Archiving vinyl

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chrisg

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I am toying with idea of archiving my vinyl collection and put it on my laptop. I could enjoy some decent music when away from home.
This is domino effect: dac, head amp and good cans but this is another topic for this forum. Doing research on the web I found recording nowadays can be done in more than one way.

One method would be to use USB TT/phonostage but I am not sure if USB gear is a good way to go. These USB TT?s look very cheap to me.

It seems using my own TT and phonostage with good quality/professional sound card which captures 24/96 PCM and records WAV files is much better option.  The hosting computer shall be also high quality:
? noise free: no CPU/GPU cooling fans or any other cooling fans,
? no HD, only SSD drives,
? reputable motherboard and add-on cards (good quality and electrically stable)
? ?clean? (preferably outboard)power supply.
? recording to external drive via USB or fire wire is a must.
To set up HQ PC is probably quite expensive.

Another way is to ditch potentially noisy computer environment and use portable digital recorders. M-Audio, Tascam, Marantz or Korg portable solid state recorders are capable of capturing audio at 16bit/44kHz or 16bit/48kHz PCM, some of them can do 24/44, 24/48 or even 24/96 PCM. They record WAV files to USB stick, SD card or Compact Flash.
Sony Hi-MD recorders claim 16/44 LPCM recording on Hi-MD disks which could be upload to computer via Sonic Stage and converted to WAV format (at least theoretically).I have Hi-MD recorder but didn?t try it yet.

Probably the best option (and most expensive) would be to invest in professional digital recorder with all bells and whistles: balanced inputs and outputs, good AD/DA converter chips and high quality associated electronics. I looked at Fostex UR-2. It does 24/96 PCM, records WAV?s to USB stick or SD card. Tascam DV-RA1000HD  does 24/192 PCM or 1 bit/2.822MHz DSD and Records WAV or RawDSD files to DVD-R/RW or local hard drive.

Having said all that, I am not even sure if solid state or HD/DVD recorders are the way to go for home archiving. Most of the related write-ups and reviews on the web are about their suitability for live recordings. There is not much said (if at all) about using them for archiving music. Professional top notch recorders are also very expensive beasts. It?s worth noting though; Tascam RA1000HD is recently half of it?s original price on Amazon US (reduced to 1300 USD). Fostex UR-2 is 1000 USD. Add shipping, insurance and import taxes. It does not make financial sense to me. Not with my 250 LP?s. Unless someone has huge 1000 plus vinyl collection and even bigger bank account. Perhaps cheaper portable SS recorders are more justified but are their vinyl archiving capability good enough?

Do you guys have any views on this subject? Or, has anyone recorded vinyl lately and would like to share his experience.
 
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