Hi All,
A bit OT I know but I am hoping that someone somewhere has encountered
this issue or at least something similar.
Basically I have a Pro-ject Debut II turntable hooked up to a Pro-Ject
Phono Box II USB phono stage. This latter device has a USB output that
shows up as a Burr-Brown USB DAC when probed by alsaconf or similar. By
selecting this device and using audacity or gramofile I can rip vinyl
albums and singles to .wav files, for subsequent processing and
compression to ogg vorbis audio files. The most convenient and
consistent way to do this has proved to be using the following process:
1. boot laptop running Puppy 4.11
2. attach Pro-Ject Phono Box II USB to usb port
3. run alsaconf and select this device as the sound card
4. run [zmixer|alsamixer|sgmixer|...] to set the recording level
(although this seems to be totally ineffective)
5. run gramofile
6. record the signal
7. process the signal
What I have not been able to do, as implied in (3), is affect the input
level to audacity or gramofile, using a selection of operating systems,
applications and settings.
I have tried various combinations of operating system (Ubuntu, Puppy and
Win XP) + applications (audacity, gramofile, mH Wave Edit) + the various
mixers as available. In every scenario the device is visible in the
mixer of choise and I am (apparently) able to manipulate the sound level
(i.e. the slider moves up and down where others are greyed out or
otherwise unavailable), but the subsequent recording level remains
unchanged.
Approximately 80% of my recordings are fine both in terms of the
reported levels and the result; the remaining 20% or so report high
levels and clipping but produce a result that is listenable. (Note: my
hearing is being affected by a long-term illness so take this last
statement with a pinch of salt!)
It occurs to me that the alternative is to unhook the phono stage from
the amp and attach it to the line-in, but that is a major faff and
utterly defeats the point of the purchase of the new USB phono stage,
which replaced its non-USB equivalent.
I have trawled the various hifi and AV forums and not found anything
remotely applicable; has anyone here got any thoughts on this?
Cheers,
Sean
[1]
http://www.project-audio.com/main.php?prod=phonoboxusb&cat=boxes&lang=en
--
The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.
Frank Zappa
