I'm looking around for a professional grade analog to digital converter. If you have any experience in this area I would love to hear about it, or any sites that deal with A/D for professional grade equipment.

The soundblaster line-in is just not going to be cutting it. It will be mainly for LP & cassette so the S/N ratio is not huge but sonic quality is the top priority.

Thanks

You don't really need to go for professional high-cost equipment ... a DAT recorder from around 1995 (preferably with 44,1 kHz analog recording since most DAT's did analog recording at 48 kHz) will serve perfectly as an external ADC IMO (I use my Sony DTC-790 mainly for that reason although it is still fully operational) ... but stay away from MD standalones ... I found out that the ATRAC circuitry is active even when no disc is inserted and the device should act like a pure ADC ...

Funny thing is, I can playback a wav file, route it into my DAT (using 10m no-name toslink), re-route it into my pc (another 10m no-name cable) and record the wav file simultaneously in full-duplex mode ... no bits changed when doing a wav comparison.

http://www.rme-audio.de/adi/adi2.htm

You could just try a good sound card (e.g. audiophile 2496 - see also other more recent suggestions).

Whatever you choose, if your SB doens't give bit perfect digital I/O when recording, you'll need a new sound card anyway.

Cheers,
David.

You might want to check out the source forum on www.head-fi.org - people are obsessed with this stuff over there.

If you're looking for a fourm about professional gear, there is George Massembourg's professional recording forum, but cassette, even high end, has absolutely nothing to do with professional quality.

For professional restoration tools, have a look at Cedar audio

Thanks all - as always just when you feel you are advancing in knowledge you find out there is another level above you

When one of the top 5 record companies want me to start converting their 8-tracks I'll look into cedar! Those 5 I think are about the only ones who can afford that equipment!

@PIO2001 - what do you mean by cassette has nothing to do with professional quality?

I mean that with a decent consumer digital device such as the M-Audio Audiophile soundcard, there will be no significant loss of quality copying a cassette into wav. It is already a challenge to distinguish between a digital copy of a CD and an analog one made with such a soundcard.
Cassette has a noise around -80 dB, a frequency response stronlgy affected by dynamics, nothing magic in the sound...

Professional equipment will bring you features like patented noise shapes for dithering, or things that are way overkill for cassette recording.