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What You Listening To? v. I'll be Bach... (No Embeds)

felix said:
Interesting. How did you power the turntable (as in sound), or did you not need to?
Click to expand...
The Ion audio capture device has a headphone output, which I plumbed through my amplifier and speakers. Though I could have selected "software playthrough" and had it come though the computer's speakers -- or a cable from the computer's headphone jack to the amplifier. Or (since the presence or absence of speakers doesn't make any difference to the recording) I could even just have waited till the recording was completed and then listened to it.

The amplifier -- being a chunky old beast from the 1970s, when silicon was still acting like it had something to prove -- has an RIAA input for a magnetic cartridge, if I wanted to listen to the LP without bringing the computer into the mix. My "squat party special" CD DJ console (usually my everyday CD player but temporarily disconnected, to make room for the Christmas tree) also has magnetic phono inputs (two of them, funnily enough).

The other point about a USB audio interface is that they often are less noisy than internal sound cards. Modern laptops nowadays have only have a pink mono mic input anyway so no good for stereo recording (and the level and impedance are wrong, and no RIAA); but even with a desktop computer fitted with a blue "line in" jack and fed via a suitable RIAA preamp (or the tape-out sockets of a receiver / amplifier with its own phono preamplifier), the sensitive analogue audio signals are on the same motherboard as spiky-edged digital signals, and some interference pick-up on quiet passages is almost inevitable. And if you've ever left your mobile phone near a radio as it was communicating with the mast, you'll know what digital interference sounds like :/
 
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