Vinyls to MP3?

khammer99 wrote:  I am going to be all over this! I may have only a hundred or so albums but I would like to be able to take them anywhere I go. Another reason for me to do this, is my mother used to work at RCA, and we have hundreds of albums from the 50 to early 60s, many unopened, that I would love to make portable. My dad also used to own a delivery service that delivered albums to the local record stores, so he would "grab" the latest and bring them home.

AHHH! The collector in me says don't open those!!!

Dick Heath wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: If you live in the U.S., Canada, U.K. or Germany you can also use the Napster flatrate. Many old recordings are available there, including the Don Ellis album you mentioned. One other benefit of this approach is that you get access to the remastered / extended versions of the albums. I spent a weekend cleaning up that Don Ellis LP, only to discover (literally) the following Monday that it was due for release the end of that month - I bought the CD issue asap. With 30 years between LP and Cd issues, you might be forgiven thinking  after 20 years there won't be a CD - or have tremendous patience.

This is actually a phenomena of sorts I have noticed myself.  If you want something to be released on CD, all you have to do is go to the trouble of trying to make a nice CD copy of the vinyl.  In my case, particularly if I scan in the cover art and make a nice little CD booklet out of it.  The only one that hasn't worked like that so far is Sky's Cadmium.

kiwi wrote: If I close my eyes its like I am in front of a warm open fire!

MikeEnRegalia wrote: If you live in the U.S., Canada, U.K. or Germany you can also use the Napster flatrate. Many old recordings are available there, including the Don Ellis album you mentioned. One other benefit of this approach is that you get access to the remastered / extended versions of the albums.

From another thread in Tech Talk, this is what I use to convert LP's to CD...

MikeEnRegalia wrote: 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.

If you say so.

oops, little late seems youve already found an answer. but no garage band isnt free... it came stock on my computer so i have been playing around with it lately, splitting up albums and making some of my own, really horrendous music. Garage band isnt a program known for its quality tho. its just mediocre. 

I have both but I have only used Cakewalk Pyro, which seems to work well.  Splitting your file into separate tracks is as simple as a click of a button.  It's also easy to get rid of the silence and hissing before the first track actually begins, so you don't have to synch it up or anything.  It's also relatively easy to edit out the annoying repeated parts from when your record decides to skip.  If you get lucky you won't even be able to tell that it skipped at all.  The Audio Restoration seems to work well, but of course the more pops and clicks you try to eliminate, the worse the quality of the music, so you have to find a good tradeoff.

I assume Audacity will do all the same things, but I haven't actually tried it.  Both came with my turntable, and I just assumed the program that would normally not be free would be better, but I could be mistaken.

Rubidium wrote: ClassicRocker wrote: keiser willhelm wrote: If you record it as a single track it might faster to edit them apart afterwards using something like garage band. I got The Wall from a friend but with each disc as a single song only. i cleaned it up with garage band and separated all the songs out. didnt take too long. probably shorter than stoping the recording id assume. Oh, I haven't heard about that one! Is Garage Band something you can download for free (via CNET) or is it a program you have to purchase? I've never tried it, but supposedly you can use Audacity to do it, which you should be able to (legally) download for free.

ironpagan67 wrote: keiser willhelm wrote: 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?            I know of a few places close to where I live  that will transfer vinyl to cd that charge upto about $50 per album.

If you've got the capability of getting an audio line to your computer, Audio Cleaning Lab only costs $30 retail for the basic version.
PS I have no financial incentive to promote this software, but if the guys at Magix want to send me a new version I wouldn't turn it down.


Edited by Slartibartfast - February 19 2008 at 20:57