A-D conversion in DV camcorder... any good?

[Charles Martin]

> From: Sean <spenney at stemnet.ca>
>
> I was reading in MacWorld magazine how the audio in ports on the Mac 
> may
>
> not be as high quality as third party options (although the article
> doesn't quantify how much the Mac audio-in ports are inferior) and now
> I'm wondering.
>
To the best of my knowledge, the AV ports on the beige G3 can sample 
sound at CD-quality, ie 44.1Hz. I have an alternative for you that 
might work better, though ... read on, MacDuff!

> I'm using my old, trusty Beige G3 with the built-in A/V card running OS
> 9.2 and sometimes OS X 10.2.5. I want to digitize some of my old LP's.
>
> What I've done in the past is to connect the turntable to a pre-amp and
> into the audio-in RCA jack of the Beige G3 and record it directly to
> Peak or something like it.
>
Which should produce perfectly fine analog-to-digital recordings.

> My question: Will the Sony camcorder digitize the incoming analogue
> signal better than the Beige G3's A/V card?

No.

If you're really looking for even higher-quality input than the 
built-in AV port can hand you, try this:

1. Buy a USB card for your beige G3 and install it (CompUSA's generic 
one works fine, costs about $20-30). This will come in handy in lots of 
ways, but you MUST be running at least version 8.6 for it to be useful.

2. Buy a Griffin iMic ($35), and download the free Final Vinyl software.

3. Connect the turntable to the iMic *directly* (no preamp needed) via 
a $3 Radio Shack adapter.

You're now inputting sound into Peak at 48Hz instead of 44.1.

_Chas_

"That the PC world would doggedly stick to a dull, unimaginative, 
clinical term like 'IEEE 1394' (notice how it just rolls off the tongue 
- NOT) for the sole purpose of *saving a few pennies* over using an 
imaginative, exciting, visually-stimulating term like 'FireWire' tells 
you EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW about the PC world and that whole 
industry-wide mindset." - Me, March 2003