[zorba]

I am gonna buy a "MP3" player

one thing I wanna do is transfer my old vinyl collection and audio cassetes (D90's from the eighties and nineties) to electronic format

any ideas on how best to do this?

and do I need to choose my new MP3 player carefully in order to support me in this
(or is this something I can do by buying some soft/hard-ware for my PC, and downloading the files onto the MP3 player) ?

many thanks in advance

 

[valis]

do you have a good turntable?

 

[zorba]

nope!

 

[valis]

well, there's step one. Step two is some app, I think it's called audacity or something.....I have to head out now, but I will google it for you tomorrow if nobody else answers tonight....but you need something that PLAYS the vinyl in order to get it OFF the vinyl......after that, it's really quite easy.

And with vinyl, remember; quality definitely counts. It would be worthwhile to see if you have any friends with some high end turntables.

 

[docaudio]

AudioTechnica makes a basic turntable with built in pre-amp (you'll need one) that goes directly into your sound card.http://www.needledoctor.com/Audio-Technica-PL120-Turntable?sc=2&category=358
After that you'll need a cassette deck you can trust with your vintage tapes (buy a new one, it'll be worth it and not that expensive) You have several choices for audio software. I like Sony Sound Forge myself... has some basic LP clean up tools and can output a bazillion kinds of files. If you budget can allow it, the absolutly best audio cleaning software I've heard is DC6-Live from Diamont Cut About a $1000.00 but they have boil-downs for less money that do most of the functions (except the spectral noise reduction which is unbelievable!)
Good luck,
-Bill

 

[guitar]

it'll take so long and the quality won't be very good unless your records are in top nick and tapes would be real crappy it would be quicker to download the songs as mp3 already

 

[zorba]

Guitar,

If I already own the records (and original tapes too for that matter), does this mean that its legal for me to just download the MP3's from anywhere I can find them ?

This would definitely be the easiest solution, as long as I can find the MP3's out there...

 

[t bone]

here's a link for audacity that valis was talking about.
after you install it youi need to go here and download the lame encoder...make sure you follow the directions for unzipping and installing.
this encoder allows you to save as mp3 after you record.

i've had good luck with audacity, best part is it's free. it also has some basic cleanup effects.

 

[guitar]

not to sure if its legal but it should be if you already own them i guess it depends on laws in your country its ok here in australia

 

[valis]

it'll take so long and the quality won't be very good unless your records are in top nick and tapes would be real crappy it would be quicker to download the songs as mp3 already

actually, I've got about 120 albums on vinyl and they transferred perfectly. Used a high end turntable and it sounds better than most of my other mp3's.

But I am still convinced that a good turntable sounds better than any cd out there.

 

[valis]

here's a link for audacity that valis was talking about.
after you install it youi need to go here and download the lame encoder...make sure you follow the directions for unzipping and installing.
this encoder allows you to save as mp3 after you record.

i've had good luck with audacity, best part is it's free. it also has some basic cleanup effects.

thanks, t bone. Thought it was audacity, but this was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away that I transferred those.

 

[guitar]

actually, I've got about 120 albums on vinyl and they transferred perfectly. Used a high end turntable and it sounds better than most of my other mp3's.

But I am still convinced that a good turntable sounds better than any cd out there.

that may be correct for old cd's but now the quality is much better and cd's use a much better sampling rate etc

the time it would take should be considered and expense of turntable etc

the thing that your hearing as better is actually analog smoothing which happens instead of digital clipping, so you're not actually hearing it you're feeling it, this sometimes particularly on old cd's makes them sound harsh which is why nowdays we record digital and then put it on to tape before final mastering it smooths out beautifully
ask any sound engineer they can explain it better than me
i felt the same way until it was proved to me by my bass player who has a degree in sound engineering and his own studio

 

[BarnStorm]

I recently did this and the results were quite good.

I established a "legacy stereo" area in my home office where I have my old components including Nikko receiver, Nakamichi cassette and B&O turntable... all of which are in fine condition.

I just run L/R output jacks into my PC's "line in" and use Audacity to record. By the way, I discovered Audacity via this forum and must say it is one of the better pieces of free software. It is quite sophisticated... AND you can export to MP3 via the LAME encoder (not included in Audacity due to legal issues).

 

[valis]

yeah, I really enjoyed the ease of use with audacity....I still miss the ol' turntable, and I stll have all my vinyl, as 'one day' I will have another one....no matter what everyone says, I still feel that the best sound is from a high-end turntable with equally high-end speakers.....good music demands teh best.

however, with a 2 year old, that is simply a recipe for disaster.

 

[docaudio]

that may be correct for old cd's but now the quality is much better and cd's use a much better sampling rate etc

Standard Audio CD have always had only one sample rate - 44.1kHz /16 bit. Older ones may not sound as good as newer ones because of better mixing and mastering equipment, but unless you're talking about DVD-Audio or SACD, the sample rate is the same. BTW, I have some old 'direct-to-disc' CDs done by Shefield Labs that will put to shame nearly all new CDs in terms of sound quality. It's too bad SACD and DVD-Audio are doing so poorly in the market. "If you can't put it into an iPod, then I'm not interested".
BTW, I compared a couple songs a client friend downloaded from iTunes with my commercial CD release of the same songs... Wow, what a difference! The iTunes version was all compressed and tweaked. Sorry to rant... I've been cursed with wanting to hear really good audio for many years, but it gets harder and harder to find it.
-Bill

 

[guitar]

192kHz/24-bit dvd
we record in 32bit to give more control of individual sounds but mixdown to standard 16bit
really good audio is live performance imho records cd's dvd's don't even get close
ipods suck mp3 suck wav is good but files get huge