Tips for ripping vinyl

I am jealous about your location. Owning a Takasaki 5" refractor, a 3" Takasaki, a 14" and 8" reflectors and living in the Pacific Northwest... pooh. Are you in Arizona out past Benson? Idaho. Satellite internet then. 

A good streamer will cache. I think there is a way to download stuff from Qobuz... when your streamer is up. I'm not positive. Streaming is not going to become prohibitively expensive.

Transferring vinyl... to sound good like vinyl is somewhat like putting together a good sounding vinyl system... but in reverse. So your ADC must be of very high quality or you're not going to get a great transfer. 

ghdpretice, 

I wish I was in those locations too, but I'm in Ohio and I go to norther Pennsylvania to observe with a 20" Starmaster and image with a 5" Explore Scientific ED triplet. I spend my extra money on astronomy so audio plays second fiddle if you will. The Cronus was my splurge beyond that I've made calculated purchases. I publish my photos at http://casazza.net/G2.

I hope you are right about streaming, but sadly neither Qubuz or Tidal seem to be profitable based on available data. Everyone's idea of prohibitive is different. For me, doubling the cost would cause me to cancel my subscription. I have quite a solid collection of physical media. I enjoy streaming for background music, but I do like to be engaged with the process otherwise I'm too easily distracted. 

Getting back to my original question and keeping in mind the primary use case of playback in an RV with very tiny speakers and 12V DC powered amp, what do people think about the TASCAM US‑1X2HR as an ADC and VinylStudio Premium for the software solution? 

Nice photos! It I amazing what amateurs can today. In my youth I went to the Chicago Planetarium monthly. I would gaze at Wilson observatory photos of the planets and Andromeda Galaxy... I can do much better with deep sky photos using  my equipment. I used to go out to Eastern Oregon to a farm with no lights the rented a small house. It was breath taking. I also have a 70mm Coronado Solar telescope... it has been fantastic recently. 

I’ll let some of the other folks respond to your request. You do not need the kind of quality that I was expecting. Good luck. You can always cancel your subscription if the prices increase. 

I used something similar, a Focusrite Scarlet with VinylStudio Pro. Just did a few limited rips. The biggest problem I have is with getting volume right. Do a test, then play some OG digital tracks or CD rips with vinyl rip thereafter and check whether volume is the same. I have not figured out how to adjust volume after a vinyl track has been captured.

Digitizing vinyl is EXTREMELY labor intensive. Also, cleaning your records before recording makes a huge difference in how much time you have to invest to clean up the recordings. The addition of a cheap Vevor ultrasonic machine has made a radical difference in lack of noise when playing vinyl.

Have fun digitizing your vinyl and enjoying it while stargazing. I do the opposite, looking down at small things (microscopist).

I have been using Vinyl Studio since 2013 and ripped about 7,000 lps to date.  I started with an RME HDSP PCI card for A/D.  I ripped my then entire lp collection in 2013-2014.  It was and is a labor of love but you do get to hear your entire collection.  The conclusions from the initial run of a little under 4,000 records was that 96/24 flac files were fine vs 192/24, keep your records and stylus clean, and watch your levels.  Unlike analog, digital recording is not forgiving in the least of overload.

I then switched out the RME card and went to a PS Audio A/D converter after eight years or so.  For me and my ears, despite any theoretical gains from dedicated/isolated power supply etc, I never liked the sound of the end product and this was after three years of use.  Last year after listening to other options, I got an RME HDSPe AIO PCIe card.  You can also set the levels using the VinylStudio software.  For my money, at under a grand, it sounded the best and gets my vote for AD conversion.