Linn Owners

Recording from the Urika II

DavidHB

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When my LP12 was upgraded last week, I asked Chris my dealer to fit a Toslink cable to the Urika II, to facilitate recording (which is the stated purpose of the output in the Linn user documentation). The cable is working well; I plugged it into my Chord Mojo DAC/headphone amplifier to test it. Now all I need to do is find a suitable Toslink input to USB adapter or converter (that can handle 24 bit/192kHz) to record from the Urika II to VinylStudio on my Laptop PC. I have repeatedly searched the web for such a product, without success. Amazon seems to be spamming the whole web with irrelevancies.

The Linn team must have had some sort of connection in mind when they designed the Toslink output into the Urika II. So I contacted the Linn Helpline. The reply I received from Richard in Customer Support is as follows

"Unfortunately, we have limited staff working at Linn at the moment and the engineer that I would need to ask about your question is currently not in the factory, so I am unable to give you any suggestions to your question. However, there is a hifi forum website (HiFi WigWam) that has a section devoted towards Linn owners and you may wish to visit their site to see if there are any postings related to your topic or possibly post the question if none are listed – the link to the forum website can be found using the link below:

https://www.hifiwigwam.com/forum/forum/147-initial-linn-owners-welcome-to-wam-thread/https://www.hifiwigwam.com/xenforo/forum/147-initial-linn-owners-welcome-to-wam-thread/

If you are still unsuccessful obtaining any suggestions from this forum site, please let me know and I will forward your enquiry onto the appropriate person at Linn to look at when they return to work"

Now it would be unkind to have a pop at Richard, who was trying to be helpful in difficult circumstances, but the unintended irony of his response is all too apparent. So now I have to ask the question; has anyone used the Toslink output on the Urika II for recording purposes; if so, how did they do it and what success did they have?

I am of course aware of the alternative of using Songcorder (https://doomhammer.github.io/songcorder/). In fact, I have had some success with it, but it does have a tendency to glitch or drop out completely. If @DoomHammer has any news on whether and how he plans to develop it and/or make it more robust, that too would be most welcome.

David

 
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9designs

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I've just started using SongCorder to record some before and after LP12 mods....  it seems to work fine so far, everything is hardwired. 

Even if you have the odd glitch isn't it the most direct way of doing it? 

 

Baba Yaga

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I've just started using SongCorder to record some before and after LP12 mods....  it seems to work fine so far, everything is hardwired. 

Even if you have the odd glitch isn't it the most direct way of doing it? 
Never had a single problem with Songcorder, works perfectly

 

DavidHB

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Even if you have the odd glitch isn't it the most direct way of doing it? 
Taking the feed from the Urika II should be even more direct, and should provide a SPDIF stream directly to VinylStudio. Of course, I don't yet know whether that makes a difference.

Never had a single problem with Songcorder, works perfectly
You are fortunate. @Nrwatson, for example, has never been able to make it work.It works for me, but often with dropouts and restarts. So far as I can tell, this seems to be an issue with contention on the network; when packet resending gets beyond a certain level, Songcorder stops and restarts, splitting the RAW file and dropping (typically) a couple of hundred frames in the process. I have improved matters by (1) connecting the laptop to the same switch as the DS and (2) shutting down all other user activity on the network. All my connections are of course via Ethernet.

David

 

DavidHB

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Before the thread gets itself concerned exclusively with Songcorder, I hope we do not lose sight of the connection issue with which I statred. A friend of mine has suggested this Item

[SIZE=11pt]https://www.thomann.de/gb/rme_digiface_usb.htm[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]It's a nice looking bit of kit from a respected manufacturer, but £319 is a bit steep for my use case, which essentially is for an adapter.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]David[/SIZE]

 
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9designs

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Surely Urika II having digitised the signal feeds it via EXAKT link to the DSM, which Songcast shares on the network, and SongCorder picks it up.  Why would you want to go out through a jittery 3rd party SPDIF connection to USB and loose packet integrity that Linn had achieved?   Appreciate you seem to have a few network or PC problems to solve, but I'd rather sort them out. 

 

gotburger

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For the sake of comparing an optical output versus using songcorder I recorded the same music in parallell with (a) songcorder 192kHz sample rate and (b) using optical output at 96kHz using a Zoom U-44 (https://www.zoom-na.com/products/production-recording/audio-interfaces/zoom-u-44-handy-audio-interface) with the bundled recording software.
The singcorder issued no requests during the course of music being recorded.

The setup was (no Urika II though) a good LP12 and an AEDSM. Details of the LP12 specification should not influence the outcome of a compatison since the recordings were captured in parallell.

The recordings were brought to my dealer and I asked him to make a "blind test" and assess which recording sounded best on his demo set-up.

The (b) recording was assessed to present a better listening experience than the (a) recording. I hadn't expected that...

The Urika II appearently has no other alternative than the 192kHz output, and the Zoom U-44 copes with 96kHz only, so it can't be used with the Urika II.

 

Nrwatson

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David I have managed to record part of a record with song order but never got to record the whole of one side Tried Mac and windows versions xx

 

TooManyCatweazles

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Full disclosure / Disclaimer: This contribution of mine is completely OT, as my Urika ll exists only in the order books, as yet  9_9

If Songcorder does not quit the connection, due to too heavy packet loss issues, it works fine for me. I did record a lot of my vinyls, and the results are much better, than those achieved by my previously used M-Audio audiophile usb device, basically an ADC with 24/96 resolution, and USB interface. I did feed it directly from the (analog) phono stage, a Linto in those days.

There are good days and bad days for Songcast/Songcorder, though. So far I could not make sense of the fact, that sometimes packet loss peaks, and the connection is lost. This happens even, when my 17 yr old is sleeping. So my first working hypotheses, that his PC gaming might cause the effect has been invalidated. I'm not even sure, whether this is an issue of Songcast (the transmitter side), Songcorder (the receiver side), or the network in between. There is not much happening on my network, while the son is asleep, though. So it's tempting to speculate, that the network isn't the bad guy?

It's interesting to learn, that other people experience similar issues.

Still, I have no intention to record vinyls using the Toslink interface. I'd rather probe, if it's a good, or a bad day.  :)

 

Baba Yaga

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As stated earlier, I never had any issues with Songcorder so far and I recorded a lot of my albums.

I only make sure to have no other program running when recording. I even tried a wireless connection which worked fine as well, but why take any risk, so I use wires.

DSM and PC are connected via a WiFi repeater which separates the main traffic from the music network, maybe that helps? But then I helped two friends with the setup on their system, neither had any issues.

 

DavidHB

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Thanks to @Baba Yaga and @TooManyCatweazles. My experience with Songcorder, after a pretty shaky start, is now much like theirs. I found that things improved considerably when I connected my laptop to the same switch as the DSM, and improved again, to an almost 100% success rate, when I switched off everything else on the network that was running user applications. Fortunately, I could still leave my NASs switched on, as stopping and restarting them is a bit of a faff. I use only wired connections: the WAP I would need to use is only ng standard, and is probably not up to the job.

Has anyone any views as to whether the recordings sound significantly different to direct play by the LP12? I'm finding it hard to make up my mind. There may be a slight loss of immediacy in the recording, though, where I have been able to compare, the recording still sounds way better than the same album on CD. 

I'm still planning to try out the Toslink connection if I can, though my curiosity does not extend to paying out £300+ for a connection box. If the worst comes to the worst, the Toslink cable (marginal cost zero, as it was part of my upgrade) can always be used for headphone listening, for which my KEDSM provides no other facility. 

David 

 

TooManyCatweazles

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After 58 minutes of Radio Paradise flac with metadata streaming, the stream just stopped. When I hit pause + play in Kazoo it works again. 

Wait, this is not really  OT, only almost the wrong thread. I'm wondering, whether the reported flakeyness of RP flac streams (in the other thread), and the reported issues with Songcorder (in this thread) have a common root cause: Disconnect due to unrecoverable packet loss?

If this is so, then the question remains, how a software application should react on this. Is it a good, or a bad recovery strategy to attempt a reconnect after some timeout?

With Songcorder I'd prefer to stay disconnected. A reconnect might go unnoticed. A cover up of the recording failure does not help the usecase.

With radio streaming an automatic reconnect would be most welcome in most cases. 

And, of course, the question arises: What could we possibly do to improve the communication quality within our side of the network?

 
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DoomHammer

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Thanks for calling me here @DavidHB. The new version of Songcorder is currently under development and should launch this month.

I'd appreciate all the reports regarding glitches and drops as this will help us make a better product.
Regarding the packet loss, this is very often the result of a congested network. I remember one of the users tend to have this problem from time to time. The source of the problem turned out to be kinds streaming video on the same network :)
Also: WiFi should work with Songcorder, but if you want a reliable stream it's much much better to use a wired Ethernet connection whenever possible. Ideally putting Songcorder and the DSM on the same network switch with nothing else there.

In my opinion, Songcorder is the single best way to record audio from LP12 as it uses the internal ADC from Linn DSM as well as clocking information from the same source.
 

 

kampak

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Hi DoomHammer,

will the new version support combinations like mine (Klimax DS3 + Urika2) or is a DSM requested?

regards, K

 

DavidHB

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will the new version support combinations like mine (Klimax DS3 + Urika2) or is a DSM requested?
Songcorder records from the Songcast stream used for multi-room playback. The required connectivity is provided through the normal network (preferably Ethernet) connection. This works with any DS or DSM, though you do have to enable Songcast in Konfig. With that done, you simply connect the computer on which you are running Songcorder to the network (ideally, I have found, into the same switch or router as the DS/DSM is connected to), and start up Songcorder. I record from a KEDSM which has no outputs, analogue or digital, other than the Exakt Link, and it works fine.

David

 
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DavidHB

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Thanks for calling me here @DavidHB.
My pleasure. I'm very grateful for your response.

The new version of Songcorder is currently under development and should launch this month.
That's exciting news. I have to say that, basic as the current version is, I find it very straightforward to use, perhaps because of that very simplicity. I also think that you made a very good call in positioning SongCorder as a front end to VinylStudio. I have Audacity and use it for other projects, but, for adding LPs to one's digital library, I think that VinylStudio is hard to better, and well worth its cost. I'd recommend anyone who wants to use it at all regularly to stump up for the Pro version with the capability to look up albums in Discogs and other online libraries.

I'd appreciate all the reports regarding glitches and drops as this will help us make a better product.
Regarding the packet loss, this is very often the result of a congested network. I remember one of the users tend to have this problem from time to time. The source of the problem turned out to be kinds streaming video on the same network :)  ... it's much much better to use a wired Ethernet connection whenever possible. Ideally putting Songcorder and the DSM on the same network switch with nothing else there.
This fits in exactly with my experience. I started off getting at least four RAW files per album side. This reduced to (typically) two when I connected the laptop to the same GS108 switch as the DSM. I then found that, if I switched off or put into standby all other user devices on the network (desktop computers, tablet, smartphone, but not the two NASs), I was getting 100% success - a single RAW file for both sides of an album, and no audible glitches. That result has continued for half a dozen albums now.

In my opinion, Songcorder is the single best way to record audio from LP12 as it uses the internal ADC from Linn DSM as well as clocking information from the same source.
I agree generally, but the Urika II adds another twist. It still uses the clocking from the DS/DSM, but does the actual conversion via its own pair of ADCs. The result can be output to Songcorder as before, but also, in theory, via the Urika's dedicated SPDIF/Toslink port. I say 'in theory', because, as noted in previous posts, I have yet to find a sensible way to connect the Toslink output to (presumably) a USB port on my laptop. If the Toslink output could be used, it would bypass any network connection issues. That said, if Songcorder continues to work as well for me as it has been doing, the working of the Toslink connection will be a matter of interest rather than necessity.

David

 
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Nrwatson

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My frustrations have continued with trying to record have attached computer to a switch with only the dsm and melco but still have been unable to record whole side of an lp without it timing out 

also attempts to use the toslink have failed I have an old mini Mac with a toslink input but doesn’t seem to work is the output from the Urika to high res 

also tried with an old box that converted digital to usb again no luck

begining to think the piracy police are trying to stop me recording 

 

macfan

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@Nrwatson Can you tell us a little bit about your Mac Mini. It could be a weak link in the chain.

  1. Processor speed, RAM, and NIC link speed.
  2. HDD or SSD for recording? 
  3. Internal or external?
  4. How full is the drive?
  5. OS version?
  6. Any applications that connect to the Internet behind the scenes that update automatically.
  7. Are you running any other applications at the time?

Know these answers could hep identify the issue. You could also record one or two songs allowing the recording to go into the beginning of the next band. The using an audio editor assemble the recordings to make one compete side or leave them as individual tracks. The point of going into the next song is to preserve song spacing. You would find the 1st sample of the next song and use this as an insert point.

Special note on audio editors - not all will handle 24/192 and will truncate the file. So when capture at this resolution from a Urika-II with Songcoder, any post manipulation of the file must be done with an editor than can handle it otherwise sample rate and resolution may not be preserved as expected. This could also happen without warning from the audio editor or when saving or exporting the file from the editor. 

 

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