Records to CD's

Francis Chamberlain · Post by **Francis Chamberlain** » 7 Jan 2005 7:59 am

I have a bunch of old 33RPM records and I
would like to burn them onto CD's. I
understand that you must have a preamp
between your turntable and computer.
Where do you purchase the preamps? How
expensive are they? Any suggestions?

Earnest Bovine · Post by **Earnest Bovine** » 7 Jan 2005 8:05 am

If you have an old stereo amp or receiver it will have the phono preamp built in. Just look for phono inputs on the back, and phono on the selector switch on the front. Then you can get the signal from the tape (REC) outputs, and from there into the computer.
Also, new turntables have the preamp built in to the turntable.

Gene Jones · Post by **Gene Jones** » 7 Jan 2005 8:16 am

*[This message was edited by Gene Jones on 19 January 2005 at 04:50 AM.]

Ray Minich · Post by **Ray Minich** » 7 Jan 2005 9:02 am

To go along with what Earnest said, I bought a turntable (model escapes me at the moment) at the local electronics store about a year ago. It has a switch selectable (switch on underside) preamp built into it so it can be used at normal magnetic pick-up output levels (for the typical phono-input jacks) or at higher level that would appear to be compatible with the 0.7 v or 2.0 v line-in ranges for an audio card. Haven't tried the amp-in configuration yet.

Leon Grizzard · Post by **Leon Grizzard** » 7 Jan 2005 9:35 am

There is a good product called Rip Vinyl that makes it easy. It costs about $10 as a downlaod, and provides you with a meter to set the level, and it recognizes (usually) the silence between the songs and starts a new file, so you get indivual tracks.
http://www.wieser-software.com/ripvinyl/

Mark van Allen · Post by **Mark van Allen** » 13 Jan 2005 10:48 am

Francis, my wife got me a great turntable for Christmas that has a built in pre-amp and so will connect directly to your computer sound card or into studio gear, recorders, aux inputs ojn your amp, etc. It's the Sony PS-LX250H, Musican's Friend sells 'em for $99 and you can find them for $79 on the internet. I understand the cartridge may eventually be expensive to replace, but it works well and sounds great.

------------------
Stop by the Steel Store at: www.markvanallen.com

Ollin Landers · Post by **Ollin Landers** » 13 Jan 2005 1:15 pm

Francis
I do a lot of vinyl restoration as a side business. Take a look at some software called Wave Repair. It is specifically designed to record vinyl to CD. If you dont get too carried away with doing restoration work it's not too hard to learn. Best of all it's shareware and you get 30 days fully functional to try it out http://www.delback.co.uk/wavrep/

Mike Hoover · Post by **Mike Hoover** » 17 Jan 2005 6:35 am

Francis, If you want some software that is real good for cleaning up these old records, get Magix Audio cleaninglab 2005. it is real good for removing noise from old records.

Mike

Joseph Barcus · Post by **Joseph Barcus** » 17 Jan 2005 7:03 pm

May be a little better if you could go to someplace like dc++ and download them already done. its a very nice place and it is also run very tight. only thing about it is you have to have i think 2 mb of music to share to get any from there, but its virus free. and again a very nice place to get just about anything you like.

Ron Page · Post by **Ron Page** » 20 Jan 2005 9:48 am

On the pre-amp. I bought one through Radio Shack but as I recall had to order in online and not in the store. It was around $30 and requires a battery. Does a good job. I didn't find it on their web site through the search function; turntables are about $100.

Since that time, my old direct-drive turntable was struck by lightning and the replacement I bought has the built-in, switch-selectable pre-amp as described above.

------------------
HagFan

[This message was edited by Ron Page on 20 January 2005 at 09:51 AM.]

George Kimery · Post by **George Kimery** » 20 Jan 2005 10:27 pm

I don't know why nobody has mentioned just a CD recorder/duplicator? I have one and it has an analog imput RCA in the back to hook up tape players, record players, etc. You can then record the analog onto a CD. I picked mine up at Best Buy for about $190.00, but this was a couple of years ago.

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 21 Jan 2005 7:18 am

Bob, perhaps you'd consider posting your advice here on the forum so we can all benefit from it? There's a bunch of us watching this thread...
Many thanks,
Jim

Garry Vanderlinde · Post by **Garry Vanderlinde** » 21 Jan 2005 7:28 pm

Please excuse my ignorance, but can you just use a stereo mini-jack out of the back of a receiver/amp and plug it into the audio input of the computer and copy LPs or cassette tapes locally and then burn it to CD? If so,exactly how, click for click?

Tommy Mc · Post by **Tommy Mc** » 22 Jan 2005 11:00 am

can you just use a stereo mini-jack out of the back of a receiver/amp and plug it into the audio input of the computer and copy LPs or cassette tapes locally and then burn it to CD? If so,exactly how, click for click?

Yes, absolutely. You just need some recording software. Here are some instructions using Polderbits. http://www.angelfire.com/vt2/tommymc3/LPtoCDR.html

Garry Vanderlinde · Post by **Garry Vanderlinde** » 26 Jan 2005 9:36 pm

Thanks for the link Tommy Mc, so it's possible and accessable, but it's not actually easy! I do need and want this technology. I just wish the learning curve wasn't so steep for an anolog creatin like me. Are there any shortcuts or things to avoid?

Tommy Mc · Post by **Tommy Mc** » 27 Jan 2005 6:18 am

The tellin' is harder than the doin'. If you break the process into small chunks and look at them one at a time, it might be easier.

1. Record to hard drive. I'm an old analog guy too, and I look at this the same as if I were going to transfer the LP to tape. The only difference is that you are using the computer as a tape recorder.

(a) Hook-up: The signal from the turntable needs to come through a pre-amp to boost the volume. So use the Line-out of your stereo, and plug this into the Line-in on your computer.

(b) Recording: You need a recording program to do this. There's a million of them, many free or low priced. The reason I like Polderbits is that the recording is real simple. No dialog boxes or menus. You open it up, and it kinda looks like a cassette recorder. There are level meters, Record, and Stop buttons. Something an old analog guy can understand......set the levels, and press Record.

2. Editing. A cassette tape is one long recording, and the only way to navigate between songs is to Fast Forward or Rewind. You could do this on a CD too, but it is much nicer to cut the long recording into individual song 'files'. That way the songs appear in your CD menu as Track 1, Track 2, etc. When you create your CD (called 'burning' it) you add each individual 'file' in the order you want it to play. How do you make individual song files?

(a) The easiest way to understand (but a pain in the pooper) is to record one song off the LP, stop the recorder, save the recording. Repeat this with each song.

(b) The most efficient way, once you learn the program, is to record one entire side of the LP, then 'edit' the recording into individual files. Polderbits (and many other programs) will automate this process by searching for the silence between songs and cutting the recording there. Or you can do it manually, which is often more accurate...especially if your music has silent passages that might fool the program.

(c) Name your files and save them. Mp3 is smaller in size, but will have to be converted back to wav when you burn them. Most burning software will do the conversion automatically.

(d) Optional: If the recording has excessive scratches or hiss, you might want to clean it up. In my tutorial, I used Depopper, which is pretty simple to use.

3. Burn to CD: This is going to vary slightly depending on what CD creation program you use. Basically, select 'Music CD', assemble the music files in the order you want them, and burn.
Both Polderbits and Depopper have fully functional free trial periods so you aren't out anything if you can't get the hang of it. [This message was edited by Tommy Mc on 27 January 2005 at 06:19 AM.]

Lou[NE] · Post by **Lou[NE]** » 28 Jan 2005 3:06 am

What Tommy Mc said...for editing a large file into individual tracks I use the wave editor that came with Nero ver. 5, which lets you select a part of the large file and copy the selection to a new file.

A decent (and free) wave editor which does the same thing is available at the link below.

Good luck
http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/