Vinyl to CD Burning

[DODI]

Does anyone have software they would like to recommend to accomplish this? We have about 2,000 albums -- many not available on CD and would like to enjoy them in the car.

[joeybee12]

1. I'd like info also--I have a cd-to-cd recorder, and supposedly you can

record from an outside source onto a blank cd, such as a tape or album, but I can't figure it out.

Has anyone ever done this?

Thanks.

[Billy Burnett]

6. I can tell you how

First, you need to hook up your turntable to your receiver.

Second, hook up your CD recorder to your receiver TAPE inputs/outputs as follows,

Connect the Rec/Out RCA jacks on the receiver to the INPUT jacks on the CD recorder
Connect the Play/In RCA jacks on the receiver to the OUTPUT jacks on the CD recorder

With this configuration you can use your CD recorder just as you would use a cassette tape deck.

Any source you are listening to (Phono, Tuner, Aux, etc) can be recorded by the CD recorder... of course you will have to set your record input source and levels on the CD recorder (just like a tape deck) etc. The manual will tell you how to do that.

To listen to the CD recorder playback (or monitor the deck while recording) you will need to select "Tape Monitor" on your receiver.



I hope this helps.

let me know if you have more Q's

[joeybee12]

11. Thanks

Sounds like even I might be able to figure that out!

Then again, maybe not!

[Deja Q]

2. Pinnacle Clean to restore them

Have a decent sound card to capture with, SB Live! being a minimum standard. But Clean is a good program to use...

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

3. Cakewalk Pro Audio

You need RCA's, and a decent turntable. Another option is to go straight from CD to minidisc...then clean up the minidisc digitally with pro audio.

[Kolesar]

4. & how much do you compress them if making MP3s? eom

[MojoKrunch]

12. Minimum 192Kbs.

But if you are burning to CD as you go, I'd go as high as in the 300's.

Mojo

[sendero]

5. if you are remotely fussy...

...about how this turns out, you are in for a lot of work :)

If you just want to rip each side of the record into a single mp3, and don't care too much about pops and clicks, then its not too bad.

But if you want to break it into separate tracks, and have it sound as close to what a CD version would sound - then there is a lot of work to do.

There are programs that purport to split an album side into tracks, I tried 2 of them and neither of them worked well. I had to use a .wav editor to split, fade in and fade out each track before I was happy with it. Then I ran each track through a program called DePopper, which again was the only program I found that really did a good job cleaning up the vinyl artifacts. (I did not find or try the program mentioned earlier in this thread so I know nothing about it).

After many many hours of work I converted Secret Oyster's "Straight to the Krankenhaus" LP into wavs and then mp3s. They sound about as good as the record. But that was the last album I did, too much work.

[MojoKrunch]

13. CoolEditPro will do this pretty quickly.

It has built in Noise Reduction/hiss/pop filters.
And you can "save selection" to seperate each song after you've ripped the entire album.
The only prob is the MP3 filter is shareware.

I've had good/quick results with CEP converting wavs to MP3's and ripping out individual songs from whole album rips.

I've never done any analog ripping, though.
Never had anything worth doing.

Mojo

[dweller]

7. Ripvinyl

haven't used it myself, since my turntable is still in working order, and haven't taken the time to test it out. But it's a free download, do a search and download.
My dad uses it and had no problem with the software, but he is not particular to the background pops and hisses, and didn't attempt to manipulate the recording levels etc.

dp

[NightTrain]

8. I've been slowly converting my vinyl to CDs for the past three years

Because I've been unable to find a pre-amp, I have to record the vinyl onto cassette, hook my tape deck up to the computer, and record the songs as individual MP3s using Music Match Jukebox. To date, I haven't bothered with any cleaning-up software as the conversion process already is tedious and time-consuming enough, and I don't exactly have tons of time to devote to it.

My heart truly goes out to you on the enormity of your project!

[Billy Burnett]

10. NightTrain, You can do it directly

See my post #6 in this thread.

Use your receiver phono preamp

Just substitute your sound card inputs and outputs for the CD recorder in the directions in post #6.

[johnnie]

9. I have done it.

I have done a few, and I would like to do some of more (I have close to 2000 also, but only some are out of print)
I run my turntable thru my mixer and into the computer. I have a recording studio so it makes it a little easier. If you can get a small mixer, then run it thru to your soundcard you can get the music into your computer.
I then use Cool edit (now owned by Adobe) to clean the pops and crackel. But I dont spend too much time...it could take forever to get it too good. Cool edit has a "cue feature" that will split the tracks. Then burn them to disc.
As for the cd players that record on the fly..I have one, but a cd got stuck once and I got pissed...and used a screwdriver to get the cd out..and it is not really working too well these days..lol. So I never got a chance to record from an outside source with it.

[Tripper11]

19. Hey johnnie, thanks for that!

I have CoolEdit and some of my downloads are entire albums with no cuts distinguished so now I can do that.
Couple questions if I may. Once I have established all my cues via CoolEdit and I want to convert the .wav to mp3 to burn, will those cues remain on the mp3 format thereby allowing me to choose a particular track on the cd player?
So in other words on The Clash's Live at the Palladium I have it plays right through without any breaks, yet as cues amrked within disc that alows me to choose a particular song?
Ami making any sense?

[johnnie]

20. well..

You convert the file first..then set your cues.
Here is the way to do all that.
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/31686.htm
I hope this page answers your questions.

[doubleplusgood]

14. here's a website for LP-to-CD transfers

http://www.lp2cd.com/

Must be a lot of other places that do this...haven't looked. I haven't used them myself but I also have some LP's that I'd like to convert to CD & I am wondering if there are businesses in most cities that would do stuff like this. (I'm not too keen on shipping LP's across country to get them copied).

[rtassi]

15. Vinal to CD Burning

DODI,

I used to do a lot of this type of transfer when I was a recording engineer, routing first from a great turntable, to a pro pre amp, to a TC Electronics "Finalizer" using the digital mastering programs to a CD burner. It took time to set the compression ratios and eq's for every album, but once you did you could let the album play through to the end of side. This set up a path of A to D to D. "Pro tools" by digidesign also has some good software and works well with MAC. You can find the first generation "Finalizer" which I think is still the best on ebay in pro audio for around $500.00.

[newyawker99]

18. Hi rtassi!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[rtassi]

21. Hello newyawker99

Thank you!

[BiggJawn]

16. I do more Shellac to CD burning...

Old 78's...Have a shareware program called "popfix" that's OK, and I use Sound Forge to do the heavy work. I rip 'em to wav files so they'll play in the CD player and don't worry about MP3's.

[Noordam]

17. :kick:

:kick:

[CanuckAmok]

22. A couple of good shareware programs:

PolderbitS and Depopper are both inexpensive shareware, and they both offer full-function free trial periods. Audacity is completely free of charge, and is a very powerful editing/conversion program.

Step one: hook up your turnatable and pre-amp/mixer, and run the line into your soundcard/recording software.

I am using PolderbitS to record the raw sound onto the hard drive:

http://www.polderbits.com

I took a signal generator from work and calibrated it so that "zero" on my mixer was the correct volume into the PolderbitS software (I own a small dialogue recording studio, so things like signal generators are easy for me to borrow--if you don't have access to a signal generator, do a few 'test passes' with your volume levels, and listen to hear if it sounds right. It's hit and miss until you get it right, and, of course, vinyl has a wide variety of volume levels, which very label to label, pressing to pressing...). Be sure to set PolderbitS' input quality setting as "CD Quality Stereo"

The soundcard/PolderbitS software will record the sound into WAV format.

Step 2: Once you have the WAVs you want to convert to MP3, run them through Depopper:

www.droidinfo.com/software/depopper/

Depopper will remove most of the pops and hisses one gets with vinyl. Best of all, the factory defaults are the best settings, so you don't need to monkey around with them. Unfortunatley, Depopper can't process MP3 files, so they have to be run through Depopper BEFORE converting them to MP3. Depopper takes a long time to process the WAV files. The last time I did a pass, it was 15 full-length LPs, and I just let it run all night.

I usually record each side of a record as a separate file, i.e. "Slayer Reign in Blood Side 1.WAV"

Step 3: Take the file you've created, and load it into Audacity:

audacity.sourceforge.net

Use Audacity to edit each file, and then convert/save them as MP3 files. Audacity is freeware, and it's very user friendly. I cut each track of the album side separately, and fine edit things like the fade in/fade out, etc. Then simply "save as" the title of the track as an MP3.

I don't notice much of a difference in audio quality between MP3 sample rates. Even the lowest quality MP3 rates surpass the quality of vinyl, so the imperfections aren't apparent.

To date, I've done about 400 LPs and 12" singles, and over 600 manufactured CDs. The cool thing is that I can carry hundreds of full-length albums on my laptop's hard drive, and I plug my laptop into my car stereo for long trips.