Transferring Tunes (probably OT)

[Superman]

Okay, go ahead and move this thread, but you guys are my only e-friends and I have a question. I want to listen to my favorite tunes while driving my Porsche 911 (this is my attempt at Porsche content). I have Windows XP on my home computer a CD burner tray, a receiver, a turntable and an awesome collection of rare music on vinyl (The Snoopy V. the Red Baron album by the Royal Guardsmen, for example). The receiver does not have a preamp-out (I think).

What software do I use, and what hardware? Be very specific, as I am much more e-challenged than most of you.

[RickM]

Try these sites....hope they help.

http://www.br0wn.co.uk/vinyltocd.htm

http://www.ganymede.hemscott.net/tutorial.htm (may be overkill)

http://www.wavecor.co.uk/links.htm

[jyl]

I have been looking into this as well. Here is a description I got from an Apple-oriented website. I realize you have a PC, but the "concept" should be the same and some of the recommended software (e.g. Roxio) is available for PC, so maybe this will be a helpful "starter". I did a Google search "ripping LP" and found other software.

The piece is in italics, my own thoughts in BOLD.

OK, here's the step-by-step:

First, you need a turntable, a receiver or pre-amp of some kind with a phono input, and a Mac. This will allow you to control the input volume to your Mac a little easier, and will compensate for the high-impedance most turntables have.

I will assume you know how to hook up your turntable to the stereo. So let's skip right to how we make your Mac part of your stereo system. Essentially, we are going to replace your cassette deck with your Mac. The best way to do this is to use the Tape Out jacks on your stereo system.

the next couple of paragraphs essentially refer to the audio card and connectors on the Mac. If your PC is newish (which I assume it is, since you have WinXP), you probably have an audio card with analog inputs. If not, audio cards are only about $30.

If your Mac has an analog sound-in port, use it. This takes a 1/8 stereo mini plug similar to the kind used for the headphones that are used with a Sony Walkman or Rio MP3 Player. If you have a newer Mac that lacks the analog sound-in port, you will need a USB audio adaptor such as the Griffin iMic or the iVoice.

The other end of this cable should have two RCA Phono-style plugs, one for left channel and one for the right channel. These are typically colored Red for the right channel and White for the left channel. Simply plug the RCA plugs into the Tape Out jacks of your receiver or pre-amp, and the 1/8 inch mini plug into your Mac (or USB adapter). You can get the cable at Radio Shack. Ask for catalog number 42-2481.

If you don't have Tape Out jacks, you can use the Headphone Jack. This requires a different cable, one with a stereo 1/8 inch mini plug on the Mac end, and a stereo 1/4 headphone plug on the stereo end. This cable can sometimes be hard to find. If you have trouble you can substitute a 1/8 inch to 1/8 inch stereo cable (Radio Shack Catalog Number 42-2387) and add a 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch stereo adapter (Radio Shack Catalog number 274-367).

Make sure the cables you buy are stereo compatible, since many of these cables are also available in mono! (If you buy from Radio Shack, using the part numbers I provide will insure getting the right cables.)

In WinXP, you have settings analogous to the following ones.

The first - and most important - step before recording sound on your Mac is to make sure your Sound Control Panel is setup properly. If you have an analog port, make sure the Input is set to Sound In. If you are using a USB adaptor, it should be set to External USB.

Before capturing the sound on your Mac, make sure the surface of the LP and your stylus are as clean as possible. If you haven't used your turntable in a while, you may want to see about replacing the stylus, or even the entire cartridge. Remember - you are making a transfer from LP to digital media. You want the sound to be as clean as possible. I use Discwasher products to keep my equipment and vinyl clean. Their site includes a reseller locator.

The next paragraph refers to software called "Roxio", is also available for PC. I'm sure there's plenty of other applications available, but Roxio is pretty well known.

There are a few software choices for capturing sound. If you have Toast Titanium from Roxio you can use "CD Spin Doctor," which you will find in the "Roxio Music" folder after installing Toast Titanium. I use CD Spin Doctor because it has a feature for auto-defining tracks. This is a real time-saver, although you should double-check its guesses to make sure they are accurate. Defining tracks manually is also easy.

Recording vinyl is as easy as 1-2-3 once things are hooked up:

1). Launch CD Spin Doctor. 2). Put the needle on your record. 3). Click the Record button on CD Spin Doctor.

If you baby-sit the recording, you can even flip the record over without stopping the recording. But the fun doesn't stop there...

Once the sound has been captured, you can use CD Spin Doctor's built-in tweaking features to reduce noise and pops, increase bass, and add aural excitement and width to the sound file.

For most people this will be good enough, although I don't find CD Spin Doctor's noise and pop filters particularly effective. (More on this in a bit).

Once you have defined the tracks and are satisfied with the sound file, you can use a built-in feature in CD Spin Doctor to send the tracks to Toast. Once in Toast, you can either burn it directly to CD or save it as a disk image. If all you want is a high quality CD, go ahead and burn one off. But if you ultimately want to convert your music to MP3s, save it as a disk image.

Either way, you can now throw away the sound file that was automatically saved in the CD Spin Doctor folder to get back some hard drive space.

Before converting your music to MP3s, you must convert them to AIFF files from the disk image. This is also an excellent opportunity to clean them up and add a little EQ. But be careful! This is also a good way to ruin a perfectly good sound file if you don't know what you are doing. Make sure you always work on a copy so you can go back to the original "raw" recording if you goof things up.

If you still have Toast running, clear the files by selecting all of them and pressing the Delete key. Now find the disk image of the LP you recorded and double-click it (it should load the songs into Toast - notice they have a different icon now).

Select all of the songs and press the Extract button. You will be asked where to save the files. I usually create a new folder with the name of the album. This saves each of the songs as individual AIFF files. (AIFF is a high-quality format for sound files).

If you are a perfectionist, you may want to do some advanced clean-up and apply some EQ to your sound files before converting them to MP3s. There are a few programs to choose from on the Mac. Arboretum software makes a couple of products: Raygun and Ionizer. I haven't used either, but I am told Raygun is better for dealing with sounds that originated from vinyl recordings.

Prosoniq also offers some sound editing tools, including the free SoundWorx Basic.

My personal favorite, although a bit of overkill for just eliminating noise and pops, is Cubase VST from Steinberg Virtual Studio. This is a tool for real audio hounds, but it does the best job (in my opinion) of eliminating extraneous noise from your recordings. I converted some very old Christmas albums and ran them through Cubase, and then made some compilation CDs for my family for Christmas. They could not believe the originals came from old LPs!

[Note to Steinberg Virtual Studio: I think there is an excellent market for a stand alone product that employees your various declick, pop, hiss, and scratch filters. Hint, hint...]

I don't know what PC programs are the equivalents of the Mac apps mentioned below, but there are plenty out there.

These final few steps will insure MP3s that you will always remember from where they came. There are several utilities that will convert AIFF files to MP3s. Perhaps the most popular are SoundEdit (choose "ShockWave™ for Audio") from the Xtras menu), SoundJam MP [Ed: No longer avalailable], and (of course) iTunes. I prefer SoundJam MP, partially because I am most familiar with it - but also because it seems to offer the most options. (If you are using Mac OS X, you will probably want to use iTunes).

Launch SoundJam MP and open the Converter window. Then locate the individual AIFF files you saved from Toast in the Finder (they will have ".aif" extensions on them). Drag the AIFF files to the Converter window. Next, rearrange the songs into the order the appear on the LP by dragging them to the appropriate spot in the window.

Select all of the files in the window and choose "Get Info" from the File menu. You may get a dialog box asking if you want to edit information for all the tracks. (You can tell SoundJam not to ask again). Enter the name of the Artist, the year the album was released, and the name of the album in the appropriate fields. In the track fields, enter "0" for the current track and the number of songs you are converting in the "of tracks" field. Enter the genre in the appropriate field as well (you can choose from a pop-down list). Finally, you may want to enter any particular information about the album (such as how much noise and pop or EQing you had to do) in the comments field.

Next, select just the first track and choose "Get Info" from the file menu again. Make sure the name of the track is correct. You may need to remove ".aif" from the title, or type missing characters for long titles that were truncated. Put a "1" in the track number field. Click the "Next Field" button and do the same to it (putting a "2" in the track number field, of course). Continue this until you have gone through all the tracks.

Once you are finished, hit the OK button, select all the tracks in the Converter Window, and press the "Start Converting" button.

After the conversion has been completed, you can delete the disk image and ".aif" files to reclaim a bunch of hard drive space.

[Teutonics]

The receiver should have a line-level out for a tape deck, which is what you want to use. Many (most?) pre-amp outputs are variable with the volume control. Also, most sound cards have line in jacks, you'll just have to get an RCA to 1/8" stereo jack adapter from Radio Shack.

The links above should give you what you need for software and process.

[stomachmonkey]

If you convert to mp3's before burning to a cd make sure your in car cd player can actually play cd-r's and mp3's, otherwise leave as sound files.

If your car stereo still has a cassette player I would suggest bypassing the whole cd burning process and getting an iPod, they are Mac and PC compatible.

That way you can record your vinyl to disc and also rip your favorite cd's and load them all on the iPod. No worries about getting your cd's lost stolen or messed up in your car.

Scott

[nostatic]

This is really easy to do on a Mac...can't help you on XP. My advice is to buy a Mac

info here:

http://www.idiotsguides.com/Quick-Guides/MG_Trans_Albums_Comp/file.htm

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/7777

edit: and another good one:

http://www.a-reny.com/iexplorer/restauration.html

One issue I've seen people talk about concerns a suitable preamp from the turntable if you don't have a proper pre-out on the receiver (RIAA equalization issues). Other than that you simply need a sound card (or audio interface...USB ones are pretty cheap these days) and an application for capturing the tune.