Have you tried recording vinyl to MP3s and or CDs? Turntable with USB port?

[Manix]

I always use a decent USB preamp or audio interface, which you can get well cheap nowadays. There are so many out there I dare not reccomend one in particular, although the Tascam US122 is pretty good for the price.

I always find using an audio interface the best option, because the software usually gives you a lot of control over your overall sound output and hance the quality of your results!

Not sure if this is what you needed to know, but if you already have a decent turntable just plug it in to the audio interface.

I still have a lot of vinyl, not because I'm old but because I am a ELECTRONIC MUSIC HEAD/DJ and often want to transfer some tunes to my ipod.

 

[Janice8]

Hey out there,
While my husband is out hunting I am Christmas gift planning by trying to put together a system for recording his old LP collection to digital because his hard drive died with all of his MP3 albums on it.
I've been looking at the gamut from turntables with built in USB connections like Numark TTUSB, (he has a decent turntable that needs a new needle) to this site's nine-inning process. Now I'm dazed and confused. He's plenty smart and geeky enough to manage the drawn out process and would like good quality recording, but I doubt he would want to put a lot of time and patchwork gizmos into it.
Any advice from all you smart people? Pleeeaaazze?

I had to transfer some of my old vinyl recordings to Cd, so as to play in my car. I did it with editing software, FlexiMusic Wave Editor to record and to save the audio as Mp3 files. It worked great for me.

 

[Eric York - 2010]

You don't need to buy a turntable, especially if he has a good one already. Spend some money on a good, new cartridge. Make sure his PC has a good quality sound card; there are lots of them out there with a line-in capability. (I'm still using a pretty old one from Creativ, but it preserves sound quality very well. You can often find good deals on not-up-to-the-minute products on ebay if you spend some time.) You can then plug the turntable directly into the sound card. A decent option for file treatment prior to burning CD's is Sound Forge. It does a great job on pops, hiss, etc. Eliminating this kind of noise without 'muddy' results will be your biggest challenge, especially if some of the albums have been used a lot. Sound Forge does a good job.

By the way, buy another hard drive to be used only for backup/archiving, or burn the mp3's to DVD. This way you can avoid this catastrophic and traumatic music loss!!

Cheers.
Eric

 

[aliasJohnQ]

Actually the best way to record is to just have a connection from your turntable to your computer. Forget about the USB turntables!!!
They are all garbage! There is not accurate sound reproduction coming from this source at all, and you can read all the reviews you want, but it still won't bring the full sound to the table. If you have a very decent cartridge, and a nice turntable, then just get your rca's connected directly to the computer, then and only then, get a software package to coordinate your music, and make sound adjustments. This is the best way, hands down!

 

[tomvehoski]

Re: Have you tried recording vinyl to MP3s and or CDs?

This is an attractive idea because some MP3 players can be hooked up to a little transmitter and play on a car stereo through a radio station. (we don't do Ipods and their Itune servitude) That makes it portable but rather costly. My husband had wanted a car stereo with USB jack but then he could only listen to his MP3s in that car--his antique, Sundays only car.

So you see I have managed to make this difficult! I nuke everything.

I have tried several of the FM radio transmitters and none worked well. It might work if you are out in the country with minimal stations broadcasting. I large cities there are just too many stations crowded together to get an open frequency to use without interference.

I have a Bluetooth receiver that plugs into my AUX jack in my car, but even that can be a pain to keep paired without interference. I've gone back to a simple cable to hook my phone into the car. Simple and reliable.

 

[Marc]

Re: Have you tried recording vinyl to MP3s and or CDs?

The biggest obstacle to converting all the music is the time. I have several hundred cassettes going back to the 1970's. I don't have a cassette player any more except in my car. I pull a few out and now and again and listen to one, but then again since I don't travel any more so I rarely get them out.

But - My main point is you have to remember the transfer is *real time*. So - If you have (example) 350 cassettes/records, and each is approximately x minutes per side, figure out how long it will take to transfer all that music. I thought of transferring all my tapes a few years back but when I estimated the time it would take I decided against it.

 

[bobdoering]

Re: Have you tried recording vinyl to MP3s and or CDs?

The biggest obstacle to converting all the music is the time.

But - My main point is you have to remember the transfer is *real time*.

Sure shootin'...and if you get a skip it really hurts!!!

 

[Mikishots]

Hey out there,

While my husband is out hunting I am Christmas gift planning by trying to put together a system for recording his old LP collection to digital because his hard drive died with all of his MP3 albums on it.

I've been looking at the gamut from turntables with built in USB connections like Numark TTUSB, (he has a decent turntable that needs a new needle) to this site's nine-inning process. Now I'm dazed and confused. He's plenty smart and geeky enough to manage the drawn out process and would like good quality recording, but I doubt he would want to put a lot of time and patchwork gizmos into it.

Any advice from all you smart people? Pleeeaaazze?

I've used an ION USB turntable with an audio interface (because the A/D conversion in my computer left much to be desired), and it was OK as long as I transferred with the noise reduction off and saved the file uncompressed. If your husband hopes to capture the "essence and warmth" of an LP but play it from a digitized file, 90% of the processing gizmos supplied with the turntable shouldn't be used. Noise reduction, compression, conversion and the like simply result in a flat, watered-down version of the sound you were expecting to hear.

Don't have it any more, as I had only a few LP's to convert. To be honest, I didn't find the results that impressive.

 

[WKHANNA]

Good results for little $ can be had. This gets good reviews from people I learned to trust.
http://www.musicdirect.com/p-42356-pro-ject-essential-usb-turntable.aspx


Personally, I run the analog signal from my HiFi pre-amp directly to my tower PC. A good quality sound card with an analog to digital converter and one of numorous freeware signal processing aplications is all that is needed.

I am currently ripping my 500+ vinyl collection to Hi-Ress 24/192 FLAC files. They are indistingushable to all but the most intent listeners when played back thru my HiFi system and compared to the original vinyl they were copied from.

 

[WKHANNA]

Some other good options for USB connection of your existing turntable to laptop or PC.
http://www.musicdirect.com/c-535-usb-output.aspx

For file conversion to burn SeeDee's or storage, I recomend Exact Audio Copy (EAC). It's a freeware application that you can download.

The one I use is Dbpoweramp. It's ~ $30, but well worth it if you're handling a lot music.

Just remmember, MP3's and stuff from Itunes often contain as little as 10% of the original music file. This stuff is extremely compressed to facilitate storage space, and as such, the audio quality is significantly effected.