Re: digitilizing audio vinyl records
Hi Johannes,
Johannes Wiedersich wrote:
Bernard wrote:
I am using 'audacity' under Debian Sarge. At first sight, the results
seemed OK... but this statement does not stand any challenge with the
original vinyl records played with an old turntable, even when using
cheaper audio equipment. Sampling was done at 44100 Hz on 32 bits float,
then the result was exported to 16 bits wav files and burnt into audio
CD. Are there any reason to think that the PC audio system matters a lot
in the quality of results to be expected ?
Well, there are two parts:
Is the sound card supported by the software?
Is the hardware quality of the sound card sufficient for the recording
needs?
The card IS supported by the software, but I was not sure whether it was
properly installed. I am now inclined to think that it is correct, even
though Synth devices and Midi devices are not unabled. Please see below :
My audio card is part of my
ASUS P5LD2 SE card (SoundMAX Audio Driver ADI AD1986), but I am not too
sure that it is correctly installed and correctly operating on my Debian
system.
I have no experience with your audio card. However, I would guess that
the input quality of the card might be the bottleneck. Input quality is
worse than output quality for most 'consumer' cards.
My first question is : how can I test this audio card on my Debian
system ?
I thought you already tested the sound card, but just the quality was
not good (enough). Did I misunderstand something?
Below is the output of
#cat /dev/sndstat
**************************
cat /dev/sndstat
Sound Driver:3.8.1a-980706 (ALSA v1.0.14rc1 emulation code)
It seems you have alsa installed. What is the output of 'aplay -l'?
The recommended sound system on linux is alsa, nowadays. The command
lists the sound cards available for alsa.
Thinking of it, do you have the right mixing levels set? Those are set
by 'alsamixer'.
Below is the result of the check I just carried with 'alsamixer' :
In the upper left corner :
Card: HDA Intel
Chip: Analog Devices AD 1986A
in 'capture' mode :
LINE : L CAPTUR R
CD : ---- (no capture)
MIC : ---- (no capture)
Mic Boos 0<>0
Phone : ---- (no capture)
AUX ---- (no capture)
Mono ---- (no capture)
Capture : L CAPTUR R 67<>67 . Was 13<>13, I just set it up
to 67
Mix ---- (no capture)
in 'playback' mode :
Headphone : MM (mute)
PCM 48<>48 (left and right levels)
Front 68<>68
Surround 65<>65
Center 65
LFE 58
LINE 65
CD 65
MIC 65
Mic Boost 0
IEC 958 00 (not possible to raise it up)
PC Speak 67<>67
Aux 71<>71
Channel 2 ch
Stereo D 00 (not mute, but no possibility to raise it up
above 00)
Thanks in advance for telling me what you think of such settings, and
what I should change
Finally, is there any particular reason you run 'sarge' instead of
current 'lenny'? Sarge has been obsoleted by 'etch', which has been
obsoleted by 'lenny' some while ago. My memory already fades of how I
used my audio card in those 'sarge' times ;-)
As of today, I am not too much willing to change a system that works for
my purpose. I will upgrade whenever I need something that I can't
operate on Sarge, or maybe when I get enough time to make the move,
since this almost always implies a few surprises and a lot of time to
spend before everything is fixed. I also have a laptop that runs on
Ubuntu 8.04 (pre-installed when I bought it from DELL), but I bet that
the sound card is probably yet more basic as the one on this Desktop.
Let me just check it .... There it is :
Card : HDA Intel
Chip : SigmaTel STAC9228
This is AlsaMixer v1.0.15 while that on my Desktop is v1.0.8, and the
items are labelled a bit differently, for instance I have no item called
'Line' on it. As for Capture, I have three items named 'Capture',
'Capture1' and 'Capture2', the first one is in mode Capture, the two
others are OFF. Next I have 'Digital' (set to 50<>50), then Input
Source, Input Source 1, Input Source 2, then "Mux' (What the Hell is
this ?), then Mux 1, and Mux 2. Above the 'Input Source', 'Input Source
1' etc., appear the words 'Mic'
All of the Best,
Bernard
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