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I have many more LPs than MP3 files or CDs and would like to convert some of my treasured recordings on wax to MP3 for preservation as I have a tendency to play my favorites too frequently.Has anyone explored and/or successfully converted some of his/her vinyl library to MP3 files? If so what method/equipment was used to accomplish the task? TIA
Follow Ups:
I believe you would want this as cheaply as possible. Some of the solutions given cost a lot of money for what will be a limited amount of use. To do this cheaply the major outlay will be on software.Assuming you have a turntable, cartridge & amp Either use tape out or (if your amp doesn't have a phono stage)a dedicated phono stage (these can be picked up dirt cheap ($50ish) or for a little more quality ($100). Next you need a phono to mini jack adapter again dirt cheap ($10 or less) but for extra quality, look at the monster version ($50 I think). To connect up, phono peads from TT into phono stage, output from either phono stage or tape out (if using integrated amp/preamp) into adapter and adapter into audio mini jack on your computer. Lastly visit "Spin it again" (see link below) purchase software and download and install. Start recording to your hearts content. Depending on what you have had to buy outlay will be about $35 for software plus $10 for adapter and the cost of the phono stage if you needed to buy it.
You won't get the last "nth" of quality but you will get a decent recording which will be quite listenable to in the car/walkman/iPod or whatever.
Enjoy.
Dual 1019 w/Shure M91ED cart., Griffin Tech. Powerwave converter (comes with analog to firewire connector wire), pair of DH Labs SS 1m RCA cables into Mac. RCAs go into the Tape Monitor section of a nic e vintage Fisher X100 integrated.. Monitors flawlessly and i get some realy nice rips from this setup.I use the simple and generally very reliable Final Vinyl software (need at least OS 10).
That's really it. I use Audacity (freeware) if i really need to clean up ticks & pops.. but frankly the compression is usually worse than a little bit of noise.
Breaking into tracks is easy in Final Vinyl.. i usually burn with an external QueFire drive and i bought a nice external hard drive (made by Other World Computing .. great external HD).. The extra space lets me leave big .aiffs for awhile in case i want to burn 16-bit copies for friends and family.
The FV software apparently has the ability to convert up to 20 bit files (audio DVD?).. but my old sound card can't accomplish this. Maybe in the future.
I just use iTunes to convert the .aiffs to MP3s.
All-in-all very easy to do.. albeit tedious. I've done a few reclamation projects for my folks and friends on old, somewhat beat up LPs and it was a gratifying thing. Always nice to unearth old musical
treasures.If you have access to a Mac or have any questions.. feel free t ask away.
"I use Audacity (freeware) if i really need to clean up ticks & pops"
I highly recommend ClickRepair for this. Best $35 I ever spent on software. It's Java, so it runs on my Mac and Linux machines.
Emac G4 with Yamaha/ADC XLM MK II into a Sansui AU999 to the computer through a Griffin Imic (not sure if I like it). I used Final Vinyl, but ended up with Amadeus II software, which I like alot. Both are good programs and it's easier than I thought it would be to do these transfers. I bought a OWC ext hd too, and it's great for storage of larger files.
To the original poster, it's great to have the music in a portable format and as Marc Homeslice says, it's great to find those musical gems in your collection. I did some research on Apple's discussion forums about transferring and it did help make the set up easier. Good luck!
Mike
Fortunately my PC has a good audio section, and I have it hooked up to my living room system for a digital jukebox of sorts. I rip vinyl & cassettes in with CoolEdit Pro (now called Adobe Audition) where I can clean them up a bit if I need to & save them as a wav. I convert to mp3 with freeware CDex, ripping at 320 kbps, which is to my ears, virtually the same as CD quality.You can also use freeware Audacity for recording with equally good results, but I think CoolEdit Pro (Audition) is more flexible & user-friendly.
For playback, I use Winamp. It's freeware & there's a plugin available which you can set up to show the album cover for whatever song of album you're playing. Pretty slick.
So as long as you have a PC with a good audio section, you can get everything you need free of charge & you're in business!
I'm using a technics TT, into a Bellari VP-129, into an M-Audio Audiophile USB, then into my computer. The Bellari allows me to monitor the transition using headphones, and I found the external DAC cleaner than the internal ones. Audio capture software is Audacity, which is available as shareware, and a snap-in called Lame, for MP3 conversion. Some albums I save as both wave and MP3, so I can choose the format, CD or MP3 player, without another conversion.Also check out Hagerman for The Ripper, which combines the phono amp and external DAC.
HI jem,
I checked out the Hagerman site and I have a question. It seems the phono preamp is intended for MM cartridges. It appears there is not enough gain for low to medium output MC carts. Do I have this right and, if so, is there a good solution other than switching to a MM or high output MC cart?
Sparky, you are correct, both the Bellari and the Hagerman need a HO MM or MC cartridge. Originally I used a HO MC, Goldring Erotica at 2.5Mv, but I went to a Rega Exact at 7Mv and got better results. I found very little difference in sound quality between the 2 in MP3 compressed files. The wave files to CD favored the Goldring, but these CDs are only being used in car or portable systems where quality is not an issue anyway.I have toyed with the idea of building a CineMag SUT and trying one of my better LO MCs in this system, but other projects await...
Get a decent quality 24 or 96 bit PC sound card. Always record in the least compressed format your sound card supports. File size shouldn't be your consideration because a 500G hard drive is cheap. I had digitized a bunch of LP's to 320bps MP3 files and ended up redid them all to WAV format. The sonic difference is significant between CD's burned from 320bps MP3 files and CD's burned from WAV files.
Theo
320 might be OK for the car, but why not go lossless or wav? Lossless has the advantage in file size and is supposedly an exact copy of the original. It does take up lots of room but not as much as wav. I've never compared the 2 however. But I do have a bunch of stuff backed up using lossless codec. I've almost got one 250 gig HD filled. Another is soon to follow
Life has lots of trials and lots of music to help us through them.
Then from cd to whatever format you'd like. A few years back I converted a bunch of stuff using MP3decode, but i think that was from mp3 to wav. It might work the other way, can't remember, and I can't remember where I got it from but it's probably still out there.
It works great. I do not archive my files as MP3s however. I stick to lossless codecs or just burn CDs.
--
Al G
Born To Tinker!
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