A Fetish For Vinyl Unheard

If you want preservation, don’t use MP3 format. If you listen with even a semi-critical ear, you’ll see why no one uses the word fidelity when referring to MP3s.

Get a real turntable or at least a better cartrage. The Stanton 681 EEE cartrage in my turntable cost me $150.00 by its self.

For easy to use software that handles the whole process try Spin in Again. The noise reduction alone is worth the price of admission.

I tried severial different programs and this was the one I bought. Yea, some are free, but this that good. Dont let the easy to use wizards fool you, you can tweak it all you want.

http://www.acoustica.com/spinitagain/

I have one of these turntables, well I have the Numark brand but it’s the same unit. I have had great success with it and can thoroughly recommend it. I have tried lots of other methods before,
a cheap turntable with built in preamp - just got lots of wow and flutter,
a preamp for my hi-fi turntable - unbearable feedback.
So when I found this my prayers were answered. The cartridge is pretty good but if you are an audiophile you could replace it with a better model, I haven’t tried this yet. My turntable came with Audacity and this is a great piece of software for this job, as you can record a whole LP and then split it into tracks in the software. It comes with built-in filters for normalisation, noise removal and click removal. You can export in different formats including WAV for burning your own CD and MP3 for saving space on your hard disk. The other neat trick is recording an LP at 45 rpm and using Audacity to change the speed back to 33. This can save a lot of time if you have a large record collection.
Have fun.

Would about 1,500 albums count as ‘mass conversion’??? As Marc noted, MP3 isn’t exactly ‘HiFi Quality’ but, that aside, those new turntables are very flimsy for the price

It would be cheaper to hunt round the 2nd-hand/charity shops and pick up a decent turntable, then get either a low-wattage amp or pre-amp then use the ‘line-in’ socket on the sound card.

The rest is a matter of changing the vinyl every 20-30 minutes and having to listen to your sounds

Approx cost for decent Pioneer turntable (2nd-hand) and new Tandy 4W stereo amp (new) £40 ($20ish)

Chris,
I did my 100+ ‘60-’70 LP to MP3. I got the rip-separate-label process down to approximately 1 hour per LP. That was before I even knew about the “special” turntables.
Player output to notebook input.MP3DirectCut to capture/rip. ID3-TagIT to label. MP3Gain to adjust volume. These are all freeware.
If some of the tracks needed a click-pop-hiss removal, I used “Click, Pop & Hiss Assassin” ($) from DAK.com. The only problem there is it works on WAV files. So the MP3s needed to be converted to WAV (used Switch). Fixed and re-converted to MP3. I found this tool after the original conversion was complete.
This was done over a number of months, as a spare time thing. An interesting experience AND I got to listen to all those great memories again.
Next, the 200+ cassettes!

I used the ION turntable to convert my wife’s record collection. It ships with an open source package called Audacity and can store uncompressed .wav files in addition the normal open source formats. The turntable itself shows up as a generic USB audio device - it would probably work fine under Linux, but I haven’t tried it.

The only reason for buying the ION is if you have to replace the turntable to begin with (we did) - otherwise, you might as well save the money and just feed the audio into the PC directly.

I am an ex DJ, as such I have a considerable amount of music on LP, 45 and EP format. I have had great success recording to MP3, WMA and countless other formats and am happy to share the how to with anyone in a similar situation. The Ion turntable sounds great, but if you have a standard turntable and a cheap mixer with a reasonable soundcard in your PC you dont have to shell out megabucks to achieve excellent results. I will go so far as to say that the result far exceeds the quality of the original vinyl recording.

–The Borg

Chris,

Before buying the ION LP-Ripper you should check out the customer comments posted on Circuit City.

Some good, some bad. Hijacks your sound card, no dust cover, no auto-stylus lift, lack of customer support from ION.

Dave

You know, if you treat them carefully, the old records will likely outlast the newer media, especially magnetic. I have even read comment that the CDs will deteriorate over long terms, where the harder old platters won’t - I am playing some of my father’s old 78’s and they still sound fine. But as someone said, getting up to flip them is a bit of a nuisance, but perhaps the exercise is a fringe benefit!

Amazon has the same turntable for $133.31 with free shipping.

Chris, found this on the Sears Web site either last year or early this year?

Check their online price match policy, also check the largest Sears store in the Seattle area (It may or may not be available in store)

The ripping software probably is the biggest difference, and you probably already have software that can do it better.

I also have a large collection of LP albums some hits and some just to enjoy. Almost everyone has a Beatles album, but how many have them on the Vee Jay label.

UncleDoug

Why spend $150? Any turntable with the appropriate Y-cables ending in a 1/8″ plug will send analog audio into your sound card. Capture it with Audacity, export it as MP3, WAV, etc and enjoy.

Re. converting LP records to digital format. If you want good fidelity, there’s no getting around the fact that you have to record in real time. So if a record is 20 minutes per side, then it will take a minimum of 40 minutes to record whatever hardware and software are used. I use a quality turntable and run its output to the Line-In audio port of my PC. For recording, I use Total Recorder by High Criteria and record one side of an LP as one WAVE file. I then use the audio editor Goldwave to (a) reduce any hiss and/or rumble, (b) remove the worst pops and clicks if there are any and (c) break up the original wave file into individual tracks including tidying up the silent parts at the beginning and end of the tracks. If there are large variations in volume from track to track on the original, Goldwave has a normalizing feature you can use to correct for this as does Total Recorder. If you have an LP which really does have a bad case of clicks and pops, you might want to try DePopper which I find is more effective in bad cases than Goldwave. (Bear in mind, however, that the more unwanted ‘noise’ you remove from a recording, the more fidelity you lose.) It’s a simple operation then to burn the individual WAVE files to a CD using Roxio or Nero or if you prefer to burn a CD of MP3s, there are plenty of free WAV to MP3 converters available on the Web for this.

My system is totally piecemeal. I have my old JVC turntable with an A/B switch and a 12 foot RCA stereo cable (what’s left of the stereo is on the other side of the room). I live record into Adobe Audition - which gives me the option to clean up a lot of the clicks and pops. I have a lot of vinyl that is obscure and will never see a CD of any sort unless I create it. Yes the quality isn’t spectacular, however it’s better than nothing and does save the vinyl from more wear and tear - as well as the turntable.

I’ve looked at the new options, but they aren’t really any better than what I set u on my own. Plus with the same system - since I’ve been too lazy to hook the TV into the PC - I have hooked the audio side of my VCR/DVD player in as well - so I can live record or record from VHS/DVD into my PC as well. I use this a lot for news interviews.

I have converted some over using Roxio as my capture software with the ION turntable. I bought it because of the USB compatability. I have a nice Pioneer turntable that uses a quartz drive and was pretty expensive when I bought it but it requires a pre-amp and I’ve never had any success routing it into my line in on my computer. Any suggestions for using that? Also, when you convert a stereo signal to a single line in input aren’t you loosing the stereo effect?

” I have a nice Pioneer turntable that uses a quartz drive and was pretty expensive when I bought it but it requires a pre-amp and I’ve never had any success routing it into my line in on my computer. Any suggestions for using that?”

Try this…
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Behringer-Microphono-PP400-Phono-Preamp?sku=187200

I’m using this with my “old” Philips GA 212 and I’m pretty impressed with it. No hum or other noise is introduced into the system that I can tell.

Do you know a good software program which is compatible with Mac computer to get rid of unwanted noise when updating old records and tapes eg Dak’s Clickety,Pop and Hiss Assasin