"Don Pearce" wrote in message

On Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:24:53 +0000 (GMT), Jim Lesurf
wrote:

In article
, Arny
Krueger
wrote:

Because of the LP format's inherent technical failings,
digitizing LPs is not all that challenging of a task
for even an one of those on-board audio interfaces that
comes with most motherboards.

In principle it is slightly complicated because of the
possibility of unpredictably high peaks. But in practice
this doesn't seem a problem in my experience and 16bit
samples should be fine if you allow for enough headroom
when setting the gain.

The unexpectedly high peaks are invariably ticks and
scratches, and it really doesn't matter if they overload
- they need removing anyway.

That agrees with my experience. The LP format has a serious problem with
dynamic range, if you define dynamic range as the difference between the
noise floor and the largest relatively undistorted signal related to music
or speech.

If you define dynamic range as the difference between the noise floor and
the largest instantaneous value, no matter how irrelevant to the music or
distorted, then the LP format might have less deficient dynamic range.

We've been in a similar place around here just lately. People have lately
gone on record as demanding sufficient headroom to play back fairly
improbable but rarely observed signals whose samples are all less than FS
but in combination can trick a reconstruction filter into creating an analog
signal that significantly exceeds FS.

I'm not buying either situation as being one that needs to be pandered to.