[Scott Dorsey]

Nate Najar wrote:
But I digress, I took the turntable into the mix room, put some rca-1/4" ad=
aptors on the cord (and wedged the ground wire prong into one of the 1/4" a=
daptors) and plugged it into the instrument inputs on the front panel of th=
e Orpheus. I tried the line inputs on the back, but then you don't get to =
use preamp gain, and I'm not sure if the impedance is optimal or not. It s=
ounded fine in the line input, if not very quiet, but the instrument inputs=
are optimized for a high impedance, unbalanced signal (like a guitar magne=
tic pickup... or a turntable cartridge!) and by bringing up the gain with t=
he preamps instead of digitally, I could monitor it at a better level. In =
the software I set the filters to RIAA compensation and gave it about 45db =
of gain which was enough to get a very strong signal but no peaks were in d=
anger of clipping. I set pro tools to 192 (I've never used 192 before but =
it seemed like a good time to try it) and recorded a pass. Top and tail, e=
xport, izotope for src and I've got a track now. =20

The good news about this approach is that high frequency noise and distortion
products get reduced in the RIAA de-emphasis, so doing the de-emphasis in the
digital domain eliminates some of the artifacts you might have with your
converters.

The bad news about this approach is that some MM phono cartridges are very
touchy about loading, and they need to ahve a 47k load. MC cartridges are
loosely-coupled and mostly don't care about loading, but you can easily get
changes in the top octave if the loading isn't right. And unfortunately one
of the things that having ringing in the top octave can do is to make small
clicks and pops into more annoying louder ones.

It sounds extremely good. A tiny bit of crackle and pop because of the med=
ium and my less than well maintained equipment, but it's actually barely no=
ticeable. The sound is very detailed and precise. It makes me want to hir=
e a young person to digitize and archive my collection (no money for that b=
ut it's a nice thought!).

It should make you want to sit down and play some records, which I recommend
doing whenever possible. No need to digitize it, just set aside a half hour
and listen to an album.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."