i'd like my hat sauteed with some garlic please

In our experience while carts make a great deal of difference on the Technics and Vestax turntables when used as a DJ tool, they can not compensate for the decks inadequacy when placed in a decent audio system or when used to rip vinyl when compared to other hi-fi decks.

I was referring to Vestax turntables

With regard to Vestax mixers, the low to mid-end units offer great features but the build quality is not battle-ship. But then, you get what you pay for. The PMC 46 and 55 are great mixers though and would always be something I would look out for on ebay as a bargain buy.

Allen & Heath, great mixers and equally great recommendation. Rane too for the ultimate in build and sound quality.

This rant about mixers could be of use to those considering ripping; they offer line level out direct to the PC sound card therefore acting as a phono stage, plus some may even may to set up multiple decks for their own mixing,...lovely!

But back to the main issue. IMHO look out for a decent Rega cheap, great deck and there are numerous upgrade options available too. I would not use the Rega cartridges often found on them though, find them quite flat and uninspiring.

 

I've said this elsewhere
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5835205926
The Logic DM101 is a cracking TT. Maybe stretching the budget at £290, but with a Mission arm and Shure cartridge it would beat any Thorens, Rega etc easilly and some (me!!) prefered it to an LP12 back in the day.

 

Get a Vestax. Great value, too.

 

Offer him £200 w/o the cart, It's not the 97ED I was expecting to see for £110. Put a Denon on the Mission, and you'll still have money for a phono stage. Good spot that one Lee

 

Ju why not get cd recorder and vinyl. and then rip cds to flac?, might be cheaper in long run

 

The other way to do this is with a DVD recorder and edit/rip to FLAC on the PC. As my post on the Pye DVD recoder available from Asda that is actually a rebadged Philips. My findings:

Have managed to grab a DVD recorded in our Philips unit at work. Used DVD Decryptor to rip down the video/audio streams seperately. The AC-3 plug-in for Nero lets you burn the ripped audio stream to a CD. So I can burn to an image file, mount the image file as a virtual CD and rip back to WAV for editing before finally burning out to CD. This sounds more complex than it actually is.

You can also take the ripped audio/video streams straight into Nero Express and either edit from there and burn out to DVD or export as an AVI and use something like Premiere (with the Panasonic MPEG plug-in) to do more complex edits.

I'll definately be picking up a DVD recorder in the New Year - not having to use a PC for audio/video capture is a godsend, but still having the flexibility of using it as an editing tool is there. I'm very impressed at the simplicty - and all using free software or software that I already had to hand (Nero came with my DVD burner, DVD Decryptor is free)

 

hmm,
i'd rather not go the route of another recorder - especially when i can get a potentially better copy on my pc. i'm prolly gonna get an audigy 2nx and some freeware to record with. i've also got semi access to a thorens td 105 with i might start off with to see how things go b4 plunging into the vinyl world with such ferocity.

 

The Audigy 2 is a nice card - I've got one in my system here and it copes with audio duties - both for recording and playback as once of my sources very well (to my ears anyway).

*Edited for typo on 'source' - been on the sauce tonight - that bottle of white I picked up today from M&S was rather good

 

M-audio Audiophile Firewire. Unless you are willing to spend on a really good vinyl front end (and then invest in the time to set it up properly) this 24/96 box will be more than good enough IMO.

 

Agree with Joel, the M Audio is a great unit. I have one, there's an M Audio Audiophile USB on EBay at the moment.

As for cartridges, I have to say the Denon was less than impressive on dance music in my system.

 

the m-audio seems to be about 150 new and the ones on e-bay are around 60 quad already. the audigy's are about 80 quid new and less on ebay.

 

...interesting, I listen to alot of electronic music which also covers many types of 'dance' music, the last thing I want in a cartridge is one that does not reply this type of music well.

 

Julian,

one is an off board A-D D-A. The other appears to be a sound card working in the delightful enviroment of a PC. My suspicion would be that you get what you pay for, but I can only vouch for the M Audio. l

 

the 2nx (usb) is an offboard soundcard with it's own psu - there is a cheaper version that's bus powered but as i'm an ex naimie psu's are important....
http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=204&product=9103

cheers


julian

 

usb 1 is not up to real-time audio work IMO. You want Firewire or USB2. This is especially true with higher sampling rates.

 

i spotted this: http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=204&product=10769
which covers all the bases and means i could concievably take my laptop out and about to record some of the club nights i go to - subject to permissions of course. as well as making schlepping the laptop round to mates without the need for 4 ways and loads of wires etc.
seems to be an ideal solution so i've ordered one - many thanks for all the hel people have given over the past few days.
cheers


julian.

 

Good luck with that. I will never, ever touch Creative products again, but who knows, in the 6 years I've had my current (M-audio) soundcard maybe they've improved the hardware and software to the point at which it now works properly

 

if it doesn;t work properly it'll be going back under distance selling regs but i've had a couple of creative products and had no problems with them. but then all i was doing was using them to play games not anything complex.
just out of interest what products / problems did you have - that way i can give my new card a stress test in the areas you've gound them to be weak.
cheers


julian.

 

It looks like it's more expensive than the M Audio Transit but it is multichannel. I wonder if you lose anything by having the extra channels though?