What's your system?
14 responses Add your response
As noted above, information on your system and budget would be helpful. I am going to make a guess on a possible DAC and you can decide. Please see the Musical Fidelity - M1DAC-A Digital to analog converter. List price is $799 and Music Direct has them on sale for $499. The M1 has multiple inputs and sounds very nice. http://www.musicalfidelity.com/m1dac/ "The M1 DAC features four digital inputs: balanced, USB, optical and coaxial. It is an asynchronous design with awesome performance: from its low-distortion, noise levels and jitter-minimising technology to its high-quality power supply, the M1 DAC surpasses the standards of DACs costing many times its price. The M1 DAC has been met with incredible acclaim. Stereophile's review said it "offers performance that is close to the state of the art", calling it "a piece of kit that can transform your system " and "a stunning bargain. Meanwhile, the review from computer-audio specialist, AudioStream described the M1 DAC as "a wonderfully musical-sounding DAC, and one that offered many hours of pure enjoyment." http://www.musicdirect.com/p-53380-musical-fidelity-m1dac-a-digital-to-analog-converter.aspx |
An alternative you might want to consider to purchasing a stand-alone audiophile-oriented ADC is to purchase a professional digital recorder that records to flash memory cards. You would then transfer the digitized files to whatever computer or other device you would use for playback. Such devices are made by, among others, Tascam, Marantz Pro, and at higher price points Sound Devices and Nagra. B&H Photo Video (bhphotovideo.com) carries many such products. Hgeifman -- note that he is looking for an A/D converter, not a D/A converter. Regards, -- Al |
If you're on a tight budget, you may want to consider a Behringer Ultracurve Pro DEQ2496. Its a digital EQ with a lot of useful features. The ADC and the DAC sections both support 24/96. You can bypass all the effects and just use it for an ADC, but some of the other features may be useful to you in certain situations, like fixing a poor recording. They sell new on Amazon for $300. |
Per Almarg, you can start with something as simple as a Tascam DR-05. It records up to 24/96 from line ins onto a MicroSD card for transfer to a computer. You can get one online for $100 at Sweetwater or Guitar Center or $70 on Amazon or B&H. At $1,000, the Tascam DA-3000 is the popular choice these days. For breaking up the tracks, tagging them, and cleaning up the audio, I would suggest Vinyl Studio for $29. Don't let the low price fool you. It is a very powerful program, very under priced. Check out this thread for someone who went that route. Inexpesive Vinyl Ripping |
| Post removed |
Vinyl Studio will let you separate and tag tracks in DSD files. Beyond that, you need to convert to PCM to do other post-processing. There is professional software that will allow you to make corrections to DSD files and only converts to PCM in the area of the correction, but I do not believe there is any consumer level product that can do that. Editting DSD files is one of the major drawbacks of the format. If you want to do anything beyond track breaks and tagging you need to use PCM. I would love to be able to clean up DSD files. I just don't think you can do it at the consumer level. |
The thing about the Tascam DA-3000, from what I've read, is that the amount of storage you can fit on an SD card is limited, and comes up pretty close to one side of a record (25 minutes when you record in DSD). I guess that is not an issue as long as you can get a record side on the chip. I'm glad to hear that Vinyl Studio allows breaking up tracks in DSD - that is what I was asking about. |
Peter, no, I suspect that what you've read was a misinterpretation of the specs on page 31 of the manual. The person writing those statements probably didn't notice that the recording time specs are **per gigaByte**, and the DA-3000 can utilize SDHC cards up to 32 gB, or Compact Flash cards up to 64 gB. (It can also use USB flash drives up to 64 gB, but only for playback). Regards, -- Al |
