Converting vinyl to mp3 or wav

[cadillac_man]

Like many aging former DJ's I have hundreds of 12" vinyl I want to slowly convert to digital. What is the best software to use for this and what is the best hardware to use so you can keep the stereo sound? I have a quality soundblaster card. Is there any software that filters out the snap crackle and pops? Also, what is a good source these days for a record cleaning system?

Back in the day i had something with a spray and 2 hand held dust brushes.

Thanks

Mark.

[ol'skinflint]

Originally Posted by cadillac_man

Like many aging former DJ's I have hundreds of 12" vinyl I want to slowly convert to digital. What is the best software to use for this and what is the best hardware to use so you can keep the stereo sound? I have a quality soundblaster card. Is there any software that filters out the snap crackle and pops? Also, what is a good source these days for a record cleaning system?

Back in the day i had something with a spray and 2 hand held dust brushes.

Thanks

Mark.

I'm saving up to buy TEAC's LP to CD recorder system as the computer software needed to convert vinyl to digital seems to require Steve Jobs-type knowledge. I bought 2 sets of the software (the Roxio CD creator and the DAK Music system, advertised here on discomusic.com) and couldn't master either. The instructions always seem to assume everyone is already computer literate and they use terminology that may as well be written in a foreign language....I've learned my lesson, though. NO MORE buying software and hoping I can learn to use it.

[BrunoRepublic]

I use Adobe Audition for recording, restoring, and mastering needle drops. Having said that, I use a rather tedious set of manual techniques to get the best possible results at removing surface noise.

[spacebass]

Hi first post,

Thanks for having me,

there is hardware device from 'K-World' called V-stream expert that retails for about GBP23 and is available from www.svp.co.uk that is designed to make DVDs from tape but of course has sound ins and outs too. So I guess you play your 12" and take an ouput from your aux in to the V-stream and out comes digital!!

I have not been in the UK since I discovered this searching on ebay and my 12 s are in UK, but I certainly intend to MP3 the lot when I get back to Uk. If anyone gets into this please post results.

Keep on truckin!

[tony98]

I recently bought a Ion USB turntable for converting my vinyl to digital. I invested in a Acoustica MP3 Converter Plus to help with it ,and i'm really pleased with the results. with the converter you can put your vinyl onto MP3,WAV or WMA.

[vectone]

"Cool edit pro" might do the job! I use it, you can add or take many effects, EQ, even do mixes (like I did)....

[BrunoRepublic]

Cool Edit Pro is now Adobe Audition.

[Naso]

I used FlexiMusic Wave Editor to record my granny's voice and to convert and save the vinyl to digital audio as Mp3 files. It worked great for me.

[ol'skinflint]

If you use and are familiar with Audacity software, can you give me a couple hints here? (THEY will not return my emails and offer no voice to voice customer service). When you transfer album tracks onto your computer's sound card, you're given 3 options for labelling the tracks as files..."Export WAV", "Export MP3" and "Export ogg vorbis". All 3 of these seem to convert the album tracks into files but when I transfer the files onto CDs there's no audio, even after converting the files to "audio files". What's the trick? thanks.

[BrunoRepublic]

Originally Posted by ol'skinflint

If you use and are familiar with Audacity software, can you give me a couple hints here? (THEY will not return my emails and offer no voice to voice customer service). When you transfer album tracks onto your computer's sound card, you're given 3 options for labelling the tracks as files..."Export WAV", "Export MP3" and "Export ogg vorbis". All 3 of these seem to convert the album tracks into files but when I transfer the files onto CDs there's no audio, even after converting the files to "audio files". What's the trick? thanks.

Audacity is freeware, so I think it's a bit much to expect *any* support from them. :)

First of all, if you care about sound quality, use WAV as those other two formats are lossy.

Secondly, for making audio CDs, you'll want your WAV files to be 16-bit, 44.1KHz sampling rate. Anything else will have to be converted.

Third, you need a program that can burn audio CDs, not data discs. I don't know if Audacity even has this capability. Nero, EZ-CD Creator (or whatever they're calling it these days), and iTunes can all do this.

Audio CDs (i.e. the kind you put in a regular ol' CD player and listen to) are formatted very differently from data discs (i.e. the kind you back up files to). You must ensure that the discs you are burning are formatted for audio, and are not data discs that just happen to have audio files on it.