Records to CDs?

[steelly]

Does anyone know of a way that is cost effective to transfer the music from old fashion records to CDs. Is their special hardware and software needed? Thanks for your help, a friend asked me, so I came here for a solution.





Bushie II out, Kerry in!

[wicked1]

I personally would just use Neros sound recording and nero to burn them to disc. Just hook up the line out from the phono and hook that into your sound cards line in. Its pretty simple to do.

[redk9258]

I personally would just use Neros sound recording and nero to burn them to disc. Just hook up the line out from the phono and hook that into your sound cards line in. Its pretty simple to do.

NO - You cannot do that. You need a preamp with the correct RIAA phono equalization. You can take the rec-out from your receiver to your soundcard. I highly recommend Sound Forge or Adobe Audition for recording / editing. I think there is a slightly stripped down version of Sound Forge that only costs around $70 **EDIT - here it is.. http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/P ... sp?PID=868 **. I've never tried this but here's a FREE program that I've heard a few people talk about.. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Good Luck.

[burninfool]

redk9258 is correct,
phono/mic=300ohms
line level=75ohms
If you use phono->line-in you will get a hum and could fry your turntable.
www.cdwave.com is another good recording software.

[cfitz]

To be fair, wicked1 said to hook the line out from the phono to the sound card, not the phono out. I think he was referring to the audio system as a whole as a "phono" (phonograph), and wasn't suggesting to hook the phono output from the turntable directly to the sound card.

But it is good that you have both clarified out the differences between phono out and line out in case steelly was also confused by the briefness of wicked1's explanation.

cfitz

[CowboySlim]

NO - You cannot do that. You need a preamp with the correct RIAA phono equalization.

I'm not sure about that (I'm going back about 40 years, after all). As I recall, preamps were only required when the turntable had a magnetic cartridge. The preamp output was fed into the power amplifier. If it had a ceramic cartridge, preamps were not used and the turntable was connected directly to the power amplifier. Now, which was close to the level of lineout or the level of phono out, I'm clueless.

If RIAA was provided by the preamp, then for systems without preamps, i.e. ceramic cartridge turtables, then the ceramic cartridge must have put out a RIAA equalized signal.

Slim
Who may be older than you look.

[redk9258]

I think you are right about the ceramic cartridge. I haven't seen one of those in years. They were mostly used on those all-in-one rigs with a tuner, 8-track, cassette, and record player on top. I think they were usually made by Soundesign (sp?).

[wicked1]

yeah when I referred to phono I was referring to my shelf stereo unit in the bedroom.It is receiver,cass and all in one.It just has line outs.

[Spazmogen]

Frankly, I've done it and it wasn't worth the effort.

Remember: I'm a former Professional Audio Engineer from back in the mid 1980's & early 1990's.

I used Creative Lab's Audio HQ to select my source and turn the volume down. I normalize it later on after I've recorded the whole LP as 1 big PCM Wave file.

Then used Cool Edit to measure the noise floor between songs. It then goes through the entire big .wav file and removes it from both music and song gaps.

Saved it at this point.

Used Cool Edit to manually split the songs.

Burn it to CD-R as DAO.

There's a huge quality hit (frequency response wise) when you remove the noise floor & clicks & pops.

You're better off just listening to it on cassette with a Dolby B or C (Dolby SR if you can afford it).

The LP had better be very rare before I'd try that again. IE: Bootleg etc.

otherwise: just download it (I'm Canadian, its legal up here!) or go to your library and see if they have it on CD.

[BillyG]

I have tried Audacity and its a very basic wav file editor and recorder. Works fine but doesnt have the featues that Sound Forge and Cool Edit have. If you can afford it, I'd go with Sound Forge basic.

I have "remastered" many rare 45's to CD-R and I like Sound Forge's editing features better than Cool Edit's. They make it easier to pinpoint many small clicks and scratches.

I dont like to use any kind of declicking and noise reduction program either - I have tried the noise processing in Nero and Easy CD Creator and usually they make everything sound muffled. And I hate any effect that gives mono a fake stereo effect.

[stix]

a couple of links to previous discussions on this topic:

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... lp+records

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... highlight=