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Need advice on formats for vinyl recordings

I am new to the PC audiophile world. I have a large collection of CDs, LPs and 45s thanks to 5 years of working in a record store in the late 90s. I also have lots of MP3s from my college days (late 90s to 2003...prime Napster era) but most are 128k to 192k (hard drives weren't as plentiful and my budget was low). Anyway, now I am thinking of re-ripping my collection and running through my hi-end system rather than my PC.

I would like to do lossless but EAC is soooo sloooow on my current system (a brand new Dell Optiplex w/2GB ram). There are also lots of settings I don't understand and I would hate to start this thing and have to go back and re-do them later.

I am going to purchase a Benchmark DAC w/USB for my system and was thinking of getting the complimenting ADC for recording vinyl. Anyway here are my questions:

1. Does USB cable length/brand matter? In my audioroom the PC is about 20' cablewise from my system (this cannot change).

2. For ripping CDs, will iTunes with Apple lossless be just as good as FLAC? I would rather have a user friendly format and I may get an iPod in the future if this goes well.

3. For recording vinyl, if I want a superhigh quality recording can I do it at 24bit/192k like the Benchmarks will encode/decode so long as I am always going to play it back through that setup? I know the iPod probably won't support this.

4. Also any recs on good recording software to support those bitrates and remove noise (I use to use SoundForge many years ago and it was pretty good)?

Any info will be much appreciated. Thanks.
jlc76
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,888 posts
 
Also, 24bit/192k loss less might be overkill for recording vinyl but try it and see if the sound justifies the data volumes. I'd be interested to hear you observations if you can share.

I use a $600 Denon CD recorder to copy vinyl to recordable CD first with no noticeable loss of sound quality so I think this is a viable lower cost option.
shazam
205 posts
 
Jlc, consider a Slim Devices Transporter instead of a DAC and USB connection. This puts everything into the wi-fi realm where placement doesn't matter and gives you the option of removing all mechanical devices (computers, hard drives, etc) from the listening room if you want. Plus, the internal "Miracle DAC" of the Transporter is nearly on par with the Benchmark DAC if you want to run other components through it.

They offer a free 30 day in home trial - so there's really nothing to lose by trying it. $2,000.
jlc76 OP
37 posts
 
Shazam, that looks very interesting. It still doesn't address my vinyl recording needs, but that is something I may not have time for anyway.
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