Oct 16, 2026, 1:49 AMStarting with this one, in memory of Frank Beard (1949-2026) and Dusty Hill (1949-2021).
- Oct 16, 2026, 1:49 AM
Replies
- Oct 16, 2026, 2:01 AM
…now the stylus is doing impersonations of the two front guitarists… where did I hide my stylus cleaner?
- Oct 16, 2026, 4:12 AM
I've just done The Cure - Greatest Hits… that's a double-album.
So far not had to adjust the gain settings, which is a surprise. I normally use this preamp on the JVC turntable which has a moving-magnet cartridge. This one has a moving-coil cartridge, which normally has a much weaker signal output.
My gain settings on the preamp are about centred… that said I did have to finally trim them back a bit for Chris de Burgh… he really did not trust that ferry man.
- Oct 16, 2026, 6:28 AM
One thing I need to check, is my RCA patch cables. I'm consistently down between 1.88 and 1.91dB on the right-side.
Correctable in Audacity, although annoying to do so as I have to split the tracks, do an "Amplify", then "mix" it back down to stereo ("Pan" is too coarse, it'll only give me 10% steps, I need to pan by a dB amount).
(Yeah, I need to look into Tenacity… first I need to build it.)
I suspect a dicky connection, but since it's stable, I'll put up with it for today. I can't be arsed hunting through my box of cables.
Speed has been *spot on*.
In terms of gain, around -2 on this preamp is giving good results. Playing back the recordings I made, I nudged the roof, but it's not audible with my equipment, so sod it, that'll be good enough.
I managed to get through 6 discs, and I'm doing a 7th one now:
- ZZ Top - Eliminator
- The Cure - Greatest Hits (2 discs)
- Chris De Burgh - The Getaway
- Creedence Clearwater Revival - 21st Anniversary - The Ultimate Collection (2 discs)
- Elton John - Too Low For ZeroI'll pack it away for today.
- Oct 18, 2026, 3:39 AM
Got some more time to myself, so I've pulled out another stack of records to capture. I've done one, Robert Palmer - Heavy Nova … no problems there.
Then I try doing Paul Young - No Parlez.
I thought I had cleaned it well, but nope… so I stop the capture and give it another clean, clean off the stylus, try again, this time with the record brush running over the disc…
Of course I didn't account for the fact that the brush needs the dust cover up to be able to pass over the record surface properly, and that it adds a little drag, so the speed was off.
Cue another repeat of "Come Back and Stay".
penguin42penguin42@mastodon.org.ukOct 16, 2026, 12:00 PM@stuartl are you using any pop filtering at the capture end?
- Oct 16, 2026, 10:23 PM
@penguin42 I think the UCA-202 is just a plain USB-connected ADC/DAC, and on the computer it's just Audacity running on Ubuntu 26.04. So most likely not.
- penguin42penguin42@mastodon.org.ukOct 16, 2026, 10:52 PM
@stuartl Yeh I did it just by feeding my amp into a laptops audio-in; there are some plugins around, but in the end I just used audacity to play the track and when I heard a pop it was pretty obvious on the waveform and just cut it out.
- Oct 16, 2026, 11:41 PM
@penguin42 There's a feature in Audacity to highlight clipping in the waveform (in the View menu).
