[Gllug] Soundcards for recording

[Peter Grandi]

>>> On Fri, 7 Oct 2005 06:02:29 +0100, Steve Nelson
>>> <sanelson at gmail.com> said:

sanelson> Hi all, I've set up a machine for the purpose of
sanelson> transferring my vinyl collection to a digital form
sanelson> (probably flac).

Archiving... BTW, I guess you are aware of a program designed
for this kind of work, 'gramofile'.

sanelson> All is well - I can record via the soundcard input,
sanelson> using audacity - it all works very smoothly.

sanelson> However, every track I've recorded has a nasty
sanelson> interference pattern superimposed, which my
sanelson> investigations lead me to believe is as a result of a)
sanelson> a crap on-board VIA chipset and b) nasty noisy fans.

Good quality recording is not easy. Onboard chipsets are often
not that well shielded, and there are many other issues, for
example some soundcards resample the input. SoundBlasters
apparently resample it to 48kHz even of it is _already_ 48kHz,
introducing artifacts.

Another comment has mentioned group issues; there is a page
discussing good quality sound recording which describes them
here:

  http://WWW.LinuxDJ.com/audio/quality/

and you might be particularly interested, if ground is your
problem, in this section:

  http://WWW.LinuxDJ.com/audio/quality/#AChum

sanelson> The next plan, therefore, is to obtain a 'good'
sanelson> soundcard for the purposes of recording, that might be
sanelson> less liabale to such interference.

If it is electrical interference the best thing is to fix it.

Anyhow, what is a ''good'' soundcard is a very difficult
subject, most are designed somewhat poorly; also a ''good''
soundcard may perform badly with an unsuitable motherboard
or power supply or if poorly designed cards are also connected
in the same PC.

Most buyers look at low price because that is easy to see,
quality is a lot more difficult to assess; manufacturers know
that usually they can get higher sales with a lower prices,
even if quality goes down. But for people who care, two general
principles:

* System integration is a lot more difficult than slapping
  together some parts bought at random. Surprises abound.

* There are no generic parts. The advantages/disadvantages of
  most products are surprisingly different, even if they may
  seem equivalent.

If you really care about sound quality, you have to do a bit of
research on the web about experiences of people who seem to
appreciate the finer points.

[ ... ]

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