Re: [Gwc-general] restoration of dynamic range in vinyl recordings?

[David B. <da...@ja...>]

James-

Can't remember exactly, but it's fairly low end "Allegro".  I use it 
because it has a better SNR on the input than the Creative SBlive! it 
replaced, by 5-10 dB or so.

I am old enough to at one time have had just vinyl in my music 
collection, and thought they sounded pretty good back then.  But 
alongside CDs, I really hear the difference.  I was listening to the 
analog output of the turntable/preamp, could hear it and see a curious 
"brick wall" max level on the VU meters.  This with several 
pop/rock/fusion records produced in the early 80s.

Regarding my card: I have run tests on the A/D portion for distortion, 
freq. response and linearity.  It's far from perfect but definitely not 
responsible for much of the hard compression I could see.   It does show 
some mild compression at the last 2 dB or so before the digital "0 VU" 
mark but not enough to explain the above.

With all the great stuff we can do these days using DSP in a 
general-purpose computer, I am just trying to make the most of those old 
records that still sound good but with a little computational help, can 
sound even better.

Dave

James Tappin wrote:

>What sound card do you have? I recall having a similar sort of thing with
>a Trident-based Hoontech card, where anything that went above about +/-15k
>ADU's was squashed out so that it was virtually impossible to get a true
>saturated sample. Whereas with the Envy24 based card I now use it just
>hits the buffers at full speed.
>
>James
>
>  
>