The other day, I was cruising the net when I stumbled upon a few albums that were ripped from vinyl at 96K/24bit. One of them was the Eagles Hotel California LP - ripped from a Mobile Fidelity pressing no less! According to the included text file, the person used a modified Technics 1200 with an Ortofon 2M Black cartridge. The phono preamp was a Pro-ject Tube Box SE and the recording interface was a Tascam US-144 USB A/D interface.

The recording was flawless and sounded great, but I felt the midrange was pushed forward in the mix and the 2M black seemed to heavily emphasize the treble. The hi-hat in the right channel stuck out like a sore thumb instead of blending naturally with the rest of the frequency spectrum. I don't have a MFSL pressing of Hotel California to compare with, but my standard pressing sounds more natural to my ears. I'm not sure if what I'm hearing is the character of the 2M Black coming through, or the MFSL pressing. The 'rip info.txt' file also stated that a bunch of plug-ins were used to cleanup and process the recordings, which could be what I'm hearing.

One thing is for sure, I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for a MFSL copy of Hotel California so I can compare. 

Is the guy's name Dr. Robert? He has the same setup as Dr. Robert, which was one of the biggest contributors to 24bit96kHz.org. I've got a bunch of rips made by him.

Yes it is!

To give you an idea what I mean, here's a sample of 'Hotel California' from my standard pressing, which I picked up from a thrift store for 25 cents:
[smg id=363 type=av]

Do you have Hotel California from Dr. Robert?

I just got a ton of new HD music.   

CD Digital Rips:
• Pretenders II (MFSL SACD - CD layer rip)
• Tom Petty 'Hard Promises' (MFSL UDCD)
• The Cars 'Candy-O' (MFSL UDCD)
• REM - 'Reckoning' (MFSL UDCD)
• Supertramp 'Breakfast in America' (MFSL UDCD)
• Supertramp 'Crime of the Century' (MFSL UDCD)
• RUSH 'Permanent Waves' (MFSL UDCD)
• Huey Lewis and the News 'Sports' (MFSL UDCD)
• Metallica 'Master of Puppets' (DCC 24k gold)
• Stevie Ray Vaughn 'The Sky is Crying' (MFSL UDCD)
• Stevie Ray Vaughn 'In Step' (MFSL UDSACD)
• Jethro Tull 'Original Masters' (1998 DCC 24k gold)
• Def Leppard 'Hysteria' (MFSL UDCD II)
• The Cars 'The Cars' (DCC 24k gold)
• Tears for Fears 'Songs from the Big Chair' (MFSL UDCD)
• Pink Floyd 'The Wall' (MFSL UDCD)
• Deep Purple 'Made in Japan' (DCC 24k gold)
• Tom Petty 'Damn the Torpedoes' (MFSL UDCD)
• Cream 'Fresh Cream' (DCC 24k gold)
• U2 'War' (MFSL UDCD II)
• Steve Miller Band 'Fly Like an Eagle' (DCC 24k gold)
• Allman Brothers 'Eat a Peach' (MFSL UDCD)
• The Cars 'Shake it Up' (MFSL UDCD)
• John Mellencamp 'Scarecrow' (MFSL UDCD)
• The Steve Miller Band 'Book of Dreams' (DCC 24k gold)
• The Doors 'The Doors' (DSS 24k gold)
• A Very Special Christmas (MFSL UDCD)
• Metallica 'Ride the Lightning' (DCC 24k gold)
• The Eagles 'Hotel California' (DCC 24k gold)
• Heart 'Dreamboat Annie' (DCC 24k gold)
• Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (SACD - CD layer rip)

HD Digital:
• Donald Fagen 'Kamakiriad' (DVD-A, 96k/24bit)
• Miles Davis 'Kind of Blue' (SACD PCM 88k/24bit)
• Black Sabbeth 'Masters of Reality' (SACD PCM 88k/24bit)
• Black Sabbeth 'Paranoid' (SACD ISO)
• Police 'Outlandos d'Amour (DSD SACD 96k/24bit)
• Police 'Ghost in the Machine' (DSD SACD 96k/24bit)
• Police 'Zenyatta Mondatta' (DSD SACD 96k/24bit)
• Police 'Reggatta de Blanc' (DSD SACD 96k/24bit)
• Police 'Synchronicity' (DSD SACD 96k/24bit)
• John Coltrane 'Soultrane' (MFSL SACD 88k/24bit)
• Pink Floyd 'Wish You Were Here' (DSD SACD 88k/24bit)

Vinyl Rips:
• The Beatles - The Collection - Boxset (MFSL 96k/24bit, Dr. Roberts)
• Pink Floyd 'Dark Side of the Moon' (MFSL UHQR 96k/24bit, unknown equipment)
• Van Halen 'OU812' (PBTHAL 96k/24bit)
• Patrick O'Hearn 'Ancient Dreams' (96k/24bit)

Bootlegs and Oddities:
• Rush - 'Echoes of the Stages' @ Knickerbocker Arena in Albany, NY; 10/18/1996 - rehearsal soundboard capture
• The Beatles - Control Room Monitor Mixes - Unsurpassed Outtakes (1993)

The Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs CD's sound noticeably better than the DCC 24k gold CD's, but the DCC's sound much better than the plain CD's.

I'm in the process of re-ripping all of my CD's (about 1,200 of them) into FLAC files on my server. I made the mistake years ago and ripped almost all of my CD's as mp3's. Eventually, I'd like to sell all of my CD's and stick with collecting/archiving vinyl and uncompressed digital audio files. Of course, I'll have to keep mirrored backups on separate drives in case of a hard drive crash. 

Right now, my home server has 9TB of hard drive space and I have 10TB in brand new hard drives sitting in a box as spares. My main PC has 7TB of attached storage which should be enough for now.