HdK Recording Setup

House de Kris

Loud-n-Deep
Here is a picture of my recording setup after some recent changes. In the past, if I needed to record vinyl I would have to drag the turntable in on a rickety stand. I've received numerous requests recently for CDs made from vinyl, so I decided to place the turntable permanently with the other gear.

Typically, right-brain DJ mixes go straight to DAT from the DJ mixer, while left-brain DJ mixes are mixed entirely on the hard disc recorder, then moved to DAT. Either way, once on DAT, start IDs are added. Followed by burning a master disc which is then used as the source for all subsequent burns. The Pioneer jukebox is used to store all the masters so copies are easy to do. No computers are used at all in this system.

For doing straight vinyl to CD transfers, I believe in preserving the original sound, warts and all. Thus, I do no noise reduction or noise elimination tricks. Plus, the compressor is set to not interfere at all, until the last 2dB.

I feel the weakest link in this setup is the phono preamps in the DJ mixer, followed by the turntable itself. In spite of that, I think I have finally gotten to the point of being able to make a copy that is, to my ears, indistinguishable from the original. Didn't happen over night.

Truthfully, I'm no vinyl aficionado, so I'd welcome the opportunity for any local vinyl enthusiasts to offer comments/critiques on my success, or lack thereof, on capturing the 'essence' of vinyl. If you want to help me out, and live in the SF bay area, drop me a PM and we'll see where it goes.

Gear List follows:
(right rack, top to bottom)
Peavey 9072A mixer
Gemini CD-9500proII dual CD controller
Gemini CD-9500proII dual CD drives
Marantz CDR-620 CD recorder
Pioneer PD-F907 CD jukebox
(left rack, top to bottom)
Setton TS-11 turntable
with Shure V15typeIIIHE cartridge
Volt Tamer C-1450 power strip
dbx Digital Dynamics Processor compressor (&ADC)
Tascam DA-30mkII DAT recorder
Korg D8 hard disc recorder
with Castlewood Orb removable hard drive
 
I don't know why you need so much gear. I have had good results by just plugging my Marantz receiver's tape out jacks to the input of my Audiotrak sound card, and recording on the PC. That makes a great CD copy of an LP. Are you recording live music as well?
 
Why so much gear?

Interesting question Don. Although I hadn't heard that one before, it is very similar to one I've heard countless times, to wit, "how come you need a separate tuner, preamp, crossovers, and so many amps...my SX-1010 can do all that just fine." I guess it boils down to we all do things a bit differently. Personally, I'd never been satisfied with the ADCs found on computer sound cards. But then, last time I look was years ago, improvements should be expected, so perhaps things are sounding better in the computer recording world. So, I'm not condeming your computer recordings at all.

Now that I think about it a bit, I'm not sure it can be considered "all that gear" anyway. For example, each of these components can be thought of as a component found in a standard recording computer. Let's do a quick comparison of hardware. The turntable is needed in both scenarios. My mixer is equivalent to the Marantz receiver or other device used for a phono preamp, my dbx is equivalent to the extra component you've got, the Audiotrak soundcard. My DAT could be thought of as functionally equivalent to the computer, the CD recorder is equivalent to a CD burner in a computer, my CD jukebox is the same thing as adding a 60G hard drive to the computer. The only thing that would seem superfulous is the hard disc recorder. But, this box is very useful for when I sit in the sweet spot and want to hear the mix, while mixing, in realtime by putting the HDR in my lap. Plus, it has a tactile interface which, for me, works much better than a point and click mouse controlling one knob at a time.

Well, I didn't mean to sound defensive in this reply, I was just trying to explain my view. Out of curiosity, are you satisfied with the quality of the CDs created on the computer? Now that I think about this even more, I could just ditch all the gear after the dbx and put a computer there. But for me, and this is a personal call, I just don't like working on a computer screen. Plus most computers seem to have a fair amount of acoustic noise associated with them, something I don't tolerate over the long haul.
 
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