Vinyl to CD software...

  • Thread starter Thread starter DD
  • Start date Start date
D

DD

I am about to start to convert my Vinyl collection to CD's and have
been overwhelmed by the number of (free) programs that are available to
do this. I am not an audiophile and only want to do a middle-of-the-road
job that would enable me to play my records on a CD player at home and
in the car.
I would prefer a single program that will do the whole job but I have
not come across one that will also remove clicks etc. so I guess I will
have to settle for at least two.
Would anyone who has done this with their own collection advise the
best and easiest program(s) to use from their experience?

Thanks,
DD
 
DD said:
I am about to start to convert my Vinyl collection to CD's and
have
been overwhelmed by the number of (free) programs that are available
to do this. I am not an audiophile and only want to do a
middle-of-the-road job that would enable me to play my records on a CD
player at home and in the car.
I would prefer a single program that will do the whole job but I
have
not come across one that will also remove clicks etc. so I guess I
will have to settle for at least two.
Would anyone who has done this with their own collection advise
the
best and easiest program(s) to use from their experience?

Thanks,
DD
Click to expand...

Google for DB Poweramp. You need a plugin for it IIRC, but it does the
job to allow any external source to be moved to MP3, then you can burn
with your favorite burner to CD.


--
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
El Gee <><
Know Christ, Know Peace
No Christ, No Peace

Remove yourhat to reply
Home Page - www.mistergeek.com
Blog - mcwtlg.blogger.com
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 
DD said:
I am about to start to convert my Vinyl collection to CD's and have
been overwhelmed by the number of (free) programs that are available
to do this. I am not an audiophile and only want to do a
middle-of-the-road job that would enable me to play my records on a
CD player at home and in the car.
I would prefer a single program that will do the whole job but I have
not come across one that will also remove clicks etc. so I guess I
will have to settle for at least two.
Would anyone who has done this with their own collection advise the
best and easiest program(s) to use from their experience?
Click to expand...

There are numerous all in one apps - MusicMatch, Windows media Player,
SoundForge, almost any wave editor - but they aren't necessarily best
even for a "middle of the road job". At the very least it will take you
two hours to do each hour of music - and that time could easily be as
much as 20 hours per hour. Given the time required, it is worthwhile to
use apps best suited for a particular job.

Basically, what you need is...

1. Something to record from an amplified turntable line out to computer
line in using a stereo cord (available at Radio Shack). The recording
program should have some way of monitoring and controlling the line in
volume. One such is AudioGrabber.

You should record to wave, NOT to MP3. The format should be PCM wave,
44,100Hz 16 bit stereo. The files will need cleaning and you can't
clean MP3s without decoding, cleaning, re-encoding. It is much easier
to record an entire LP - or at least each side - to one wave for further
processing. You may want to "normalize" while recording.

2. A cleaner. Most wave editors - Audacity, GoldWave, etc. - will do so
but none will do as good a job as a dedicated cleaner. I am not aware
of any free ones but among the $$ware, I favor DePopper. WavClean is
also good and particularly easy to use. WavRepair is the most
configurable, most precise but also the most time consuming.

3. Once cleaned, you need to split into tracks. That can be done with
any wave editor but the very best bar none is CDWave. It will also
record. Some recording programs will "automatically" split while
recording but they will generally do a very poor job and it is very easy
to do a good one yourself manually.

4. Now burn the waves to a CD selecting "audioCD" in your burning
program. You can then delete the wave files on your computer.

Alternatively, you could encode them to MP3s before deleting. Those are
playable on your computer. They are also playable on your home stereo
either by running a cable from computer to stereo or using wireless
trasnsmitter/receiver. They could be played on your car by using a
CD/MP3 player (available for <$30) and an FM transmitter or "car kit"
which consists of a dummy cassette.

The advantage of the MP3s is that each disc could have 10+ hours of
music instead of the 80 minutes of an audio CD.

There is a lot more info - and links to programs mentioned - in my
dandies, see sig.

--
dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.05...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico
 
DadiOH's post is right on the money. On the other hand I had the same idea
as you several years ago and so I started converting with Wave Repair (in my
opinion, an altogether superior application of the purpose) and quickly
found myself spending long, long hours going over the analog waveform and
cleaning all of the tics and pops. I'm talking hundreds of hours here. The
more I cleaned the more picky I got! I did get some really pristine copies
of some old LPs that can't be replaced but I'm not sure it was worth it.

You might do what I do now. Continue to listen to this old albums on the
turntable (I still consider the sound to be superior to digital) and just
buy what CDs you can find.

You're entering into the twilight zone here. You could find yourself sitting
there in front of the computer, scanning over waveforms searching endlessly
for that last tiny little pop, that last tiny little tic.

JMHO, Photodan
 
Thanks I'll have a look at it!

DD

El said:
Google for DB Poweramp. You need a plugin for it IIRC, but it does the
job to allow any external source to be moved to MP3, then you can burn
with your favorite burner to CD.
Click to expand...
 
dadiOH said:
There are numerous all in one apps - MusicMatch, Windows media Player,
SoundForge, almost any wave editor - but they aren't necessarily best
even for a "middle of the road job". At the very least it will take you
two hours to do each hour of music - and that time could easily be as
much as 20 hours per hour. Given the time required, it is worthwhile to
use apps best suited for a particular job.

Basically, what you need is...

1. Something to record from an amplified turntable line out to computer
line in using a stereo cord (available at Radio Shack). The recording
program should have some way of monitoring and controlling the line in
volume. One such is AudioGrabber.

You should record to wave, NOT to MP3. The format should be PCM wave,
44,100Hz 16 bit stereo. The files will need cleaning and you can't
clean MP3s without decoding, cleaning, re-encoding. It is much easier
to record an entire LP - or at least each side - to one wave for further
processing. You may want to "normalize" while recording.

2. A cleaner. Most wave editors - Audacity, GoldWave, etc. - will do so
but none will do as good a job as a dedicated cleaner. I am not aware
of any free ones but among the $$ware, I favor DePopper. WavClean is
also good and particularly easy to use. WavRepair is the most
configurable, most precise but also the most time consuming.

3. Once cleaned, you need to split into tracks. That can be done with
any wave editor but the very best bar none is CDWave. It will also
record. Some recording programs will "automatically" split while
recording but they will generally do a very poor job and it is very easy
to do a good one yourself manually.

4. Now burn the waves to a CD selecting "audioCD" in your burning
program. You can then delete the wave files on your computer.

Alternatively, you could encode them to MP3s before deleting. Those are
playable on your computer. They are also playable on your home stereo
either by running a cable from computer to stereo or using wireless
trasnsmitter/receiver. They could be played on your car by using a
CD/MP3 player (available for <$30) and an FM transmitter or "car kit"
which consists of a dummy cassette.

The advantage of the MP3s is that each disc could have 10+ hours of
music instead of the 80 minutes of an audio CD.

There is a lot more info - and links to programs mentioned - in my
dandies, see sig.

--
dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.05...
...a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico
Click to expand...
I have already been to your site and extracted a lot of useful
information but the concise way you explained the process in your
message has helped a lot to help me decide which programs to work with.
Thanks,

DD
 
PhotoDan said:
DadiOH's post is right on the money. On the other hand I had the same idea
as you several years ago and so I started converting with Wave Repair (in my
opinion, an altogether superior application of the purpose) and quickly
found myself spending long, long hours going over the analog waveform and
cleaning all of the tics and pops. I'm talking hundreds of hours here. The
more I cleaned the more picky I got! I did get some really pristine copies
of some old LPs that can't be replaced but I'm not sure it was worth it.

You might do what I do now. Continue to listen to this old albums on the
turntable (I still consider the sound to be superior to digital) and just
buy what CDs you can find.

You're entering into the twilight zone here. You could find yourself sitting
there in front of the computer, scanning over waveforms searching endlessly
for that last tiny little pop, that last tiny little tic.

JMHO, Photodan
Click to expand...
I thought that this could become an obsession! I don't want it to become
a hobby so I will be quite happy with what I get in the time I have
available. Thanks for your warning, I will try to keep things in
perspective.

DD
 
I am about to start to convert my Vinyl collection to CD's and have
Would anyone who has done this with their own collection advise the
best and easiest program(s) to use from their experience?
Click to expand...

Take a look at Wave Repair. Most of it is freeware including the most
important part which is the conversion of your analog LP output to a
digital wave form.


Jack Purvis
[remove the 4 x's (xxxx) before sending me an email]
 
I thought that this could become an obsession! I don't want
it to become a hobby so I will be quite happy with what I
get in the time I have available. Thanks for your warning,
I will try to keep things in perspective.

DD
Click to expand...

If you don't obsess about tics and pops, you'll stay saner.
Keep in mind that noise removal programs almost always involve
some flattening of the sound. The only way to do it properly is
to painstakingly comb each second of the waveform and remove
pops by hand. If it is a cherished, one-of-a kind recording of
your lost loved-one, by all means, spend 3 hours cleaning up a
2-minute song. But you can see how nuts it is to do this with
hundreds of LPs.

Your best time will be spent on the front end of this project.
You'll want to coax the best sound out of your turntable and
records. Having a fresh needle and/or cartridge for the project
is recommended, and cleaning your LPs carefully will help keep
the noise down, too.

The quality of your soundcard matters, also. The Soundblaster
family is decent, but I like the Turtle Beach soundcards for
their excellent sound quality, low price, and a very solid
software suite - not nearly as intrusive as the Creative
software.

If your soundcard is a chip on the motherboard, it will probably
have too much inherent noise to be an effective digital
recorder. If that's the case, you can try an external USB
soundcard.

Since you will normally be routing your turntable through an
amplifier or receiver, consider that your amplifier may have a
digital output and your soundcard may have a digital input. If
this is the case, by all means hook them together this way and
you should not have to worry about setting levels. If you use
analog connections, levels will be a constant concern. Try for
a digital connection if possible.

Now for the actual capture. Whatever program you use, save to
16-bit, 44.1 khz WAV. From there you can make CDs or any other
kind of digital music file.

You should probably burn to CD for use at home and in your car.
You should make 2 copies of each album, that way if one gets
scratched, you can make another copy from the non-scratched
copy.

While you have the music in uncompressed WAV form, you should
also convert it into one or more computer music formats, the
most useful and universal being MP3. You can actually get very
listenable results by using the Lame encoder and the "alt-
preset-extreme" setting.

If you want fully lossless files, you should convert to FLAC.
Then you can always restore the complete original WAV file when
you need it.

You can burn about 15 LPs worth of FLAC files onto 1 DVD=R. You
can burn about 50-60 LPs worth of high-quality MP3 files onto 1
DVD-R. So it is trivially cheap to keep a spare copy of your
music in a safe place. Believe me, once you digitize your LPs
you do NOT want to have to do it again. Make sure you preserve
your effort.

Good luck!
 
If you want fully lossless files, you should convert to FLAC.
Then you can always restore the complete original WAV file when
you need it.
Click to expand...

Best is a CD on Vinyl.

If you don´t see the player, you would suggest a CD is playing :-)

The same Stereo Headroom like a CD, funny.




Greetings,

Daniel Mandic
 
Back
Top