[dialamac]

> This is the trouble with audio in general: people not only prefer different sound profiles but also perceive sound differently, which makes it difficult to get rips (at least in my limited experience).

The problem with worrying about this is that even the same person perceives sound differently situationally and is simply not repeatable. In most cases when someone hears a difference it is often just a change in their perception from one moment to the next.. and that’s even when something measurable has changed! The bass sounds better because of that new amp.. well no.. you just happened to focus on it more the second time around. Longer term people’s physiology changes as well.

Only repeat, blinded A-B testing can clearly elicit an objective difference that is most likely not due to these perceptual inconsistencies.

What does this mean.. record it with decent equipment that captures as much useful raw information as possible (and yes 96khz is ridiculous as we’re not bats). People can EQ and mix to their preferences any given day.

It’s not clear there was something wrong with the cartridge. These are old 78 records.. they weren’t mastered with much to begin with and the useful fidelity in them is limited. If you want you can post-process them with whatever fancy shit, but I wouldn’t immediately assume the recordings weren’t the best given what they were working with for source material.