If you want audiophile-quality sound and your audio interface supports doing so, you should record at something higher than the CD-standard 44.1kHz/16 bits, and then save your recordings as uncompressed WAV files. For devices that don’t support FLAC–and many do not–I use Windows’ or Apple’s lossless formats. For classical music, I bump those rates up to the maximum (320, 256, or 192 kbps, depending on the format) or use the free FLAC lossless codec. I use at least 192 kilobits per second for MP3 and AAC files, and 160 kbps for WMA files. Experts differ on which bit rate sounds best for each format. If you’re not especially concerned about the sound quality, saving your recordings to compressed MP3, AAC, or WMA is fine. Noise reduction software can use the spaces between tracks to “profile” noise for more effective processing with less loss of dynamic range throughout the spectrum. If you intend to apply noise reduction (see the next section below), don’t trim your recordings until after you’ve cleaned them up. You can ditch the larger file once you’ve split it up. The editing software will let you select and save each individual track to a file that you create on your PC. The start and end points of songs are easy to spot by the changes in the visual wave form. Any audio editor or recording app worth its salt lets you select and save individual sections of an audio file. Don’t bother trying to separate each song during the recording process–record wholes sides of records and cassettes. Once you’ve connected your hardware, use a program such as Audacity (free) to record, edit, and save your newly digitized music. The sound from its preamped analog line outputs was very good, but its USB output sounded little better than the Crosley’s.Īnother Ion product, its $120 Tape 2 PC cassette deck, created middling audio recordings in my tests, regardless of whether I connected it via the USB or via the analog line outputs. Ion LP 2 CD is a turntable with USB connections for analog-to-digital audio conversion the unit subsequently transfers digitized recordings to your PC via USB cable.The quality of Ion Audio’s $300 LP 2 CD turntable, in contrast, was impressive, offering the antiskate and tracking pressure adjustments missing from the Crosley CR2413A. The digitized sound was decent, but again, it did not approach audiophile quality. Alas, the quality of the unit’s components (especially the turntable) was a tad disappointing. The $400 CR2413A Memory Master that I tested includes a turntable (33, 45, and 78 rpm), a cassette player, an FM radio, a CD player, and auxiliary line-level stereo audio inputs for other audio devices such as MP3 players–all of them recordable to your PC via a USB connection. Crosley Radio‘s products have a distinctive, appealingly retro look.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |