OT: Vinyl LPs to MP3 transfer

As you said earlier, you need some sort of preamp. A phono preamp usually has RIAA equalization. If you connect the turntable to a receiver, with a phono input, the recording output should be nicely equalized. I have a cheap stereo mixer, which has a phono (with RIAA equalization) built in, which works well for recording to the PC.

Terry Coomb: "MOTS"

??? English.

There's probably a vinyl shop in your area that buys and sells old albums; try them before you pitch the albums, you might make some cash off of them.

Paul

In a nutshell...

1. Hook turntable to preamp (a stereo is fine).

1. Hook pre-amp line out to computer line in

2. Play & record the vinyl.

At a minimum, you will spend one hour for each hour of music. If you want to do a good job, you will spend a minimum of 3-5 hours per hour of music.

1. For recording, Audacity is fine. I like the interface of Audiograbber better.
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1. You may need to adjust the in volume so that the recording is not clipped
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2. Record to wave format. It is highly probable that your recording will have unpleasant noise from scratches etc. in the vinyl. To remove them - to clean up the recording - you need to work on wave files; recording in that format means they do not need to be decompressed for cleaning.

1. Clean the recording. Any wave editor such as Goldwave or Audacity will serve. There are also specialized programs intended for that purpose. One of the best - but not easiest - is WaveRepair.
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2. It is easiest to record an entire vinyl side, clean it and then split into tracks. The easiest splitter I know of is CDWave.
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1. Encode the wave files to MP3. For your purpose, a bit rate of 128 or

1. You may want to tweak the MP3s so that they have similar volumes. Here are two programs that are handy for that, MPTrim and MP3Gain.
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2. If you want for your mother to be able to look at her player and tell who is playing what (if the player supports that function), you will need to write tags to the file. There are two versions of MP3 tags...ID3v1 and ID3v2. The latter allows for more fields and extensive info but are not recognized by all hardware. For your purpose, ID3v1 should be ample. Mp3Tag is a versatile tagger.
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For more info, see my dandies...

That's a helluva nutshell.

Thank you much.

Or you can feed the turntable into a receiver's phono jacks and connect the tape loop output from the receiver to the sound card line-input jack; use the receiver's pre-amp.

_____________

Cannot seem to find the exact post, but someone here asked if modern receivers(less than 5 years old) still have PHONO inputs.

My answer: 1 out of 5 unfortunately, and usually the higher end models within a manufacturer's lineup. They'd better get with the program though, vinyl LP are making a comeback! :)

It is more of a cult following.

I know that down here in SW Florida I couldn't find anyone to buy about 400 LPs I had accumulated from other people who couldn't get rid of them. I ended up giving them to a guy who sells them for a buck or less at the flea market.

I think the days of playing any kind of music or movies from little bits of plastic are going fast. With disk storage going for less than $50 a TB and new media playing devices supporting WiFi, nobody is going to want to fool with records, CDs or DVDs unless they are stuck in the 60s.

Meanie,

That's a direct drive turntable from the mid 80s. It has a reputation for being fairly stable so the tracking force and anti-skating should be ok. I'd be suspicious of the needle. If you can't check it with a microscope then buy a new one. Maybe $20. Set the table up so it's level and play an old record to see if there are any problems. You can find the owner's manual on-line. You don't mention an amp or pre-amp. You need to get the turntable's weak signal amplified up to a "line-level" and also add a lot of bass. Radio Shack, among others, sell phono pre-amps that do this. Be aware that records before the early 60s may have a different bass equalization. Can't help you with this. So. a new needle $20

a pre-amp $15

a cable from turntable to pre-amp $10

a cable from pre-amp to computer $10

Audacity Free That may get your records into the computer.

Dave M.

more of the same

What am I checking for under a microscope? I see the needle, though a bit dusty, it appears ok, but that's not saying much.

Yea, I'm uncertain of the age of her albums but I do know some or many of the artists are, um, dead.

I have this old Recoton stereo pre-amp but have no idea where it came from. I'm uncertain of it's quality but would most likely get a better one if needed.

I also have most cables required for hookups.

Thank you.

This is the preamp I have.

On 12/19/2014 10:47 AM, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote: ...

Raises hand... :)

I just spent a significant bundle on a tech with younger, less shaky hands than mine to refurb including changing all the electrolytic cap's on the 60s era receiver/amp. Currently the turntable is also being refurb'ed as well...I have but almost never listen to the digital recordings and don't have a MP3 or like player and am unlikely to ever have such...

While hearing isn't what it once was, I agree that still the old vinyl sounds better to me; mostly because, I'm sure, it's what grew up with so the differences of later aren't what like.

more of the same

"It is more of a cult following.

I know that down here in SW Florida I couldn't find anyone to buy about 400 LPs I had accumulated from other people who couldn't get rid of them. I ended up giving them to a guy who sells them for a buck or less at the flea market.

I think the days of playing any kind of music or movies from little bits of plastic are going fast. With disk storage going for less than $50 a TB and new media playing devices supporting WiFi, nobody is going to want to fool with records, CDs or DVDs unless they are stuck in the 60s. "

You must be a young 'un. :) As long as I'm around there's nothing like a good hard physical copy of the thing in my hand.

I'd never trust any of my music to a "cloud" or "stream". Sure, I've got everything ripped, but I know it's ripped from a good source and that physical source can't be equalled.

You said "Usenet" which I assumed you meant newsgroup forums.

I've done searches in Google and found as you did but It doesn't hurt to ask in here for first hand experience which then allows followup questions if necessary. Can't do that watching a video.