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Standalone CD recorder for Laserdisc audio capture?

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CD recorders are still around, believe it or not. (And they have optical inputs.) I've been thinking about getting one for capturing digital LD tracks. My DVD recorder works perfectly for analog only LD's.

Has anyone tried this? Would it be "bit perfect" to the source?

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Where were you in '77?

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Can you still buy the discs for these things?

A recording through a TOSlink input would definitely be pure digital, whether or not it would be bit-perfect would depend on the recorder I suppose.

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Current models are no longer limited to "Music only" recordable discs.

Got a Teac recorder new in box pretty cheap on Ebay.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Teac-CD-RW890-Consumer-CD-Recorder-Player-108256876-i3043886.gc

Some Amazon reviews harped on the editing features, but I don't need those. LD's never had any sort of copy protection, so I don't anticipate any problems.

Once I have a capture, how do I determine it's accuracy to the source? Is bit perfect even something the human ear can tell?

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SilverWook said:

Current models are no longer limited to "Music only" recordable discs.

Got a Teac recorder new in box pretty cheap on Ebay.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Teac-CD-RW890-Consumer-CD-Recorder-Player-108256876-i3043886.gc

Some Amazon reviews harped on the editing features, but I don't need those. LD's never had any sort of copy protection, so I don't anticipate any problems.

Once I have a capture, how do I determine it's accuracy to the source? Is bit perfect even something the human ear can tell?

 

There are two aspects to test for when wanting to achieve bit perfection. One, is the digital audio signal being altered/processed in some way by either the LD player or the CD recorder? Two, is your LD player doing a perfect playback of the digital audio track?

To test for #1, your LD player will need to be able to play CDs. Play a track from a CD in your LD player and record it with the CD recorder. Then extract that track from the CD-R using EAC or XLD (CD rippers). Then, take the original CD you were playing in the LD player and rip the same track using EAC or XLD. Now do a cancellation comparison on the two files. You may need to edit some samples to get both tracks into perfect alignment. If they match, your setup is playing and recording the unaltered digital audio track. If they don't match, depending on what audio is left behind in the cancellation process, we might be able to determine what type of alteration is being made. But you would most likely need to repeat the test with another LD or CD player to try and determine  which device is altering the signal.

To test for #2, you'll need to record everything twice and do a cancellation comparison. Any place that does not cancel out to pure digital silence, you did not get bit perfection. I'm running into this problem with my setup. So far, 4 of my LDs have recorded perfectly and match 100%, while two are giving me issues. At times, the difference is only an isolated sample here and there. Other places it's a section of many samples not matching up. Sometimes this isn't heard, other times I can hear light ticks. The LDs look totally clean and have no evidence of rot in the video, so I suspect my player is a bit weak at accurately playing digital tracks on certain discs. I don't have another player to try, which could possibly confirm if the problem is with the discs.

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Do you own any DTS LDs, SilverWook?

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rnranimal said:

SilverWook said:

Current models are no longer limited to "Music only" recordable discs.

Got a Teac recorder new in box pretty cheap on Ebay.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Teac-CD-RW890-Consumer-CD-Recorder-Player-108256876-i3043886.gc

Some Amazon reviews harped on the editing features, but I don't need those. LD's never had any sort of copy protection, so I don't anticipate any problems.

Once I have a capture, how do I determine it's accuracy to the source? Is bit perfect even something the human ear can tell?

 

There are two aspects to test for when wanting to achieve bit perfection. One, is the digital audio signal being altered/processed in some way by either the LD player or the CD recorder? Two, is your LD player doing a perfect playback of the digital audio track?

To test for #1, your LD player will need to be able to play CDs. Play a track from a CD in your LD player and record it with the CD recorder. Then extract that track from the CD-R using EAC or XLD (CD rippers). Then, take the original CD you were playing in the LD player and rip the same track using EAC or XLD. Now do a cancellation comparison on the two files. You may need to edit some samples to get both tracks into perfect alignment. If they match, your setup is playing and recording the unaltered digital audio track. If they don't match, depending on what audio is left behind in the cancellation process, we might be able to determine what type of alteration is being made. But you would most likely need to repeat the test with another LD or CD player to try and determine  which device is altering the signal.

To test for #2, you'll need to record everything twice and do a cancellation comparison. Any place that does not cancel out to pure digital silence, you did not get bit perfection. I'm running into this problem with my setup. So far, 4 of my LDs have recorded perfectly and match 100%, while two are giving me issues. At times, the difference is only an isolated sample here and there. Other places it's a section of many samples not matching up. Sometimes this isn't heard, other times I can hear light ticks. The LDs look totally clean and have no evidence of rot in the video, so I suspect my player is a bit weak at accurately playing digital tracks on certain discs. I don't have another player to try, which could possibly confirm if the problem is with the discs.

 Thanks for the info.

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AntcuFaalb said:

Do you own any DTS LDs, SilverWook?

 Just Mortal Kombat.

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Even if I have a CD-Recorder, I have never used to capture LD audio tracks, as I don't see the point to use it for this... indeed, you have to record the CD and then rip it into your PC; even if it will take few minutes more than direct capture, it's still longer... multiply those few minutes for a large collection, and the total waste of time will be hours, if not days!

There are, of course, few exceptions:

  • you have NOT a digital input on your sound card
  • you want to capture the analog tracks and the CD-Recorder ADC is better than your sound card's one
  • you want to capture both analog and PCM tracks at the same time (to prolong the life of a precious laserdisc player and/or cut the capture time in half)

If you have some minutes, take a look at this post.

Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com

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I only have a laptop these days, and haven't seen an external sound card in stores recently.

I've been able to do excellent captures of analog LD tracks with my DVD recorder, as some people who've used what I've sent them can attest to.

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SilverWook said:

I only have a laptop these days, and haven't seen an external sound card in stores recently.

So it falls into the first "exception" category! That's a very good option, indeed, and TEAC is a solid Hi-Fi brand; I remember their gorgeous audio cassette recorders... but I digress!

About recording of analog tracks; I agree, the DVD-Recorder (IF it has the PCM option, of course) capture at 48KHz, so you have not to re-encode the track for DVD/BD compatibility reasons, as you will be forced to do with the CD-Recorder, that could record only at 44.1KHz.

Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com

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That's what I do. It's just been murky to me if capturing digital LD audio through the analog outputs is audibly inferior to an all digital transfer. You have to process it anyway to make it DVD and Blu Ray compatible.

However I want to try doing it the "right" way if I can.

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Where were you in '77?

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Frankly I don't think there will be much audible difference between bit-perfect 44.1KHz capture, converted to 48KHz to be BD/DVD compliant, Vs. analog capture (with a very good ADC) directly at 48KHz...

I think also that the analog tracks have very good quality - if japanese chose to put the japanese audio in the analog tracks instead of the PCM ones, *maybe* there were good reasons to do that!

I read somewhere, years ago, that the analog tracks could sound more "natural" than PCM ones, but this is "fuel" for a completely different thread...

Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com

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SilverWook said:

That's what I do. It's just been murky to me if capturing digital LD audio through the analog outputs is audibly inferior to an all digital transfer. You have to process it anyway to make it DVD and Blu Ray compatible.

However I want to try doing it the "right" way if I can.

If your LD audio is destined for DVD/BD... Some would say, that if you need 44.1 to become 48khz, it's actually better to convert to analog and re-record at 48khz rather than use a digital resampling process. The 2009 Beatles CD remastering engineers chose this route in taking the 96khz transfers to 44.1 for CD. I personally would rather stay digital once I'm there.

Because of CX noise reduction, I'm not big on LD analog audio and have made it a goal to get perfect bit-bit digital extraction of the digital audio tracks, but that's become a headache and is on hold until I can spend some more time (and money, I'm sure) on figuring out a solution to the problems I'm having.

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With early LD titles, Digital isn't an option. Thanks to the idiosyncrasies of the studios, some analog sound only titles were still being released as late as 1991! Commentary and isolated score tracks are almost always put on the analogs as well.

The Beatles remasters sounded pretty darn good to these old ears.

Still waiting on the postman to deliver my Teac recorder.

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I have heard of people doing this for LD and LP.  It would be interesting to see if it can be done consistently bit perfect.

:)

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I got the Teac the other day, but I don't have the space or time to fiddle with it right now. My house is disaster area again until the bathroom is finished.

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 (Edited)

I was finally able to uncrate my new Teac, and hook it up to my 704 via toslink tonight. The unit is fairly simple to operate. It's surprisingly solid, hefty, and well made. (And yes, Made in China.) The remote is the only thing that feels and looks cheapo, but I've been spoiled by LD player remotes for decades.

The synchronized recording feature didn't want to work, as the LD probably doesn't have a TOC like a CD would. (Using an mid '80's title for the test.) Not really an issue so long an I can manually hit record and stop.

I was getting worried as the VU meters were not moving much as I made my capture. Finalizing was easy and painless. Popped the CD-R into my Blu Ray and it sounds like the Laserdisc!

Whether it's actually bit perfect remains to be seen. Maybe I should capture my Mortal Kombat DTS LD, and send it off to someone to analyze? ;)

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Happy to know it works well! Maybe a newer laserdisc will work, as almost all discs with PCM have a TOC (AFAIK).

Bitperfect: just record a DTS laserdisc (two minutes will suffice), copy the .wav file from the CD to a PC, and play the file with a software player; if it plays flawlessy, it's bit-perfect, if not, maybe the file should be converted somehow (sometimes it's useful to change extension to .dts)... I did it in the past, and it worked, but honestly I can't remember what I did exactly - you know, I'm a grumpy old man! (-^,)

Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com

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Thanks for the tip!

The LD I'm using, (as I know nuances of the soundtrack very well) only has the minutes and seconds display, and no chapter stops.

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LD TOC (table of content) should have chapters, just like a CD; so, probably without it, the CD-R won't make a sync rec.

Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com