Move Vinyl LP's and Cassettes to CD (I’ve Got the Music in My Computer! writeoff)Aug 03 '02 (Updated Aug 07 '02) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line If you have albums that you'd like to move to cd, its not as hard as you think, & you can make a cd that sounds better than your album.
My entry into the I’ve Got the Music in My Computer! writeoff, cohosted by Opalman, Lambchops, and Opinionated3 (Thanks!) follows. I "needed" to get music off of LP's and into my computer. Using commonly available software and hardware similar to those mentioned below, anyone can move music from LP's or cassette to digital versions. If you have music not widely available on cd or even on the file searching services (see my last compilation of songs from 20 year old vinyl at the end of this review for an example), this is the best way to play it back in your cd or mp3 player, and you'll have a copy that sounds cleaner than the original. (Please read the reviews by the other writeoff participants listed at the end of this epinion.) What You'll Need You will need the following hardware and software to move your tunes from vinyl or cassette to your hard drive, and ultimately a cd rom: - Turntable (or cassette deck if your source is cassette) My turntable is vintage '78, made by Kenwood. - Amplifier; Except for a few turnables that include an amplifier, the output from most turntables is too weak to provide an adequate signal to your sound card for recording. So, if you are thinking about moving only your turntable into the same room as your computer to record albums, forget it. You'll need the amplifier/receiver also. - Sound card - I use a Soundblaster Live MP3+ - with a line in jack, capable of recording in stereo @ 44khz. Most sound cards meet this requirement, even the built in sound chips on value priced motherboards. - A few hundred megabytes to a couple of gigabytes of disk space. You will initially be converting the songs into .wav files, which require about 10mb disk space per minute of music. A 40 minute album's worth of .wav files will require 400 mb of disk space, and you'll need more for editing. - Cables to get from your amplifier to the line in jack on your PC. Most amplifiers will have a line out (usually connected to a tape deck) to which you can connect cables with the red and white RCA connectors. The line in jack on sound cards requires a 1/8" plug, so you will need an adapter to convert from this 1/8" jack to the red and white RCA connectors on the cables plugged into your amplifier. This adapter should look like the item shown in this Radioshack link ( www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=&product%5Fid=274%2D369 ), or may be a short cable with a 1/8" stereo jack on one end and RCA connectors on the other. If you don't have an available line out connection on your amplifier, you can run a cable from the amp's headphone jack to your sound card. Keep in mind, though, that this connection results in an audio signal coming to your sound card that has been modified to match the settings on the volume, treble, bass, and equalizer controls on your amp. - Software to record and edit the audio signal being sent to the sound card to your hard drive. If you have Windows, a sound card, and a cd writer, you probably have several choices. Easy CD Creator Platinum cd writing software comes with SPIN DOCTOR for recording and Sound Editor for editing, while Nero Burning Rom, another popular cd writing program, comes with Nero Wave Editor. Most soundcards include recording and editing software, and my Soundblaster Live card included SoundForge 4.5, Creative Recorder, and Creative Wave Studio. As a last resort Windows offers Sound Recorder. I prefer to use Spin Doctor for recording, and Nero Wave Editor or Creative Wave Studio for editing. - You'll need to be familiar with your Soundcard mixer software. This controls what volume your sound card records at, adjusts balance between channels, and selects which sound card input is being recorded (ie, are you recording from the "line in" or "microphone" jack on your sound card. Your sound recording software may cover most of these functions, but you should use this software to make sure that the line in jack on your sound card is enabled. Typically only the mic in or line in is enabled, but not both. - CDR/CDRW drive My system includes an ASUS motherboard with 750mhz Athlon CPU, 256mb memory, Soundblaster Live MP3+ sound card, Rage Fury Pro video card, 45gb and 20gb Maxtor hard drives, Pacific Digital Mach 48 cd writer, and is running Windows ME. I ran RCA cables from the back of my stereo amplifier to the "line in" jack on my sound card, using about 30' of RCA stereo cable and a 1/8" stereo to RCA plug adapter cable. Once this was done, I started to set the sound recording levels and make a few test recordings. Testing your setup Checking your settings Optimizing the settings of your recording software is the most critical part converting albums to cd's. Start off by making sure you have the latest drivers for your sound card. After connecting the Line Out jack from your amplifier to the Line In (and not the microphone jack) on your sound card you can start testing your connections. Play an album on your turntable. You should be able to hear it on your PC's speakers. If not, or if the sound is softer than your normal playback volumes, you probably have not enabled the Line In on your sound card (or it may be "muted" by your sound card software), or the Line In volume is set too low. Check your sound card mixer/setup software, or if you have a "speaker" icon in your task bar (near the clock), right click on this icon to adjust your sound card properties. There should be an option to allow you to select recording properties. Make sure the Line In is enabled or not muted, and the volume of the Line In is not set to zero or a low value. Raise this volume level to as high as level as possible without creating distortion. If this sound icon is not present in your taskbar, you should also be able to access these controls from the Sound and Multimedia properties icon in the Control Panel. Adjusting Recording Volume Launch your recording software to make a test recording. All recording software includes a way to adjust and display recording volume. You will want to set recording volume as high as possible, without overloading or causing distortion in the signal, to get the best possible signal to noise ratio. Most recording software includes a graphical bar display of recording volume, typically a green bar changing to yellow, and ultimately red as volume increases. Red means the volume is too high, yellow is marginally high, and green is ok. Play a loud section of music and set the recording volume so that it occasionally goes into the yellow region. If your audio goes into the red region a lot, some of the audio signal will be distorted or clipped (eliminated) or both. Make a recording and play it back. If the volume is too low (much lower than other audio files played back on your computer with the same settings) try to increase the recording volume a little more. Repeat this process until you have reached the highest recording volume that does not result in a clipped or distorted recording. Testing your recording software Although most recording software programs offer few recording options, Spin Doctor offers a few advantages for recording LP's, including adjustable filters to remove hiss, and clicks and pops from recordings. Since adjusting these filters to aggressively eliminate unwanted noise can also result in the loss of part of your desired audio signal, you should evaluate how these filters work with your recordings. If you launch Spin Doctor to record a complete album, you can also ask it to save each song separately, by starting a new .wav file whenever it detects no sound for a user defined length of time. Usually 3-4 seconds works ok. If your recording software includes filters, you will want to test these filters at the default and a few other settings to be sure your judgement agrees with the software. Spin Doctor allows you to test the impact of these settings "on the fly" by providing a preview mode to listen to the effect of these filters, volume levels, and other settings before you start recording. (Spin Doctor will significantly reduce the clicks and pops in your recording, but does not eliminate all the unwanted sounds, and you may want to use your wav editing software to remove those annoying clicks that Spin Doctor doesn't get.) You'll also want to test the time setting you choose to break up audio tracks, if you use that feature. I've found more than a few songs that include a few seconds of silence in the middle of the song, which Spin Doctor mistakenly takes as the start of a new song, so I don't use this feature often. Double check and make sure your recording software is set to record in stereo, some software defaults to mono. Make Your Recordings If you've done a good job adjusting your sound recorder settings, everthing else is pretty easy. Most recording software works like a cassette deck, push the record button (usually a button with a red dot or similar symbol) to start recording, and push stop, to end recording. Wav files are saved to a directory of your choice, and are typically 30-60 mb in size each. If your making compilation cd's, you'll be able to put 650 or 700mb of music on a cd, depending on which size of blank cd you purchase. Although it is difficult to start the recorder at the same time you start your turntable, its easy to cut out the initial or final parts of recording with sound editing software, so I always start my recorder, then drop the needle on the record, and edit out any undesired parts later. Its also pretty easy to record the whole side of an album as one track, and then break it into separate files for each song later. Be sure and disable your screensaver, and try not to perform other tasks while recording to ensure that the audio signal is recorded without interruption. Today's fast computers and hard disks can handle this task much better than 3-4 years ago, when audio recording required most of a system's resources, but I still recommend that you minimize other demands on your PC while recording. Editing Your Recordings Now that you have your .wav files, you will want to play them back and fix any glaring problems before recording the songs to cd. Hopefully you won't have much left to do. Most wave editors (Nero Wave Editor, Creative Wave Studio, or Sound Forge, etc) are very similar, with minor differences in controls and appearance, and more significant differences in editing features and filters offered. Open each .wav file in your sound editor program , and play back the wav file, while observing the oscilliscope-like graphical display or graph of the audio signal. This should run from left to right, and contain two tracks of information, for the left and right stereo channel. If you zoom in on this display, along each track you will see the trace of the audio signal rising and falling many times each second as the music proceeds. If you hear any clicks or pops, they will usually show up as a sharp spike on the audio graph. If there are only a few, you can easily zoom in on that unwanted part of the graph corresponding to the click or pop, usually only a few hundreths of a second in duration, and shrink or remove the click by hiliting that part of the graph and using the delete or amplify functions of the sound editor. You can also highlight and delete any unwanted dead recording time at the beginning or end of each wave file. Sound editors, such as those mentioned above, offer many other ways to change your wave files, including the ability to increase the volume of any section, adding echo and reverb effects, switching channels, fade in and out controls, equalizers, and other tools to improve or fine tune your recording. Many third party programs, to improve audio quality of recordings are also available. For example, the click, hiss and pop filters included with Roxio's Spin Doctor were developed by Arboretum Systems, a company whichs offers a stand alone package for cleaning up digital recordings from vinyl albums and cassettes. This program is called Raygun, with a demo available here, http://www.arboretum.com/S20_products/S22_raygun/S222PRODINFO.html. Burning your audio cd Now that you have your .wav files, there are only a few more decisions to make. I prefer to use Nero Burning Rom to burn audio cd's, but many other programs (Easy CD Creator, NTI CD Maker, Hotburn, etc) are also capable. Opening Nero and choosing the option to make an audio cd allows you to add the audio .wav files to the complition window. Nero will convert these to cd audio on the fly. You can also double click on any track to add CD Text info, to adjust the time between tracks (typically 2 seconds) or if you want to edit the file one last time, apply several sound filters (click removal, fade in, etc, with on the fly previews of each filter available), or launch the Nero Wave Editor. A few minutes after you finish your final edit, and press the burn button, you will have a cd sounding as good, and likely better than the original vinyl. The Music I've Got In My Computer..... and on cd(I don't expect any requests for copies...): Rock and Roll Party in the Streets (from the album Offerings) - Axe Get it Right On Out There (Bill Quateman) - Bill Quateman The River (Home Free) - Dan Fogelberg I Cheat the Hangman (Stampede) - The Doobie Brothers Mr. Las Vegas (Its for You) - Hammersmith Music Eyes (Heartsfield) - Heartsfield Into the Night (Paradise Island) - Lake Rat Race (Legs Diamond) - Legs Diamond Deadly Dancer (Legs Diamond) - Legs Diamond Stay in Time (On) - Off Broadway Celebration (PFM Cook) - PFM Cook Lost Weekend Farewell (Tornado) - The Ship A Cold Old Worried Lady (Old Loves Die Hard) - Triumvirate Hardware and Software Used Soundblaster Live! MP3+ Sound Card, with Creative Wave Studio for wav file editing Pacific Digital Mach 48 CD writer Nero Burning Rom, vs. 5.5.9 (cd authoring), with Nero Wave Editor Spin Doctor, from Easy CD Creator Platinum (audio capture and click/hiss removal) Visit The Other "I've Got the Music in My Computer!" Participants: LambChops - Cohost Quasar Lyagushka Opalman - Co-host FrazzledSpice Deaser26 Paulyoungotti Dedemw NetNut746 Divad23 Mike.Holmes Jag2112 DVON Aerocat Kurt_G DrFaustus JennJoy Cartman_2k Kiko_cat KCFoxy Cntaur5 Opinionated3 - Co-host Links to all the participants are available on Opalman's page: http://www.epinions.com/user-opalman  |
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