Archiving Vinyl Records to CD

[ol'skinflint]

because they reinforce my reluctance to deal with small companies I've never heard of who want payment first and then prefer to deliver product later, sometimes much later and sometimes not at all. They wouldn't really serve my purpose anyway because I have lots and lots of disco favorites that I predict will never ever be released on CD anyway, at least not in my lifetime. So here's my plan: I'm going to buy one of the LP to CD recorders TEAC has on the market (as soon as they drop the price: $500 is a bit much for me). After I put my favorites on CD myself, then I'll use a color printer to shrink the LP's artwork, and I'll essentially recreate my favorite disco LPs into a personalized CD collection. I won't have to wait any more, pay high import prices or deal with shady mail order companies. And in case you're not familiar with the LP to CD recorder, it allows you to do the transfers WITHOUT any computer at all. That's a Godsend for me because I can't work the DAK system, Roxio CD Creator or any of the other "EASY" software systems I've wasted my money on.....

[remicks]

Originally Posted by ol'skinflint

.............here's my plan: I'm going to buy one of the LP to CD recorders TEAC has on the market (as soon as they drop the price: $500 is a bit much for me). After I put my favorites on CD myself, then I'll use a color printer to shrink the LP's artwork, and I'll essentially recreate my favorite disco LPs into a personalized CD collection. I won't have to wait any more, pay high import prices or deal with shady mail order companies.

Great plan!! Ya wanna split the equipment costs .........have a couple of pressing parties ........ and share our treasures in the process !!!! :D :D :D

*****

[ol'skinflint]

that sounds like a good idea, but I think that if we just hold on awhile, the price of that unit should come down soon, because most people I know have the ability to do these transfers on their computers, I seem to be the only dumdum that doesn't. I've already seen one guy in my area trying to sell one for $350, but when I emailed him, he turned out to be a real jerk. And in case you haven't heard, many GoodGuys electronics stores are going out of business, and I plan on scouring some to see if I can get a good price on that unit, if they have it. My back up plan is to find someone who has one who'll rent it to me because after I've transferred all my favorite disco albums, I'll have no further use for it. If you'd like to see what the unit looks like, go to the website for Southwest Airline's Skymall Magazine, it's in there. It should also be on the manufacturer's web site (TEAC) though I haven't looked yet.

[QUINNY]

Even better idea.

Buy yourself a full size minidisc recorder and a second hand stand alone CD recorder [a pro model like a Marantz or HHB BURNIT! (I'm assuming you have a reasonable turntable)].

That way you'll have minidisc and CD-R back ups. Why do this?
CD-Rs are absolute crap for archival purposes, whereas minidisc appear to stand up to archiving much better. By having a minidisc 'master' you'll be able to transfer to any future digital medium without having too much hassle.....and you probably will have to transfer again sometime in the future.
I personally would swear by Minidisc, whereas CD-R I wouldn't give you tuppence ha'penny for 'em.

www.minidisc.org

[Bernie]

Minidisc?!!! There's no way I'm archiving to minidisc as it is a lossy format. I used to sell Minidisc back in New York and I wouldn't touch it. I have a better idea... spend that money on a spare 300 Gb hard drive and archive at full fidelity AIF or WAV file and burn to whatever format is hot that year.

[soulsta]

what is the reason for waiting for the teac to go down in price? you can transfer analog to cd from any cd recorder. but does this one do something interesting? I am just curious. thanks

[BrunoRepublic]

Originally Posted by Bernie

Minidisc?!!! There's no way I'm archiving to minidisc as it is a lossy format.

Not necessarily. The latest generation of MD units are capable of recording uncompressed 16/44.1. The new discs hold up to 1GB each, so this is slightly more than a CD-R.

[ol'skinflint]

if I had any idea what you're talking about I wouldn't be trying to save up $500 for the LP to CD recorder. I am a computer novice (email is occasionally still a challenge for me) so anything "explained" in computer lingo may as well be in a foreign language to me. And what kind of "assistance" do I get from the software's manufacturer? "Sorry the period for customer assistance has expirer". "Please review the owner's manual". "Sorry we do not offer assistance for discontinued models" and the like. They're about as helpful as a milk bucket under a bull. And pay $20 for a CD copy of an album I, in many cases, got free? Thank you, no.. I'm giving up........

[QUINNY]

Originally Posted by Bernie

Minidisc?!!! There's no way I'm archiving to minidisc as it is a lossy format. I used to sell Minidisc back in New York and I wouldn't touch it. I have a better idea... spend that money on a spare 300 Gb hard drive and archive at full fidelity AIF or WAV file and burn to whatever format is hot that year.

Bernie, that was a long time ago. Forgot you are an audiophile. Minidiscs are incredibly good now and to all intents and purposes, absolutely good enough, except for peoples like you. One advantage I've noticed is that the ATRAC system appears to help with losing a little of the rumble and general noise of vinyl, exactly because it 'sees' the low level information as not being useful. Strange but true.

BTW: Ol'skinflint (live up to yer name don't ya?)
You can buy what are called 'stand alone CD recorders (the BURNIT or Marantz named above) that connect to outside equipment just like a tape deck would . They have phono ins and outs plus digital ins/outs in most cases (the pro models will also have XLR ins/outs too). They're dead easy to use, even for a technophobe. If you buy one, make sure to buy a pro model that uses any old CD-R and should last longer. However, the specially made audio CD-Rs should give the best results as they should (in theory) have an optimum writing speed of 1X or maybe 2X (not 36X, 48X or 52X).

I would never tarnsfer all that amount of sound files to one carrier in one location. There's an awful lot to be said for owning individual pieces of CD, vinyl or whatever. This is iPod's and a computer's achilles heel. What happens when the thing goes down (and statistically it IS likely to, at some point, isn't it)?

[grooover]

I use a standalone philips cd recorder. no problems. The Philips models only accept audio discs which are more expensive but if you can track down the first models you can cheat the machine. Firstly put in a blank audio disc. when the machine has read the disc manually open the cd drawer and swap the disc with a cheapo cdr.Then manually close the drawer and hey presto it thinks its an audio blank. They also take rewritable discs so you can record a mix and wipe it if you trash it and start again. I also record to rewritable from vinyl then stick it in my compoota and convert to mp3 etc for my mobile music needs then wipe the disc.

[discokicks]

I find this topic very interesting. I've been transferring vinyl to cd for some time now just as Bernie indicated...via line-in sampling to my computer. I do it through my Audiograbber software and it does a pretty good job. It's great to take all those old mixes off my cassettes and get them on cd!

My question (perhaps a naive one) is could someone do this as a business? Are there businesses that you know of that do this? I know there are copyright issues but if someone owned an album and wanted it transferred to cd for personal use, would this still be a copyright infringement?

[BrunoRepublic]

Originally Posted by discokicks

My question (perhaps a naive one) is could someone do this as a business? Are there businesses that you know of that do this? I know there are copyright issues but if someone owned an album and wanted it transferred to cd for personal use, would this still be a copyright infringement?

Yes, there are people who do this as a business. Legality varies by country. I believe in the USA it is allowed under fair use, so long as the person transferring the vinyl to CD doesn't keep a copy, but I'm not an expert so don't consider this as legal advice.

I've often been told that I should go into the audio restoration business, but this is not feasible for me. It takes me too long to clean up an album to my standards to be able to charge a reasonable amount for it.

[discokicks]

Originally Posted by Graham_Start

It takes me too long to clean up an album to my standards to be able to charge a reasonable amount for it.

Thanks for the reply and info. I agree with you that charging a reasonable price might not be worth all the time involved. It definitely would be a tight niche market but something to consider nonetheless.

However, in regards to niche markets, lately, my mind is quickly opening to the abundance of individual tastes and desires out there. It's only been this past month that I discovered that all these dance records that I've been buying since my teens may be worth something. For instance, a few years ago, I had my financial advisor question all the music purchases that I make with a smug suggestion that I should look at curbing my spending. That hurt and it did make me start thinking that I've been doing things wrong...lol. I never considered the fact that there may be other collectors out there just as interested in this music as I am.

And then I discovered this site! It's like a friggin' dream come true and I have to say, I'm humbled by the amount of knowledge that others possess. My love for disco has been something that I don't get to share with too many people and finding those with such massive knowledge and love for this music is, to put it mildly, mind-blowing to me...definitely a passionate niche market.

As well, on another forum, a woman mentioned that she was getting her deceased grandmother's huge record collection put on cds for a Christmas present to her mother. Putting all of this together, I'm certainly wondering whether a part-time business of audio restoration is viable.

Sorry if my thoughts are all over the place with this post...lol...perhaps too much excitement with the thought that I actually could make a career in something that I truly love.

[Noman]

Their are good services out there. http://www.pristineaudio.co.uk/ is a really serious one. There are some incredible samples of what they have done on the site.

I'm spending appr 4 hours on "cleaning up" an album of average condition to make it "good enough" for me. :oops:

Maybe one could sell once transfers cheap if one got proof the buyer own the same record? :) Not a copyright violation? or is it?

[Disco Funk]

Here's what I like to do:

Since a CD-R can hold 80 minutes worth of music, I try to find two LPs that are similar (same artist; same producers; same sound) and record them onto the one CD, as most LPs ran under 40 minutes in total (20 minutes per side).

My set up is a Sony record player, which has the amp already built-in, run straight into my PC. Then I record it, using Goldwave or Cool Edit, a whole side of an album in each shot, rather than one song at a time. Because I find records sometimes sound too quiet or bland when I straight record them onto my PC, I like to adjust the EQ, bring up the lows and highs. Then I save each song, cutting them out as I save each one as a .wav file, until I get to the last one.

What I then like to do is if I find the two records are more than 80 min in total, I'll just shorten the song I least like. If I find the songs run more than 10sec too short, I might lengthen a song or two using fancy editing. I am a stickler for using up as much of the CD as possible. I even get rid of the spaces between songs. It's a feature in CD Creator, and really comes in handy if you're burning a medley of tracks onto CD-R. I don't have any particular brand of CD-R I prefer, but I try to stay away from the cheapie stuff like Memorex.

I figure one day I'll get an even better record player and possibly go through the process again with certain CDs I wasn't happy with.

One thing affects the ability to get a good sounding recording, outside of a really worn record, are albums that are a badly centered. Usually it's just one side, with the other side being normal. It's not an issue with 7 inch singles which mainly have big holes (unless they're from the UK), but it is for 12"s/LPs which all have small holes. I just hate that wobbly sound, especially if there are strings or synthesizers holding long notes. I haven't shopped for any "high-end" record players (i.e. the DJ kind with pitch control), so I was wondering if there are players that allow you to lift out the spindle in the middle and adjust the centering of the record? I'd rather do that then, god forbid, grind out the center to make it bigger.

Disco Funk