Sound card

[Richard King]

I have been thinking of upgrading my sound card (mostly to get the best possible quality in digitizing old records, you know, those flat black antique things). I have been looking at this:
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile192-main.html
I like it because it has balanced inputs and my phono preamp (Rane PS-1 [Discontinued]) has balanced outs. http://rane.com/pdf/old/ps1dat.pdf

Any suggestions?

[DonLandis]

Richard- wasn't there a turntable that offered direct USB 2.0 that came out not long ago? I recall seeing one at NAB in the audio North Hall. While you won't go wrong with old school XLR I/O for noise reduction, maybe this USB thing of the 21st century is worth looking at for your application. Probably expensive though.

[P Smith]

I would say Transit device would be better choice by features/price ratio for your processes.
We're using it in audio test lab.
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Transit-main.html

[Richard King]

I would hate to give up my "classic" turntable. :D Actually, I probably bought this thing in about 1973 or so and it is still running as good as new. It might be time to consider a new cartridge, but I haven't really seen any performance problem with either the table, tone arm or cartridge.

I'm actually thinking of starting a business (very small) digitizing people's old records for them. There are several "companies" doing this that are on the net and I thought I would start just going to the local home theater joints here and leaving fliers. It may work, it may not, but it looks like I am going to have the time to give it a try in the near future so I thought I would. I used to do remastering for records released on the Pickwick label back when I had my recording studio. Things are MUCH easier now with digital technology. I actually used to have to edit with a razor blade and tape. :lol: Anyway I want to have as good a system as possible without getting insane.

[Richard King]

I would say Transit device would be better choice by features/price ratio for your processes.
We're using it in audio test lab.
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Transit-main.html

Interesting device. It's an unbalanced in though, I guess that wouldn't matter if I keep my lines very short, which shouldn't be a problem.

How are you using it in an audio test lab? What kind of testing do you do?

[P Smith]

not me personaly, but the company

[Cholly]

Richard: After reading your post, I tried a bit of searching about and came up with this link that might be worth checking out.
http://www.emu.com/products/category.asp?category=505

E-mu has traditionnaly put out good products, and one of these might meet your needs (I didn't check them all, but some DO have balanced input capablility, and DTS encoding to boot)

Also worth checking are the M-Audio Delta 10 products: http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.list&ID=pciinterfaces

[DonLandis]

Richard- The idea of using USB as opposed to the analog I/O is that line noise pickup is one thing but the main issue with sound purity will be the process of bringing any sound analog signal inside your noise box, the computer. If you can do the conversion to digital outside that box of oscillators and HF noise, you will go a long way to noise reduction. All the balanced XLR will do for you is supress any hum pickup in the lines from the turn table / preamp to your card. But inside the card you'll still have analog audio in the presence of all that HF noise floating around. The best sound card I ever had was a Turtle Beach card and I can see the noise the old 66Mhz 486 PC would put on the signal. It had Balanced inputs but still had that trash.

Anyway, I wonder what type of turntable you have- I have a Direct Drive, one of the first out by Techniques, about the same vintage as yours I believe. I even have one of those QUAD discrete cartridges and a couple of Sure cartridges. I have quite a few QUAD records as well as a few of the old SQ logic quad records but no longer a preamp to decode them.

I think you's have a good business with that if you can figure out a way to streamline the process to auto configure the MP3 play list for people. That is the secret is automating the work load. That is why I like my DVD duplicating business so well. The profit margin is so good with commercial equipment automating everything and the right client mix. It generates about 12 times the profits as my old VHS duplicating work.

[Richard King]

This turntable:
http://www.thevintageknob.org/KENWOOD/KD500/KD500.html
with this tonearm:
http://www.zenn.com.sg/Black_Widow.JPG
and an AKG cartridge that I can't get a replacement stylus for anymore.

An old friend of mine had a quad system that he used to like playing around with. He had 4 of the high end ESS speakers at the time, one in each corner of the room. When I was over there once he cranked it up so loud that he hit a resonance with the room some how. He thought that was pretty neat so he cranked it up again and when he turned down the volume the room continued to make noise. So, being adventurous he did it again. This time when he turned it down a crack formed from floor to ceiling in one corner of the room. I left. :lol:

[Richard King]

Another thing I have to think about is compatability with XP64, which M-Audio claims the Audiofile 192 is set up for.

[DonLandis]

Sounds like we could be friends, Richard. :)

I used to try to blow out flames at a given distance with my system back then 15" JBL with the 20Lb magnet driven by a 500watt amp. IK had a quad JBL speaker system using 2 Olympus S8R in the front and 2 L200 's in the rear. 500 watts on each. Those were tube amps with McIntosh transformers but my tube design using 2 810's in push Pull Class A of course. Anyway those days are long gone. All I have is the Akai 4 track R2R Tape Quad recorder and the Turntable. I know today's amps and speakers in a sub woofer design are better. But, I still have those speakers in my Home theater. They don't wear out but the amps got too expensive to power and the preamps all died years ago.

Your turn table platter looks the same as mine but the tone arm I have is stock.

[Richard King]

My front L/R are (and have been for years) JBL 4430 studio monitors with 15" woofs. Who needs a sub? The turntable was sold armless as the KD500 or fully armed as the KD550. I got it armless and armed it myself. :D

[DonLandis]

Richard- do those studio monitors use the famous JBL Horn Lens with the 28 pound magnet? That's what I have with the 075 machined aluminum ring radiator for SHF. I added these to the L200 as they originally came as a two way. The S8R have one 15 driven, one 15 passive, a horn lens and an 075 ring radiator.

When I had the Quad sound system in my Living Room those were the 4 speakers. When DD came out I rearranged everything with the build of the home theater room. I kept the S8R's in the living room and moved the L200's to the HT for the front L+R then added two tripoles for surround rears by Klipsh and a center channel Klipsch. The sub is a modified Infinity with XPLODE Sony twin 10" 4 ohms in series to a 2KW carver amp. I also have a 2KW carver amp on the Butt Kicker custom mounted to the couch frame. It puts out some sound but to keep the house from falling apart I had to reduce the sub woofer volume with the Butt Kicker. I spent alot of time tweaking a custom built crossover curve for the Butt Kicker so I get really clean lows that match the subwoofer, not just my Butt Kicked as it comes from the factory. The only thing I rteally wish I had now is the new acoustic wall boarding that has come out since I built this HT.

[Richard King]

These are different than what you are speaking of. They are a two way cabinet with a 15" and a bi-radial horn. It could be the same driver though as the speakers weigh in at 125 pounds each. Here's an old picture of the speakers shot before I got my projector. http://www.pbase.com/rking401/image/780607 The speaker was referred to as the "Dolly Parton" speaker, relating in some way to the shape of the horn. :lol: I think the horn you are speaking of may have been what was called the potato masher horn with an acoustical lens attached to the front. Sounds like your system "kicks butt" :D Here's a picture with his big brother. http://www.audioheritage.org/html/profiles/jbl/4430-35.htm

[DonLandis]

From your link I grabbed several old images of my system

The lens isn't exactly like mine and the horn is more like the design on the Paragon.

Also, I found some of the dates a bit inaccurate by my recollection, like the Pragon as 1957? I thought it was introduced in 1972. Maybe that was the first year we got one in the Audio store I worked at. The web site was done by a guy claims to have started in the business in 1980 so maybe some of his dates were off a bit.

[Richard King]

I actually sold a pair of L200's at the stereo shop that I worked for for a short time. BIG heavy speakers.

I had to laugh a little when I saw this picture. Mark Gander was a regular visitor at the store that I worked for back in the old days. He always had his pocket protector at the time. He's now VP of Marketing. :lol:

[DonLandis]

How I got the S8R's--
The store I worked at, I sold them to a guy who saw a picture of the Paragon and his wife insisted he get that instead. So, He returned the S8R for half price and bought the Paragon for a small discount. I got the S8R for half price! The store had this deal with all the employees- Dealer net plus 10%. Can be paid for buy cashing in hours worked at $5 per hour. I never collected a dime in paycheck there as I cashed in all my commissions and hours for equipment. Some notables I worked with were Henry Kloss, Ed Muntz, and Don Kirchner.

[Richard King]

JBL had an employee purchase program for all their dealers. I was able to purchase the 4430's at 50% of retail which was about 5-10% below dealer cost. I am actually on my second pair, having bought a pair a year before these and sold them to a customer (at a profit) to buy these. I almost bot the 4435's, but didn't know where I would put them. You could only do a personal purchase once a year and I took advantage whenever possible. When I was setting up my studio I bot some tape machines (Teac 3440, Teac 73002T), small mixers (Teac Model 2) and mics the same way.

I spent a couple quarters teaching the recording studio lab class at the tech school that I went to in exchange for studio time. I put most of the money from studio business into equipment and used to haul the equipment in when I had a session (since they just had some older 4 track equipment and I bought one of the first 1/2" eight track machines in Minneapolis. I also never got a paycheck from teaching, just from my studio customers that I would bring in in exchange for my time. Not a bad way to do it. Here's the studio: http://www.pbase.com/rking401/studio_stuff The picture on the left shows the very old home brew rotary fader console that was replaced by the console you see in the 3rd picture. The two tape machines sitting in the chairs were mine. The picture on the right shows my location recording rig (before I bot the 8 track machine). My, how things have changed. :lol:

[DonLandis]

All the audio mfg's had deals much better than their wholesale price sheets for the home equipment lines. Not sure how it worked for the industrial stuff like you were into back then. Typical for our store was a 60% cost of MSRP but the owner of the store I worked at paid 30 - 40% of MSRP by buying large lots and becoming a wholesaler himself, keeping about 10-20% of the big lots for the store. I remember one Friday I went to the downtown store and it was packed with 1500 Akai receivers. These sold for $999. He paid, $25 ea. !!!! The deal was, we were to sell them for minimum $200. Then we got 75% commission on every dollar we got over that. I sold a bunch of these and paid for a Kloss Novabeam, my first big screen PJ CRT. The receivers moved fast at 50% off! :) With $225 commission in my pocket for every receiver I moved, It didn't take long to own that Novabeam! But unfortunately that was a rare deal and he got in on that just before Akai folded. After we moved about 600 of those receivers (12 salesmen) the owner wholesaled the rest before the invoice came due at the end of the month. If only we had more population in our market. This was in Middletown NY.

Originally I was hired as a repair tech but there was so little repair work that I begged to be in sales. The only real sales job I ever held.

[Richard King]

Ah, but, Akai never did fold. They got out of the consumer end of things in the US and started a pro division that was VERY innovative and is still going strong. :D http://www.akaipro.com/
I remember selling a digital recording studio to a local guy by the name of Willie Murphy http://www.mninter.net/~wilmurph/. This thing recorded to a very expensive custom tape (similar to Beta in size) and was a 14 track with a fairly sophisticated built in mixer. http://www.labguysworld.com/MG-1212_002.jpg This waas the first of it's kind back in the early '80's.

[Richard King]

I found a new, in box from a dealer M-Audio Audiophile 192 for $135 delivered and ordered it yesterday. If it doesn't work as expected I can always Ebay it. :D

[Richard King]

The card arrived today, but I haven't had time to install it because I got my first paying project and spent too much time working on it to get the parts (TRS 1/4" connectors) to wire the thing up. An older fellow brought me a 1/4" tape that he found after his brother died. He figures it was made sometime back in the mid '60's and it contains the recording of a bunch of old 78 RPM records (32 songs) from the depression. After listening to this stuff today I can see why the called it the "depression". This stuff for the most part is very gloomy and depressing. I am playing with several software programs to clean it up as well as possible. Of course, this project has a combination of two problems that need attention, tape hiss and 78 RPM record noise, although the tape hiss isn't really bad. The 78 RPM record noise is a real mess though. I am able to get a significant improvement in some of the songs, but several of them end up with chipmunk like sounds in the background :( but there isn't much I can do about that. I have a feeling that the customer will be happy just being able to listen to it after all these years. The tape is in AMAZINGLY good condition. I have had no shedding problems as I would have expected. The tape is Irish Brand, not related to Scotch brand. In doing an internet search I found that Irish tape was purchased by Ampex sometime in the '70's. This stuff is actually in better condition than my master tapes from the '70's and '80's that I still have around here. Amazing.

[DonLandis]

Richard- Sony Sound Forge with Noise Reduction works wonders in a preset for Vinyl restoration. "old 78 RPM records too.

Be careful with that 60's vintage tape. It is probably acetate base and brittle. The 70's brought mylar base tape that would stretch before it would break.

[Richard King]

I tried another program after posting and got much better results. I used a program called DC Art Millenium. I am still working on the project as every song seems to have different characteristics, being from a bunch of different 78's. I should have charged the guy a bunch more, but this is probably the toughest project I will ever get. A good way to break myself in. I have the tape transfered to the computer and it did just fine. I wish all tape held up as well over time.

[DonLandis]

The easy jobs will be done by the people themselves. What you will get are the time consuming projects. I believe you will learn to adjust your rates according to certain categories of work involved that they request.

Just guessing here but if you digitize the entire tape and then put it on a long time line, go into the timeline and split to individual music mp3's saved to a folder, then have to title and name each song according to the list they hand you on paper. Add noise reduction rendering, save to some form of media. How does this job compare to a similar one that just:
Digitize the entire tape to a large file, render to mp3, save to media.

Some clients I have delt with want to microanalize every step I take in the edit process, while others want just a bottom quote for the job. I use a laundry list of known time and cost esitmates to build the quote. Some things are easy to fulfill and charge accurately, but something like noise reduction which will have varying degrees of success and time factors, best to charge a flat fee for this that covers your base but make no promises as to what to expect. False expectations will kill you in your attempts to make the customer happy.

[Richard King]

Sounds like I am going in the right direction. I digitized the entire tape on the hard drive. I attempted to use the same processing for the entire project and, of course, that didn't work, so I broke the project down into similar problem areas (and similar music). Some software works on one type of music but may not work right on others. I charged WAY less than I should have for this little project, but, that's ok, it's a start.

Here's my promo material... so far. http://upload.pbase.com/rking401/richard_king_remastering_services

Now my DVD Burner/reader has decided not to read. It writes cds ok, but won't read, meaning I can't load the drivers for my new sound card. I can't help but blame XP64 even if it may not be related.

[Richard King]

A reboot fixed that, but, of course there are no XP64 drivers on the disc and the ones at the site are beta. I am not pleased since they CLAIMED they were 64 bit compatible. We shall see.

[DonLandis]

One thing that I am surprised no one has mentioned yet. You know what you are doing is quite illegal, don't you? While old 78's are probably in the public domain under the older copyright law, newer stuff will not permit any copies to be made without license from hoards of people. If in doubt, you can always call the Harry Fox agency in NY or Rights and Permissions Inc. Usually, if I have a question I contact these people before calling BMI or ASCAP. I once got out of hot water on a huge lawsuit because I had good advice from an attorney. I got the client to supply the music along with a letter that said he assumes all responsibility for copyright licensure of the copy work he hired me to do. When that high profile suit was filed, I got contacted by the plaintif's law firm and I faxed their office the letter and I was in the clear. But, my client was sued bigtime as he had no permission at all. I won't go into all the details of the case but it involved a fairly large company and made national press about 8 years ago.

[Richard King]

Nah, there are sites all over the internet doing the same (I'm trying to base my pricing on them). If they say it's ok on the internet it must be. ;) Actually, this goes back to the "home taping" suit from years ago. People are allowed to make a "backup" of their media. I suspect in your case, being the professional video guy that you are, that they were probably using the material in some sort of a commercial presentation. The little project I just finished could probably be questioned more than anything else since it was a copy of a home made tape and he didn't have the original record in his posession. But, then like you said, the material is so old that it probably is public domain by now... knocking on wood.

I got the sound card working and it is dead silent. I LIKE it. I just spoke to a recording engineer friend of mine and he said I need a pair of Genelec self powered monitors now. :lol: http://www.genelecusa.com/news/

[DonLandis]

The video that the music was used in was shown at a home cookout as a motivational piece for people engaged in home based business. You know, where they sell cleaning products using a multilevel marketing program. The case was won because the people were playing the musig at home for a gatherring where the theme was to improve income in the program. That crossed the line. The practice and method of motivation was encouraged by the main company. The Fair use act is quite clear on this. You can make a copy for your own use but you may not distribute it or make copies for hire. Anyway, just wasn't sure you were aware of the legal position you are in by doing this for hire.