes, you can use WASAPI in current nightly builds, which according to my testing does the trick as long as the input device is set up correctly. At first WASAPI would only provide a loopback device, but they seem to have fixed that by now.
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