When I started tackling my vinyl, to make it available with everything else on the SBs, I looked around and ended up with a solution that was inexpensive, yet very satisfactory (to me). The only vinyl I bother to record is stuff that has never come out on CD and seems unlikely to (mainly old jazz, some personal albums that were never commercially released, and a few family-traditional Christmas albums -- altogether, about 100 LPs). Since all of these vinyl albums are at least 35 years old and well played, their audio quality is not exactly first-rate, so an inexpensive turntable with line-level output works out just fine for me. I got a little Numark belt-driven turntable with direct RCA line-level outputs from Amazon for less than $100, and run that directly into my soundcard's line in. With proper adjustment of the signal level output from the turntable and record level on the input side, I get a recording that is (to my admittedly no longer young ears) as good as the way the records sound on my old Sony turntable, which is to say far from CD-quality, but as good as I expect old, much-played vinyl to sound.
For recording and splitting the tracks up, I use Magix Music Studio (software I already had anyway), and like Pat, I hate the distortion and audio artefacts introduced by digitally "cleaning" any hiss or pop out of the raw WAV. I just convert the result to FLAC and tag it. There is time involved in recording each side, cutting them up into tracks, converting, tagging, and getting the cover art. (Some of these rarities I can find images of on the Web, but for many, I just take a digital photo of the cover, crop it and resize it.) But for albums I love, it's worth it. I'm still working on my collection, in fits and spurts, but each time I get an old favorite into the system and can put it on as easily as the rest of my collection, I'm determined to keep plodding through them and finish the job. If someday some of these albums become available on CD (or whatever non-lossy digital medium may come along), I'll probably go ahead and repurchase them. Until then, I at least have copies of them integrated into my SB world, where they're convenient to play. It lets me listen to stuff I didn't often play in recent years, and integrate tracks into playlists and so forth. When I finish the LPs, I'll start working on the old 78s. Whatever method you end up going with, just make sure the records are as clean as you can get them before recording. It's the single biggest factor in determining the quality of the final digital version. -- Dogberry2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dogberry2's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=18883 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=60096 _______________________________________________ ripping mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/ripping
