Vinyls to MP3?

I have one of those USB turntables, and believe me, it can be a hassle. Not only do you have to wait for the entire LP to copy, but then you have to check how many clicks and skips made it onto your digital recording. If you're a perfectionist, you'll re-record the problem areas and edit them. But that takes time. As does converting the stuff from .wav to .mp3/.wma and tagging it. It's an extremely time-consuming task, I'll say that.

Isn't it against the rules to talk about stuff like this?

sounds interesting. how much would something like this cost? i only have around 15-20 albums on vinyl but it would be worth it to put them on my iPod. or maybe not?

everyone wrote: I have 3500 vinyl albums. I have converted most of my albums to cd format through an old tube stereo and a cd burner connected to that stereo.  There is no comparison between the fidelity of old tubes verses transistors.  I do not have to use my computer to make the transition from vinyl to cd.  I still do not like the fact that I am putting a round note in a square hole.  Today's dolby stereos sound crappy because most of the sounds that come from them are bass and high end sounds.  In prog music there is a mid range of sounds that you cannot hear clearly through these new stereos.  Transistors stereos have to be replaced because their sound degrades quickly in time.  Tube stereos are like wine they get better with age.

Actually it's tubes which degrade with time ... maybe the added distortion sounds pleasant to your ears, but it's a degradation nonetheless. Transistor based systems don't degrade at all with time, they may simply break at one point and need to be replaced, but usually they last about 10x longer than tubes.

And as for the difference of using an USB turntable compared to using a hi-fi CD recorder: There is none, at least not as far as analog/digital conversion is concerned. The "square holes" (as you put it) are on the CD, and no matter what fancy equipment you use - in the end your analog signal will be digitized when stored on a CD. And even if you use a tube amp - the amplification is not used anyway, the signal is just routed from the turntable to the recorder.

I've been burning from my own vinyl to digital format  for over a decade, in particular to have the music in a convenient format for my various Walkmans. More recently I've burnt directly from vinyl to either audio CD burner or MD recorder - the latter does permit the chance to edit out between-track crackle, hiss and pop - having gone through this editing the content sof the MD can be transferred onto CD. From CD it goes onto a hard drive and treated using audio software, to edit in tracks, remove surface noise, then get re-equalised and then typically a 3db boost, to give the resulting CD a play back level close to modern manufactured pre-recorded musical CDs.

I have a collection of around 300 LPs, but I don't consider transferring them to CD/digital format. You just can't capture the warmth of true analog sound, so it's not really worth it. And it's very time consuming as well. I would probably only transfer vinyl to CD if it was unattainable on CD/digital format, such as the mono version of Sgt. Pepper's or obscurities such as Alphataurus.

Yea I use Creative MediaSource and the "Line-In" to record my vinyl to mp3. It is very time consuming, but I just have to remember to record every time I play a vinyl I haven't yet recorded. People (old people especially) are blown away when they see that ~40% of the music that is on my Microsoft Zune is from vinyl.

It's also alot more economical... there's a a record store close to me that sells Jazz and Rock for $1 a vinyl (and $ 0.50 when you buy more than 50). I'm saving about $5 an album, assuming that I would've bought the cd used from Amazon or something.

I have about 300 records, so I bet I've saved somewhere around $1200 by buying vinyl.

^ you could play vinyl and CD alternatingly, maybe it has the same effect as a contrast shower. Finally listening to music can effectively improve your health!

^ it's not about making the music better, it's about making it more accessible and preserving it. You can't listen to vinyls on the bus or in your car, and even if you listen to them at home each listen degrades the vinyl ... ripping them to the computer enables me to listen to them whenever I want without destroying them in the process.

Vibrationbaby wrote: Why do people want to block out their thoughts with music 24 hours a day ? On the bus. In the car. Walking down the street. Skiing. This is something I never really got either. Walkmans and discmans and now MP3s. Ear drums are very fragile. With  these plug in headphones are bloody dangerous. I dunno.

Edited by Slartibartfast - February 19 2008 at 16:58