Putting My Vinyl To CD

steve-pressman said:

While not vinyl but cassette I have used the direct input on my on board sound card to record over 300 90 minute cassettes just connecting direct from my tape player to the input on the card. I have experienced no loss of quality at all and I would recommend this route as the way to go.

As a former DJ of 30 years experience I also have tons of Vinyl that I eventually want to put down on the PC, I have tried USB turntables in my local store on high end rigs and the quality was not good, most likely down to the cartridge and needle an awful lot of noise from them.

I see you are using a Bang & Olufsen turntable and have I assume quality needles for it, I would just plug it directly into your PC and see how you go from there. As for software I would go with what the other guys have said.


Steve

Hello Steve I did'nt skimp on the needles as they are for my music.I only get tight fisted for things like food and clothes and I will try the onboard sound first and see what reproduction is like.
Thank You
Bright Blessings

You can try a standard turntable connected directly to the PC, but you probably won't be happy with the results. Turntables need RIAA equalization and you usually get that from your amplifier or receiver in an ordinary sound system.

You can get a $35 USB sound card (Behringer UF0 202). It connects to your USB port and has a proper turntable input and can also accept any line level source--tape deck, etc.

Audacity is an excellent way to do the recording once you have the turntable hooked up the right way. It has some built-in processing capabilities--click repair, noise and hiss reduction, etc and they work pretty well. You can spend 15 minutes trying to get rid of clicks and pops in a particular song if you want--one click at a time. It's just a matter of how much time you want to spend on that.

There are software packages out there that attempt to automate the click and pop removal.

I would use mp3 format, but be sure to keep the bit rate fairly high. Probably 192 kbps. Joint Stereo is good. VBR is good. Avoid constant bit rate if you can. Avoid low bit rates. You can set all that up in Audacity. You capture the recording in Audacity and then "export" it as an mp3, with whatever mp3 settings you have chosen.

You could use a USB turntable, but they are not likely to be as high quality as a traditional turntable.

Joint stereo and VBR are both designed to produce smaller files than would be the case with stereo and constant bit rate with no negative effect on sound quality. Joint and VBR have come into prominence in the last 4 or 5 years. Some still refuse to use either. That's fine.

Likewise, you can cut file size in half on mono files compared to stereo with no effect on quality.

Those who are unconcerned with file size would presumably not use mp3s to start with.

You can google more info or check various sites such as hydrogen audio.