Playing 78’s on my modern turntable

[Edisonfan]

Yea, I’m not playing the Victrola as much.

[drh]

A suggestion: Do I understand correctly that you're recording the music by putting that microphone in front of your speakers? If so, you'll get better results piping the signal from your turntable to your computer directly as a line level signal.

As to diamond disc styli, Expert Stylus in England can make you up an appropriate tip and cantilever assembly for your Shure cartridge. I have one for mine (different model Shure, but same principle). Same goes for Pathé. In either case, you'll do best to mount a second cartridge on its own headshell and wire it for vertical cut by swapping the right channel "hot" and "ground" leads at the cartridge pins. Then when you set your amp to "mono" you'll get a pure vertical cut signal. All that said, I generally prefer to play vertical cut records on the equipment that was designed for them 'way back when; I've not had especially good results with modern gear, even with properly sized styli.

[Edisonfan]

My turntable does not have a USB Port, that is a different model. I have my microphone on top of my iPhone when recording, and I play the setup between the two speakers.

I’m with you, I prefer to play my Diamond Discs on my Edison Disc Machine.

[drh]

My turntable does not have a USB Port, that is a different model. I have my microphone on top of my iPhone when recording, and I play the setup between the two speakers.

I’m with you, I prefer to play my Diamond Discs on my Edison Disc Machine.

You don't need a USB port on the turntable. Ideally, you'd connect your preamp's line out jacks (or those of your integrated amp, or whatever) to an external audio interface (combined digital-to-analogue and analogue-to-digital converters) that in turn connects to the computer via USB, at the most basic level something like this https://smile.amazon.com/Behringer-U-Co ... 033&sr=8-4

You can, however, connect the preamp/amp's line out jacks to the computer's line (or mic) input with a y-cable, RCA plugs at one end and an eighth-inch miniphone plug at the other. The computer's built-in converters probably will be inferior to those in even a modest outboard unit, but that would suffice to get you up and running. You'll need some audio capture/editing software; I like a free program called Ocenaudio, which is sufficiently flexible to do everything you need and sufficiently intuitive to avoid steep learning curves. Lots of folks like one called Audacity, also free, but I'm not one of them; I find it confusing and difficult to use by comparison.

[Edisonfan]

Actually, i do everything with an iPhone and not a computer. Since I don’t own a computer, just and iPad that has USB-C.

[Orchorsol]

You can still feed audio into Apple devices - you need a special adaptor where a resistance has been added across 2 of the 4 segments of the Apple-specific minijack which the device reads and as a result, switches the source from internal microphone to line in.

[Edisonfan]

Or I can continue to use what’s I have and, not worry about it!

[Orchorsol]

Yes of course, absolutely! I was just contributing to the conversation, not meaning to tell you what to do - apologies if I gave that impression.

[Edisonfan]

No worries!
drh was just telling me, how to make it sound better, but since I have not had any complaints about the audio in my videos. I’m not overly concerned. Besides the SHURE mic is a marked improvement over the one I have with my iPhone 8. Plus I also have MOTIVE Audio that I had to install on my iPhone, to use the microphone. Which also has mic level reading, plus the mic itself has a Green LED Light that would turn red if it gets too loud. The microphone works best for when I record my cylinder and Diamond Disc machines. Which was the main reason why I bough the microphone in the first place. It also works well for podcasts.

[BillH_NJ]

The microphone will certainly work for that purpose, especially if you are limited to the iPhone for recording. I either play my old records on one of the Victrolas (or Columbias or Sonoras) in my collection or on a more modern turntable. My go to turntable for that purpose is a Fons from the 1970s since it has speed adjustments for all three speeds that provide a continuous range from 29 to 100 rpm, which is a big advantage for the early classical and operatic records that form the bulk of my collection. There are multiple sources for styli, but places like Expert Stylus can provide a range of options and I can use different sizes available for my Nagaoka cartridge depending on the age and condition of the record. It isn’t the perfect solution, but you can also add an Esoteric Sound Re-equalizer to remove the modern RIAA equalization and choose from a variety of different turnover/rolloff settings to provide more realistic bass and treble. However, a lot can be done just using the tone controls on the amplifier as well. Thanks for publishing the recordings!

Bill