Bit-perfect LD-capture - What's necessary?

[zoidberg]

Some dual PAL/NTSC LD players will only output NTSC as PAL60, this conversion can cause a marked quality loss. Most of the decent players will output a legit NTSC signal though

[deleted user]

If I'm only interested in bit-perfect audio capture and don't have an LD player yet, how low could I go price-wise and still get something that will do the job? I looked up the Pioneer on ebay and it's multiple hundred bucks.

[Dr. Cooper]

Stupid question: Would any other device with an SPDIF-In do the job as well? E.g. this one also has SPDIF in and also supports 44.1 kHz, but costs just half of the ESI-device.

[deleted user]

Since it's all digital, it should work in theory I think, however cheap devices like that have a higher likelihood of having problems with drivers and such and since there are no reviews ... it's kind of a gamble I'd say.

[Chewtobacca]

^^ The various cheap boxes that you can buy to capture audio over SPDIF have the advantage of avoiding digital<>analog conversions, but there's no guarantee that a capture made using them is bit perfect.

[bronan]

Like they're saying it could very well be hardcoded to just always output resampled 48khz to PC, you just never know. The ESI for example comes with a control panel app that lets you choose the sample rate, which is essential to getting a bit perfect capture. Let us know if you take the risk, would be great to learn of cheaper devices that can do bit perfect capture

[Dr. Cooper]

The product-description for the one I linked above says "This device supports 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz sampling rates for digital and analog recording and digital / analog audio playback."

Guess it might be worth a try - if it doesn't work you can still send it back within 14 days.

[Chewtobacca]

^ Most of them support a variety of sampling rates, but even if you capture at 44.1kHz, there might have been processing of some kind applied; that's what you can't rule out. This might not matter much, and we've had at least one discussion about whether or not it's worth worrying about. It's just something to bear in mind.

[zoidberg]

Personally I'm using an M-Audio Transit USB capture device via Reaper on a Win7 PC. I believe most of the M-Audio internal/external devices have been verified as capable of bit-perfect capture (usually using a 'pass-through' mode for bitstream DTS/AC-3), the only caveat is driver support for most of these devices stopped at Windows 7. Some only have a coaxial input which in turn requires an optical->coaxial converter as pretty much all LD players only have an optical TOSLINK output.

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been covered but to say that the devices mentioned have been confirmed to work with bit-perfect capture, there may be other as yet untested devices out there if you're prepared to take a chance and do some trials.

[SilverWook]

If you can find a good old fashioned standalone CD recorder with an optical input, that works too. It's what I've been using for a few years now. I just rip the resulting CD's on the PC. Don't know about Europe, but it's still possible to buy new models here. And the newer models can use regular cheap CD-R's (Or CD-RW's) instead of those "music only" recordable CD's the music industry originally hobbled such machines with.