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I want to convert my old vinyl records to CD. How do I connect the record player to my computer? What software do I need? What file format for best quality?
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Assuming you have a PC with MS Win:
1. you need a phono pre-amp
2. connect this pre-amp to your 44.1Khz Soundcard (line in)
3. Use any sound editor (like CoolEdit Pro) to capture your LPs (use 16Bit/2ch/44.1KHz) for sampling
4. Once captured, use CEP to remove BG noise and clicks.
5. Normalize whole LP to 90-95%
6. Save tracks as mp3 or wave.
Burn as wave to Audio CD or as mp3 to CD/DVD. -
It totally depends on what you have for equipment.
Easiest way is just get a cable with 2 rca jacks on one end to connect to your record player and the correct plug on the other end to connect to your line in for your PC sound card. That will hook you up, then you set your sound volume on you record player to where ever you want for best results. Mark that spot somehow for future referance so all your recordings come out the same volume. Might take a few tests to get it just where you want it.
For software all you have to have is MusicMatch Jukebox. Look through the settings and help files for specifics. Basically you set it to record your line in from the sound card, choose your bit rate settings etc...
There are options to break your recordings to tracks based on lenght of silence. This is good to set! You can turn on an album with 10 songs and forget it, if all goes well you will have 10 seperate tracks when done.
I think you can also fade in fade out and such if you want to mess with those settings.
Provided you have good quality albums (not too scratchy) this should do a good job. Only thing is if you have some of those songs that pause in the middle with silence for a few seconds they will get broke to seperate tracks of course since the program won't know the difference in silence between a pause for effect or a pause between songs!
That's how I did many of my casette tapes, 8track tapes, and phono records myself in the past. Also manually created sound tracks from videos this way using the audio out jacks from Beta and VHS players.
You should be able to create several formats, mp3, wav, and maybe others.
Haven't done that for awhile, but it worked very well for me in the past and probably the cheapest way too! A couple dollars for the cable, and I think the free version of the program worked good. Not too sure on the free version since I have the registerd version now, don't recall which I used for that. Pretty sure it was the free one, though it's only like $15-$20 anyway. -
You don't necessarily need a dedicated phono preamp - if you have a hi-fi amp with a Tape/Monitor loop on it, you can use that for recording. (So your hi-fi amp's phono preamp is used.)
Alternatively, if you don't have that, you could plug your record deck into the mic socket on your soundcard, and use the mic boost (usually in the advanced properties in the recording mixer in windows - Start->Run->sndvol32.exe /r). This feature is not really designed as a phono preamp, but it'll do the job if you don't want to spend the cash on a purpose-built unit.
Dragonsf is right about using 16-bit 44.1khz stereo PCM wav to record in (this will be the default in most audio editor anyway.) This is the spec for audio CD.
GoldWave is a good audio editor, and it has filters built in especially for cleaning up audio from vinyl (and tape). There's a pop/click filter.
Normalising the recordings is a good idea after you've cleaned them up - this maximises the level of the recording without making it clip/distort. In GoldWAve this is Effects->Volume->Maximise.
Other than GoldWave there are several other good audio editors - Audacity is freeware, CoolEdit is good, as Dragonsf said, and SoundForge is arguably the best pro-tool, but with a price that reflects this.
Nero or something similar will burn your finished wav files to audio CD.
Good luck,
mcdruid. -
IMHO using the MIC in as direct input is not a good idea (it's cheap, but you are loosing a lot of sound information).As vinyl records are distorted (frequency wise), you need a correcting filter (RIAA filter) in order to get the original frequencies back.As good phono preamps (if you can't hook up your hifi as theDruid suggested) come quite cheap and will give most out of your vinyl.It all depends, how many records you are going to convert.
One tip for reducing background noise: just record a quiet part of your vinyl (between tracks or at the end - the beginning is often scratched) and subtract this from rest of your audio, the sound will get much clearer. -
Your quite rightIMHO using the MIC in as direct input is not a good idea
Mic input is also normally mono
Line IN is stereo and depending on the player and sound card "SHOULD" give an audio the same as listening to the phono records directly!
In all I have done, I myself rarely can tell the difference between the actual record playing from the speakers or the cd I made from the record.
For me that's usually good enough.
I did have a problem a couple times, mostly with tapes, where I got a added noise like a humm or what not, but that was do to a cheap player. I changed the player and the noise went away. I think it was a distortion caused by the motors for the tape drives.
Much does depend on what a person wants to do though. Personally I feel way to much is talked about for quality most the time. For me I most often want the quality as it was originally recorded. Not studio rehashed made over copies that have been distorted and remanufactored to be something it never was to begin with. I'm sorry but Hank Willims Sr. never recorded CDs!
Heck I can make anyone sound like Alvin the Chipmunk, I want Hank Williams Sr to sound like himself, not Alvin or Willy Nelson!
I like my 78 rpm records to sound as such, not CD quality! I only record those to CD to save and protect the thick fragil disks and because it's very hard to buy new 78 rpm players
Now if the disk itself is damaged and plays poorly, like more static sounds than it should have, then that's different.
True you may need fancier stuff if you want to reproduce your casettes and phono albums to cd quality, but it has been my expirence that if you just want the same quality on a more easy to use media then the cable and MusicMatch Jukebox gives you a pretty true sound.
For me and many of the people I know, we recorded phono records to cassettes before and now to cds mostly because you can't get an AM/FM phono players for your car
Or Walkman portable phono players either
Most of us are happy enough with the original quality, we just don't want to destroy the original media, put up with skipping needles, and want to be able to play it anywhere anytime which you can do with CDs but not phono records. -
I used Nero and it was *very* easy...
download the current demo of Nero and use the trax editor...there is an LP to CD wizard (I used the tape to CD wizard..assume it would be similar - maybe include a chance to flip the LP)...all you do is record the LP, then once you have all the tracks loaded, use the tool to 'adjust the time between tracks' and then burn...it is really easy..
the only tricks I found were:
- the first step of the wizard is where you actually record - I thought the wizard would set everything up then take you back tothe program where you would record, but that's incorrect - record the whole thing in the first step, then go on to clean up your recording in the subsequent steps
- there seems to be a bug in the current version which made it difficult to use the tracks once you get back into the main program...as soon as the wizard finishes and returns you to the main program, save your work, close the program and then re-open it and your work...it will work fine after that
One other thing: I found on the CD's I burned that when playing all the way through, everything was fine - when skipping directly to a track, the timing of the intra-song gap was off somehow so that the player associated the first two or so seconds with the gap rather than the song so that the song would start a second or two into itself - but, everything was there & when playing straight through, you would hear one track, then a user-defined pause then the next track, & everything was fine...I emailed Nero and they sent me an info gathering tool to run that IMO wasn't needed to figure out what's wrong..I would think they'll fix it after a while but for now, that's the only flaw in the CDs
I used a cable from radio shack w/ 2 RCA inputs into my sound card (line in)...worked fine - I set the input level in the s/w at about 7% but you'll find what works for you
this all was very easy w/ nero.."As you ramble on through life, brother, whatever be your goal - keep your eye upon the doughnut and not upon the hole." -
A quick note about 33 and 45 RPM Vinyl records...
These records were recorded with a standard EQ adjustment added in. This was done to limit the maximum potential "groove width" for low frequencies, and to accentuate highs, to overcome clicks and pops.
This was called the "RIAA Curve" and must be compensated for -- otherwise your records will sound thin and tinny when you capture them to a sound card.
Note -- most 78 RPM records do not have this curve added.
There are two ways to go about this. I recommend Method #1 or #3 for a number of reasons...
1) Connect your player to a stereo receiver or amp with a dedicated PHONO input. This input will not only have the necessary pre-pre amplification necessary, but will also compensate for the RIAA curve internally. From here, run the tape out to the LINE IN on your sound card, and capture with a software package as described by the others (Cool Edit works well).
2) Connect your player to the MIC input of your sound card. Using software, attempt to compensate for the RIAA curve. Depending on the software involved, there may be plug-ins or presets to do this. There are some potential problems with this method. The mic-level preamp circuitry of your card may not be of very good quality. It may be designed for voice use and may be noisy. Secondly, there is no guarantee as to its input impedance or level requirements. It may not be suitable for use with a phono cartridge. Results could include low amplitude levels and/or frequency response problems.
3) You could buy a stand-alone phono pre-amp that takes phono input and produces line level output. These things also compensate for the RIAA curve. Again, go from line out from the pre-amp to the line in on your sound card and capture with whatever software package you like.
Hope this helps! -
This is what I wanted to communicate in short words.
IMHO the original poster should acknowlege our attemps to help or give some comments, if this is, what he wanted to accomplish or what else.
All of the above posts added something use to the solution and now all the information needed is there.
If of course the SW is not available (becasue it's not a PC/Win system), you use your sound editor, which comes with the system.But the HW should be the same (hi-fi preamp or dedicated phono pre-amp), Perro Grande (is that Big Dog BTW?) showed good reason to use one of these. -
In more reading now, I think I see we might actually be speaking of the same thing basically but I may have misunderstood when pre-amps were mentioned as being needed. I most likely was using one with out even thinking about it?
Some turntables for LPs had RCA jacks that sent out a basic signal. Actually they all probably do. But in using a stereo unit you don't normally see those as they are hiddin inside the system.
For those componant type turntables you had to connect them to some from of amp before you could connect speakers or you got no sound, or very minor sound and no way to adjust it.
I only used that type turn table once for a short time in a componant type unit. All the rest of my equipment has always been actual stereos! All in one type units, so the pre-amps you guys are talking about I bet was built into my systems and I didn't know that was what you meant!
In my saying connect the rca jacks, then anyone thinking of the componant type turntables would of course be thinking it won't work without the amp.
Sorry for any confusion we had over that.
Basically I think we might all be meaning disconnect the speakers from the RCA jacks and connect there, what ever they are on
If the speakers play you are comming off the amp, rather built in or componant type.
Since I like the older style stuff, I forgot about what we used to reffer to as the disco style turntables. I am more used to the floor model stereos in large cabnits that sound like jukeboxes
And mostly Real wood and weigh 100 lbs.
Or sometimes the all in one shelf units.
Oh well,
Still for the software I would try Music match over Nero. Sounds like Nero was much harder to use, since Musicmatch will actually break the Lp or Casettes into tracks as recorded and then you only need to change the files names from track one track two to whatever you want.
Not sure about the free version, my registerd version will burn the CDs as Mp3, Audio cda I beleave, and probably wav, it even converts the files on the fly and quality is very good.
If you want to edit the tracks for whatever then you probably need other software, but basicly ripping the LP to hard drive it works great. -
It really all comes down to EQ and Levels...
A magnetic phono cartridge produces output that is much lower in amplitude than a line-level device (tape deck, CD Player, etc). It also produces an un-equalized response curve that must be compensated for. This level is roughly the same level as a microphone produces.
Line level devices produce a much stronger signal (about 1V). This is what your sound card inputs (other than the mic input) expects to see.
Speakers operate with higher amplitude still, and is what the output from your Amp. produces. The speaker requires more voltage and current to move the speaker cones than a 1V Line signal can produce. Typically a speaker output is more than enough to fry the inputs of a sound card. You don't generally want to take a speaker level output to your sound card input.
If your turntable is component level -- that is, a separate turntable with no electronics for amplification, then you need a phono pre-amp to produce line-level output with proper EQ.
If your turntable is part of a component system, you can get line-level output for capture from the TAPE OUT jacks. The PHONO IN on the component system will take care of the initial pre-amp and EQ. This is just like taping your LP. Instead of taping to a cassette deck, you run the line output (TAPE OUT) to your sound card.
If your turntable has an integrated amp and speakers in it, or speaker outputs, be careful! It may not have a line level out, and the speaker outs are very likely to be to strong to run into your sound card input. I don't recommend this, even with the volume turned way down... You'll likely get poor results.
Note -- outputs that require AMPLIFIED SPEAKERS are also considered line level outputs. The speakers have the electronics to amplify the signals to the final level to drive the speaker cones.
-Perro Grande (aka The Big Dog -- yes, you were right! )
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fwiw, Nero *does* brake the music into tracks based on (adjustable) detection of pauses between the tracks...and it also comes w/a wave editor which worked fairly well...Originally Posted by overloaded_ide"As you ramble on through life, brother, whatever be your goal - keep your eye upon the doughnut and not upon the hole."
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Some excellent posts. Thanks guys. This is more for a friend than me. Although it’s something I plan to do one day. Thanks again.
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One last comment:
there are 3 kinds of electrical pickups:
1. Ceramic: 0.5V output, bad S/N (Signal/Noise ratio), bad frequecy response
2. Magneto Dynamic (MD): 20mV , good S/N, good Frequency
3. Moving Coil (MC):2 mV, best S/N, excellent frequency but needs specail pre-amp.
Ceramic PU can be connected to line in of amp,. but don't expect too much.
Input for 2 was standard to Hi-Fi amps /some had also a pre-amp for MC -
I installed Audigy Platinum (which has the plugins for the sterio in the front). For software I use Roxio Platinum 5 - as it has a program called Sound Stream. This progr will allow you to set for 'auto tracking'. As I was doing a lot of my old Records and Tapes - I didn't have to go through a long 'wave file' and have to split the songs up manually. It does take some effort to get to know how to adjust the settings for the best results - but I found the initial bit of effort worth the trouble. I could also set for how long it would record 'without' sound before it shut the recording down. That way I didn't have to 'babysit' my computer while I was recording an LP or cassette. I could go for a walk - come back - the LP had shut off - and no 'extraneous' bit of silence were recorded. I love it!! It also allows for reducing 'buzz' and 'scratching' sounds created by poor quality LP's - although I found that this option muffled the sound a bit - myself, I preferred the occassional noise. Anyting major I simply opened in any audio editing prog. and fixed the prob. there.
I've done a lot of recording with this method - and I've been pleased with the results.
Gadfly -
As was noted above,you shouldn't connect your record player directly to your soundcard because you will get hum and could fry the player preamp(300ohms->75ohms).Connect your player to receiver/amp then to line-in on your soundcard,use www.cdwave.com to capture to WAV and split.
An easier way is to record the LP's to cassette then connect cassette deck to PC. -
Try checking http://www.dak.com/reviews/Tutorial_LP.cfm for a useful tutorial on converting LPs to CDs. Although he is plugging his own tools, there is still some good info there.
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Dragonsf,
You are correct. Ceramic cartridges produce line level output. They are relatively rare, usually on crappy, kid's record players.
Moving Magnet are by far the most common kind, and these produce a low level signal that requires an equalized preamp (phono input).
Moving Coil cartridges are extremely rare -- audiophile stuff, usually -- and produce a signal even smaller than Moving Magnet. These actually require a special ultra-low-noise pre-preamp(!) to even get them up to a PHONO level input.
The chances are really good that if in doubt, assume a component turntable has a Moving Magnet cartridge. -
I've converted many vinyl Lp's to CD via my computer. Many people recommend playing the LP "wet" with water to reduce surface noise. Playing wet with water has an unpleasant side effect that if you play the record dry it will then be very noisy. I find that using alcohol instead of water works well and eliminates the dry noise problem.
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Playing a record wet can get you electrocuted. Be very careful about suggesting this to anyone.Originally Posted by wulf109
Jeff -
Video Restorer
- Jun 2003
- dFAQ.us/lordsmurf
I suggest SOUND FORGE 6 as a requirement for this process.
Want my help? Ask here! (not via PM!)
FAQs: Best Blank Discs • Best TBCs • Best VCRs for capture • Restore VHS -
IMHO, the real challenge is not so much recording the WAV file onto your system, but cleaning it up after you've recorded it.
Recommend you try shareware called Wave Repair. It was written specifically for vinyl restoration. Free trial for 30 days, then only $30 if you decide to keep it. Even if you don't buy the software, it will still record WAV files and do track splitting as a freebie.
In the last couple of weeks, I've done about 15 albums with good success--at least according to my old ears. Unless your vinyl is in bad shape (in which case, try to find a good one on Ebay), there are two main types of noise that should be eliminated--surface noise and clicks. Surface noise is easy--you record a sample of surface noise only (e.g. during the 1st few seconds before the 1st track plays) and then the software "subtracts" this noise from the recorded track. You can vary the sensitivity, although I found the default works quite well. Once you've eliminated this noise, you will hear "silence" between tracks unlike surface noise usually heard.
Clicks are the real problem. Although there are automatic declicking options in this program, I would recommend that you do it manually--even the author recommends this, although it will take longer. I've tried other declicking programs including Nero, Easy CD, and DePopper and never found one that works well without degrading the quality of the WAV file. Basically, you "listen" to each track with headphones preferably and "mark" the location of each click. You can be as meticulous as your patience allows. For each "mark", you then find the exact location of the "click" in the WAV file (the challenging bit) and then "repair" the wave. There are a variety of options for repairing the wave including an option to "redraw" it manually. Most clicks are pretty obvious and can be repaired easily, although others are challenging and some that I've simply given up on (although these were few and barely audible to start with).
Bottom line is that if you are patient, you can really do a good job of vinyl restoration inexpensively. Recommend you give it a try. Hope this helps.
wwaag -
Some comments to the above post:
- I don't recommend to use the first track for surface noise reference, because usally this is the most damaged part of the record: as this is the place for the pickup's touch down, scratches are most likely.Use either more innermost inter track silence or part of the end of record.
- if you use CEP (don't know, if other sound editors have the same option) to recover serious clicks, you can look at the wave in frequency domain (spectral display).If you see a strong red vertical line:hereis your click.Mark it and use "remove single click" and you're done.
To remove crackle, you can use CEP's click analysis and try the automaitic removal on a part.If you're satisfied, you can apply the removal.Otherwise change some parameters and remove them with these settings. -
Do not ever use water!!! After it dries up your LP will have all kinds of contaminants on it (don't know the english term, chalk? the kind that makes water 'hard').I've converted many vinyl Lp's to CD via my computer. Many people recommend playing the LP "wet" with water to reduce surface noise. Playing wet with water has an unpleasant side effect that if you play the record dry it will then be very noisy. I find that using alcohol instead of water works well and eliminates the dry noise problem.
I've heard suggestions about using distilled water which has none of those contaminents. But apart from reducing some clicks which are dust related it doest really solve anything.
Alcohol could be used as it evaporates fairly quickly and leaves hardly any contaminants on your LP. As an added bonus it will also dissolve things like fingerprints or other 'fat-related' noise producers. But if you use alcohol get a low % solution from a chemist (not your local liquorshop!)
Lastly, there are also a couple of 'machines' specifically designed to clean your albums (a sort of combination of a bath with a set of brushes in which you spin your lp or ep. Let it dry and go for it. Note that this will also get rid of those white fungus spots that can form on LPs.
Regarding click/ hiss reduction.
Clicks and pops between songs can easily be cut out. Clicks/ pops in songs should be edited out by selecting just that 2 seconds and using a click filter.
But as far as I'm concerned clicks are part of the deal (and the charm), what I would work on more is reducing the hisses you sometimes hear (like your needle cant find the whole of the groove for a second or two).
CoolEdit Pro has all these features (and more).
have fun -
I have recorded many dozens of LPs to my computer, and ultimately, to CD.
To clean the record I recommend using a 50% solution of alcohol in distilled water on an eraser from a dry erase board (a tip from the fellow at the record shop). It gets the records very clean without damage and evaporates instantly.
I've connected my turnrtable to a phono pre-amp ($50) which, in turn, is connected to line-in on my sound card.
For capturing I'm using Roxio EZ CD Creator Platinum. The recording timer feature is good. The track splitting feature is problematic at best, however, and the noise reduction feature is limited in what it can do without removing some of the music as well. I've been using Goldwave to split the tracks manually as well as noise reduction and maximize.
The whole thing does take a bit of effort but excellent results can be obtained.
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