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| lambert.the.farmer Member Since: 11 Apr 2012 Location: harrogate Posts: 2006   
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Hi I need a pointer on a device that will let me convert my dad's and my vinyl and tape music archives to mp3. There are possibly a thousand albums and singles between us so such a device needs to be quite robust and if it's possible to separate tracks individually and automatically that would be great for my stuff but less so for his.
Any advice would be great, thanks. Rhubarb and custard let fly with their secret weapon. |
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13th Jan 2016 7:06am |
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| lambert.the.farmer Member Since: 11 Apr 2012 Location: harrogate Posts: 2006
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Cheers I will have a look in there tonight. Rhubarb and custard let fly with their secret weapon.
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13th Jan 2016 8:20am |
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| Inigo Member Since: 13 Nov 2011 Location: Kent Posts: 617  
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I bought a decent secondhand turntable (Rega Planar 3) and a decent sound card for my PC (M-audio audiophile 2496) and slowly and manually recorded all my old vinyl.
I used Sony Soundforge to record them and it has a plugin specifically designed to help clean up vinyl hisses, cracks and pops. Or you could manually go in and remove each scratch by zooming in to the waveform and just removing that one peak. Worked very well, but very time consuming. Then saved both flac and mp3 versions. |
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13th Jan 2016 9:07am |
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| Cheshire110 Member Since: 26 Jul 2013 Location: Cheshire/London Posts: 2751
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( Curveball )
another (slightly less sentimental, I know) option would be to get a subscription to Apple Music or Spotify (~£5-10/month with free trial) and to just individually find each album or single by name, and save it offline. Then you'd have lossless or v high quality versions of everything across all your devices. That'd be the 21st century way of doing it, but I completely understand how satisfying it is to have your own hard copies etc. Cheers, David Land Rovers of all shapes S3 onwards… Daily is a 110 V8. |
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13th Jan 2016 9:22am |
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| Mr Fox Member Since: 10 Sep 2011 Location: green & pleasant land Posts: 1037 
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This is an important point. There are plenty of programs and hardware devices (USB turntables, etc) that will allow you to rip albums to digital but ensuring you are making the highest quality copy is essential. I'd suggest investing in a hefty external HD - something in the 2 - 4TB range. Burn in a lossless audio format (as has been suggested FLAC) - a bit like the old maxim when you're cutting something important: 'measure twice, cut once', when it comes to ripping a lot of audio (and I know because I've done it!), 'pick the best audio quality and burn once!' When I started burning my CDs, lossless wasn't common and therefore, I've had to repeat part of the process again 
For a bit more info, this is worth a read: http://www.whathifi.com/news/high-resoluti...ed-to-know Most external devices (Apple and others) have an automatic option to downgrade your music collection when you are moving tracks to a portable device; therefore, in my case, everything on my NAS drive is lossless but when the portable synchs, it downgrades the audio to lower level so as to preserve disc space. This means I don't need two files and get best quality at home but space to have everything on remote devices. Also, Google audiophile forums and join one - there is always new stuff coming out and unless we have a heavily committed audiophile on the site, we may not know of an excellent piece of software or hardware that has recently been released and could make your job a lot easier! |
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13th Jan 2016 9:29am |
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| lambert.the.farmer Member Since: 11 Apr 2012 Location: harrogate Posts: 2006
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Cheers again will have a further Google, though to be honest my hearing is not really up for proper hq solutions I just don't get enough benefit from it so to an extent rough and ready will do. As for streaming etc a lot of my music is white label rave and other such things that were never made in high volume and are now often lost to history as it were. Rhubarb and custard let fly with their secret weapon.
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13th Jan 2016 11:20am |
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| Edzi Member Since: 20 Sep 2015 Location: London Posts: 279 
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As already suggested, best to do this at full quality first, so lossless FLAC would be a good choice. Or if all your digital realm is Apple, use ALAC. You can then if needed make MP3s from your master tracks. If you already have a turntable, you need a phono preamp which has a USB out which you then connect to your computer. I've not done this so can't recommend which software to use, but online research will give you the answers needed. Incidentally, I have a NAD phono pre amp with USB which Was bundled with my turntable. I've since upgraded so it's yours for £110 including posting in the UK if interested. PM me if you'd like it. |
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13th Jan 2016 6:45pm |
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| lambert.the.farmer Member Since: 11 Apr 2012 Location: harrogate Posts: 2006
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Been looking at roxio easy lp to mp3 on amazon, it seems to have fairly good reviews save for a few registration issues which seem to be easily overcome. It does various file types including flac and is about 40 quid complete with a selection of connecting cables. Has anyone got any experience of it or its greater reputation? Rhubarb and custard let fly with their secret weapon.
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14th Jan 2016 4:54am |
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| Edzi Member Since: 20 Sep 2015 Location: London Posts: 279
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Incidentally, this is the unit I mentioned:
http://www.sevenoakssoundandvision.co.uk/p-11451-nad-pp4-gra.aspx It's had around 2 months use (probably less). |
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14th Jan 2016 9:44am |
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| lambert.the.farmer Member Since: 11 Apr 2012 Location: harrogate Posts: 2006
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Sorry but that's way out of my price range. cool kit though. Rhubarb and custard let fly with their secret weapon.
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14th Jan 2016 12:27pm |
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| jimbob7 Member Since: 06 Jul 2013 Location: uk Posts: 2055 |
If it's for your Dad I doubt he wants the ultimate "HI-FI" music quality,in which case buy what ever is recommended on Amazon.
If you already have a hi-quality turntable,then look for a music converter to digital. Pov.spec,ftw. 2006, 110,TD5. |
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14th Jan 2016 1:01pm |
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| Laurie Member Since: 22 Feb 2008 Location: Sussex, England Posts: 2897 
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Use a turntable to feed analogue signal into your sound card.
Record and edit using Audacity.... http://www.audacityteam.org/ Convert to MP3 and catalogue with Media Monkey.... http://www.mediamonkey.com/ All free software.  |
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14th Jan 2016 11:58pm |
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| Caterham Member Since: 06 Nov 2008 Location: Birmingham Posts: 6298 
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What you doing with the old worthless vinyl?
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15th Jan 2016 7:13am |
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