![]() That said, without knowing which was which, I suspect some listeners might prefer the digital versions. That's what made the "live" presentation sound more live, and the digitized version sound more like a very good recording. Missing, though, was the sense of the acoustic space of Sammy Davis Jr.'s pool cabana, where the album was recorded. Pure Vinyl's bottom-end performance was uniformly superb on all of the digitized recordings I made. ![]() The "live" presentation had greater transparency, immediacy, three-dimensionality, top-end air, and musical flow.Īn A/B comparison of The Band's second, eponymous album confirmed the same fundamental sonic differences, though surprisingly, the digitized version produced greater bass punch and solidity at the expense of some subtle textures. While the sound of the Vitus swamped that of the digital recording made via the Model L's flat outputs and the Lynx soundcard, it wasn't $55,000 better, and the differences weren't in the usual digital-vs-analog sense. I then played the record "live," using the $60,000 Vitus Audio MP-P201 phono preamp. Did it sound "digital"? No, not as analog fanatics normally pejoratively use the word. I recorded a test pressing of Nat King Cole's Love Is the Thing (45rpm LPs, Capitol/Analogue Productions SW-824) using the Seta Model L and playing it back using the digital RIAA, the sound wasn't exactly soft, warm, and romantic, but it was fundamentally accurate in terms of tonality and space, and its low-level resolution was remarkable. You know the old audiophile chestnut of the lifting of veils from the music? Listen and that's what you're sure to hear, without an additive penalty in terms of the usual digital edge and etch. And don't be surprised if that's what happens, particularly if you pay attention to the digital RIAA's finesse and robust attacksparticularly in the bottom octavesand its unerring tonal neutrality. You could try recording both ways, and chuck your current phono preamp if you prefer the Seta Model L. Though you'd lose the direct analog feed, if you like your regular phono preamp I'd recommend getting the Seta Model L minus the RIAA section and saving $999, especially if you have a substantial collection of pre-RIAA recordings. Switching to Channel D's battery-powered Seta Model L ($4798 with RIAA module) produced far superior results. In fact, if you already have an accomplished phono preamp, just use that, and carefully set Pure Vinyl so it doesn't add RIAA playback equalization during recording, or you'll double your displeasure with massive amounts of possibly speaker-damaging bass. ![]() ![]() If you're going to archive your LPs on your computer's hard drive, I suggest aiming higher than the Seta Nano. Switching to the digital version tightened and clarified the attack and solidified the entire picture. The analog RIAA version's attack was soft and lacked clarity and definition. More apparent was the digital version's superior transient response. I could easily hear its superior overall low-level resolution as wellparticularly in how it resolved reverberant tails, which extended well beyond what the analog playback produced. Like a high-quality loudspeaker, the digital RIAA equalization's subjective neutrality revealed and resolved far more detail, particularly of low-level information occurring in the same frequency range as high-level information. The digital domain version sounded superiornot because digitizing the signal somehow improved it, but because the digital RIAA correction was obviously superior to the analog-domain filter in the less expensive Seta. With the Nano's Flat balanced outputs fed to the A/D converter of the Lynx soundcard and its RIAA-equalized single-ended outputs into the preamp, I could A/B the all-analog, RIAA-corrected "live" playback of an LP with the digitally corrected version. I started my testing by making a series of recordings using the $1599 Seta Nano phono preamplifier. If you use other A/D and D/A converters, your sonic results may differ. However, it's usable in the Intel Macs, some G5s, and some Mac laptops only with the addition of a PCI adapter made by Magma ( ca $1000). According to Robinson, most audiophiles using the software have a dedicated audio computer, which he recommends as the safest way to use his software.įor serious listening, do you really want to digitize analog?Įverything you're about to read needs to be considered in the context of the $675 Lynx L22 soundcard, thought by many to be among the best of its type. It was only when I was changing configurations, or during rendering operations, that I ran into potentially speaker-damaging problems. Normal playback with Pure Vinyl was always stable.
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