[Harp-L] RE: dubbing records to cd

["Steve Shaw" <moorcot@xxxxxxx>]

Joel:
> Depends on what you think is easy.  You can get a free program called 
> Audacity that does sound recording.  Assuming you have a turntable, and it 
> sounds like you do, you need to have the turntable hooked up to the phono 
> input of your amp/receiver.  Hook up the line out jacks on the receiver to 
> the line in jack on your pc.  You'll need an adapter that has 2 RCA female 
> jacks and one 1/8" stereo plug. (Radio Shack) Plug the adapter into the 
> line in on the sound card and run the audio cables to the RCA jacks on the 
> adapter.
>
> You could run the turntable directly into the sound card but records are 
> equalized to keep the strong bass notes from making the stylus jump out of 
> the groove.  The phono input on your receiver is connected to a circuit 
> that undoes the eq.  Without it the records will sound terrible. Some new 
> turntables have a built in preamp that takes care of this because a lot of 
> modern stereo/surround sound gear doesn't have a phono input.
>
> The software will enable you to record the record as a .wav file. Audacity 
> doesn't do cd burning, but I'm guessing you have a program that does it.  
> Seems to me that the M$ music player software does it. If you got software 
> with your pc related to the cd drive you probably got something that will 
> work.
>
> If you want to do more than the quick and dirty record and burn, you'll be 
> able to break the .wav file into individual tracks. When you record from 
> the record you'll have one file that doesn't distinguish between the 
> individual tracks.
>
> Here's a link to Audacity:  http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
>
> For $50 or so you can get software that will simplify it a little bit. I'm 
> pretty sure that in that range you can get something that will do the cd 
> burning too.  Do a web search on "audio restoration." You still have to do 
> the hookup and break it into tracks.  At that price you can also get 
> primitive restoration capabilities like silencing the pops and clicks.  You 
> can pay a whole lot more for software that does a good job of noise 
> reduction.
>
> You'll be surprised how good a record in good condition will sound on cd.  
> Even the built into the motherboard sound cards will do a fairly good job.  
> There are cards in the $30-$50 range that have better signal to noise 
> ratios in the analog part than any analog tape recorder most people could 
> afford. Because the signal is relatively low level almost anything can 
> reproduce the audio spectrum accurately. Once it gets digitized there is 
> virtually no compromise of the signal.
>
>
> PS--there are $2 integrated circuits that do cleaner audio than just about 
> any preamp you could buy 30 or more years ago.  Audio technology today is 
> astoundingly better and mind bogglingly cheaper than the first hi-fi 
> equipment.

Joel just about says it all.  I'll just add that I use a program called 
Audio Cleaning Lab (from Magix) to edit then burn my vinyl to CD.  In the UK 
it costs about £25 and you get a connecting cable thrown in.  You can go a 
long way towards eliminating hiss, pops and scratches and you can split your 
recordings into tracks for your CD (as Joel says, with a vinyl album copied 
onto your PC you get just two tracks, namely Side A and Side B!  You have to 
do something about that).  You can do all sorts of enhancing of your own 
kitchen recordings too if you want and burn them to CD.  As Joel says, at 
this price don't expect miracles if your LPs are knackered, but it is 
surprising what you can do.

One grumble I have with my version of ACL (2003) is that it installs spyware 
on your computer (C_DILLA) that you have to leave alone if you want the 
program to work.  It hasn't given me any problems whatsoever though.

Steve

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