Any way to convert LP's into MP3s?

[Deadlyman]

Fellow Lurkers,

My parents are going through a lot of there stuff, because they are moving/downsizing. Back in the late 60's my father played for a christian folk band in Europe (They were missionaries. I was born in FRANCE. Viva Le France).
A friend of theirs mentioned to convert the old records to MP3's so that they can be burned onto a Mini-Disc.

Does anyone out there know if this can be done and how??

[Taem]

I don't know a lot about this but happened to be looking at some sound cards for my computer so I'll answer the best I can.

A lot of current sound cards offer something called a stereo line in (RCA? Digital? I don't know - all they say is "Stereo Line-In") or better yet, a firewire line in. I'm pretty sure your Record Player has a line out that you could plug into one of these sound cards. The thing that confuses me is that the sound cards only have one line in, but most RCA stereo cables have a left and right. I don't know what this means :P

[Kryn]

I believe I actually saw some piece of equipment that recorded the records onto CD or something. It was XBox size and quite unbecoming.

I recently came across this though. Hopefully that can help ya out!

[channel1]

Roxio (formerly Adaptec) has a CD creation suite that includes a pretty good application for doing vinyl.

Disclaimer: I used version 4, when it was still Adaptec, and it worked very well then. No guarantee that the new version works as well as the old version

Here's a link to the info on the product: Easy CD & DVD Creator 6

A few notes. The click/pop/hiss filters work okay, and help old records a lot, BUT don't crank the filter up too high. It can make the sound too "flat".

If you're really fussy, and are ready to spend the time, a record with bad clicks and pops can be cleaned up really well manually. I found it best to work with a first generation wav file, and play it to the click. Pause the playback, zoom in on the location where the click is, select the click and do an "Insert Silence". Since the time is so short, you won't even notice where a small fraction of a second of the sound has been removed. Do NOT "Delete" the selection, since that will mess up the timing a bit and is more noticeable than silence.

-rcv-

[Den]

Don't forget that you don't have to use your PC to do this. They make CD burners/players that are actually stereo components. If you're into your Hi-Fi then it's an alternative.

[--Pete]

Hi,

By digitizing the records first, you get a chance to play games with the tracks before re-recording them. As channel1 said, you can clean up pops really well. With a decent FFT program, you can clean up the hiss from that comes from the newer, much recycled vinyl. Also, if you're working from tapes, you can clean out the tape hiss. You can expand the highs and lows that were often compressed on vinyl and on tape as well. You can do your own lead in, lead outs and make the break between cuts as distinct or melded as you like.

Don't know how much, if any, of this you can do with a straight CD burner, but I suspect not much. But if all you want is a digital copy of an analog recording, the straight copy to CD is probably good enough for most folks. :)

--Pete