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Community Newsletter: Q&A: 10/20/06 Converting old vinyl records and tapes to digital
- 10/19/06 5:01 PM
Converting vinyl to digital.
by donnythejazz - 10/20/06 4:39 AM In reply to: How To Further Automate Vinyl Audio -> Digital Recordings by tnhiker865I think I've tried every way there is to convert my vinyl collection to digital but I've now given up the "straight to PC" route. I now play the album from the expensive hi-fi turntable I have (Linn) stright into a Pioneer CD recorder, using a CD-RW disc. I then take CD-RW and copy it to my PC using Nero software. For those albums that need it, I then clean up each track using the light click setting on Adobe Audition, which is usually enough. For the albums I have done so far I now have an almost perfect digital copy, that doesn't have any of the clicks and pops associated with vinyl.
The trouble is, that it is time consuming. If you want individual tracks, because the signal is analogue, rather than recording a complete side you have to stop the CD recorder after each track and start again for the next track. However it usually takes about an hour to record a 45 minute LP onto CD-RW. Of course if you don't need to clean up an album, recording straight on to CD-R will give you a CD copy which is exactly the same as your LP.
Once I find out how to split tracks with Adobe, I won't have to record the tracks individually onto CD-RW, but that is step I haven't worked out yet.
Recording an entire side and splitting it
by Watzman - 10/20/06 4:58 AM In reply to: How To Further Automate Vinyl Audio -> Digital Recordings by tnhiker865Recording an entire side (of a vinyl record or Cassette tape) can save a lot of time, but there are some potential drawbacks:
1. Automatic software for "splitting" the side into individual songs often makes mistakes.
2. Splitting a side manually takes significant effort (although probably no more, and perhaps not as much, as it would take to record each song separately).
3. There can be really large, significant differences in the level (volume) of individual songs. From a quality perspective, this is a potentially large issue. You can end up "clipping" on one song, and not using the entire dynamic range of the sound card on another song. The worst case I've ever seen of this is on the followup soundtrack CD from the movie "Titanic", where the song "Nearer My God to Thee" has a PEAK level (instantaneous peak for the entire song) of less than 20% (this is on a CD, so it's already digital). The sound engineer for that album should be shot, but if you record an entire side (of a vinyl record or cassette tape) instead of individual songs, you can [probably will] end up doing the same thing. It all comes back to the tradeoffs that you have to make between the quality of the conversion and the time required. As I noted (and as others have also said), doing a good quality job can be really time consuming. Do a couple of albums (or even a couple of songs) and 99-cents per song will seem like a real bargain. This process is really only justifiable for old songs that are not available on CD or by download.
Splitting tracks
by nearone - 10/20/06 9:06 AM In reply to: Recording an entire side and splitting it by Watzman"Total Recorder" has the tool for splitting the tracks while recording. You can adjust the program to do a very good job. Roxio and others do also, but I have tried them all and find Total Recorder to be the most efficient. The flexibility of the splitting tool is much better in Total Recorder.
Using a splitting tool while recording takes away the tedious job of babysitting the vinyl.
ferdi-converting old vinyl records
by ultragames - 10/20/06 4:23 AM In reply to: 10/20/06 Converting old vinyl records and tapes to digital by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
i do this all the time,and it's a snap,
all you need is a audio compact disc recorder from philps, (cdr880)
at the time it cost me about $400.00,
that was about three years ago.
just record your music from vinyl or tapes to a blank
cd, and add them to your music files in your computer,
it's that easy. art reis
Re: Consumer level recorders
by Watzman - 10/20/06 5:08 AM In reply to: ferdi-converting old vinyl records by ultragamesAs is the case with video DVD recorders as well, consumer level "set top box" recorders will do the job, but they don't give you the level of quality or editing and control that you get by doing this on a PC.
But I think you miss another point, which is that the output of such a process (on your audio CD recorder) is a CD. When, if fact, today, that's not what most people want. What most people want, in the end, is an MP3 file or a WMA file (without DRM) on their computer. Because while people used to listen to CDs, today the more common listening device is an MP3 player, not a CD player.
old vinly conversion
by regman - 10/20/06 4:27 AM In reply to: 10/20/06 Converting old vinyl records and tapes to digital by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
My only objection to the methods suggested is if you've recorded a complete lp side why chop it up. It was meant to played as a set sequence of tracks . The lp side coresponds to most listerners span of attention -so its the perfect format . Random play individual tracks and you end up with a mess . Random play lp-sides and you get the perfect listerning envioronment. Feel free to find out more on my page at :
http://members.lycos.co.uk/steveislip/mp3-lp-side.html
Re: Converting old vinyl records and tapes to digital
by scottghall - 10/20/06 4:45 AM In reply to: 10/20/06 Converting old vinyl records and tapes to digital by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I'm going to disagree with some of the main answer's points. You see, I am a professional soundman, and have been doing pro-audio for about 30 years. I have also have a 3000+ item vinyl collection, many of which were one-off and direct-to-disk recordings. I also just recently inherited my grandmother's old 78rpm collection (vinyls, waxes, and even a couple of Edison cylinders). So I too am looking at many hours digitizing my collection.
As has been said, you want to make sure your source equipment is impecable. Its all about the turntable, the cartidge & stylus, the phono preamp, the digitizer, and the editing software.
You want the best turntable you can afford, and -- I can't emphasize this enough! -- you want to best cartidge you can afford for the type of material. There are different cartidges for different kinds of recordings: I use a special cartidge designed to track old 78's without harming them (today's common harder and smaller styli will gouge and ruin your 78's forever), I use a different special cartidge to track direct-to-disk recordings whose grooves are deeper and more defined (and would shatter most styli), and of course a good broadcast-quality cartidge for modern vinyl (1960's and up). My turntable is a heavy broadcast type, but the common dance club turntable will work as well. You want a turntable that is stable and has no resonances, and you prefer one that has pitch control, since older recording studios did not use exactly the same RPMs to cut their masters -- some are slower and some are faster, even in the same lable. (There are websites with RPMs for most of the registered studio's from the 1920's through the 1970's) An important turntable feature I prefer is a clutch-start that allows you to cue up the beginning of a track, and consitantly start up to speed in 1/4 turn or 1/8 turn (that's why a DJ table works well). Just make sure that you couple that with a cartidge designed for cueing! Most cartidges are not designed to track backwards, and will shatter the stylus if you try. You want a tone-arm for the turntable that you can adjust the tracking force. Some disks require you to track heavier than others in order to pickup all of the groove's nuances. The force required is usually a function of the cartidge and stylus as well, so read the fine print in their packaging: they'll have a table of the force required for the era and age and material of the disk. And don't cheat yourself on styli either. Buy the styli recommended by the cartidge manufacturer, and buy more than one -- I guarrantee that you will wear them out. A worn stylus is like using a sewing needle on your record -- it will ruin it forever, and you'll not get a quality playback.
Now for the input to my computer: I use a USB mixer to provide the input to my computer. This is because the digitizer in the USB mixer is of much higher quality than most builtin sound boards, and the mixer has a builtin phono preamp. Another advantage is that I can use it to record things besides old records; it also has a microphone preamp, a line input adjustable for home stereo equipment through pro-audio equipment, and a guitar/bass input. I have also used it for converting old 8mm and 16mm movies to capture their soundtack for the projector; the microphone input comes in handy when you have old family movies or slides and you want to record commentary from older relatives while they're still alive.
Whether you buy an external USB digitizer, or a nice quality internal sound board, make sure you get one with a phono preamp with true RIAA equalization (the preemphasis/postemphasis that was mentioned). See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization>. In otherwords, use a phono preamp where you can bypass the built-in RIAA EQ; this becomes important if you are digitizing recordings older than 1954 in the US and up to 1966 in Europe; and use digital filters instead. Some external digitizers come with device drivers that have several digital filters you can use while capturing the phono output.
Note that you can also apply digital filtering after-the-fact by using good editing software, like Audacity, that has digital filtering available. You can search the web for the right EQ curves to set your digital filter to depending on the studio and date that the disk was made; you bypass the RIAA EQ and apply the right studio filter. These are the same digital filters that FBI forensics folks and kareoke people use to emphasize some instruments over others, to make vocals standout more or disappear, and to clean up any pops, hiss's and scratches that come through. And these filters can be used create psuedo-stereo and psuedo-surround-sound by picking off certain instruments and moving them around in ''aural space'', and adding echo and reverb effects.
OK, so I spent a little more money to digitize my collection right. But it wasn't that much more money. You can get good to great external USB mixers for about the price of a good sound board (under $100) that come with device drivers and digital filters. The one I picked up even works for PC's running MacOS 10 for Intel and for Linux -- so you're not limited to MS Windows. Sure the turntable is expensive -- about $350 with a good tonearm. The mixer/digitizer usually comes with recording software, but I usually use the free Audacity program to do my recordings, since it is also my choice for waveform editing software. Audacity is powerful, but yes complex and hard to use. Those of you with Nero software might stick with that, though you'll loose many of the digital filters that come with Audacity or can be added to Audacity.
For those on a budget, I know of a vendor that has a complete outfit for $219 -- see this link: <http://www.dak.com/reviews/2020story.cfm> (turntable, cartidge, preamp/mixer & computer input, recording software, post-filtering software). It is good quality, and designed just for this task. The individual parts are available too.
Vinyl record capture
by sradbims76 - 10/20/06 5:00 AM In reply to: 10/20/06 Converting old vinyl records and tapes to digital by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
In response to your inquiry about converting vinyl records , CNET had some great recommendations for hardware lik the USB turntable device. I personally have not tried converting records to CDs; only tapes.
But I do have a recommendation for an excellent, incredibly simple SOFTWARE to help you with the audio capture: Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition..why? Aside from being easy and making great recordings, it only costs $20 USD and comes with some other useful features like a jukebox, alarm clock and an entertaining little program called "Plus Dancer". For $20 you can't go wrong.
-Brad
Converting Vinyl and Cassette tapes to CD
by RICHARD.1 - 10/20/06 5:08 AM In reply to: 10/20/06 Converting old vinyl records and tapes to digital by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
You do not need a computer to perform this operation. But at minimum, you will need a turntable, cassette player, CD recorder with analog input jack and stereo receiver (or pre-amp) with phono and tape (or line or aux in) input jacks and at least one line output jack. Simply connect CD analog input via stereo audio cable to receiver (or pre-amp) line output, queue your source and set CD recorder to record pause, synchronize and start recording.
vinyl,tape to digital
by shadowworks - 10/20/06 5:22 AM In reply to: 10/20/06 Converting old vinyl records and tapes to digital by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have only done about 1,000 so I'm no pro, bu I have found a cheep and easy way of doing this, though I do agree with the "main" answer, I'd like to give more detailes, my sound card is a sound blaster ( started with live, now 7.1 card) I use a simple mixer( raido shack) for the most older stuff) that goes into tape input of reciever, I got a cord from raido shack that has RCA on one side 1/4" on the other, hook it from the tape out to line in, I then use "creative recorder" to capture, and "audio cleaning Lab" for editing, leaving it in wave format, then use either media player, nero, or roxio to burn it. I can control the peak volume from the mixer,recorder and audio cleaning lab. roxio and nero is going for around $80, the RCA cord is around $5-10+, audio cleaning lab is around $60+ ( cost depends on where you buy it) as word of wisdome, for best signal to noise recordings, dont use max or just under cliping, distortion is too easy to make later during editing, you wouldnt want that any way,,, but some where in the 3/4 of full volume should work fine, audio cleaning lab will tell you if your volume is too low, loud, or optimal... versions 10 and 11 have some great features, also, I personaly make a copy of recordings into another file, this way, if by chance you majorly mess up you still have the first one to re copy, then the 3rd file for finished work to burn,, one can have great enjoyment of a project like this, taking your time is the best way, it takes me around 1 hour just in editing per cd.. the better the vynal is the less editing, tapes are very easy,, its a fun project and can be easy once you get a hold of it, but it all depends on your listening pref. and time. have fun with it!
Vinyl records are not the only kind of records!!
by krk - 10/20/06 5:34 AM In reply to: 10/20/06 Converting old vinyl records and tapes to digital by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
While there is no doubt that Barry and other CNET contributors to this subject have a vast amount of expertise, I must point out that a large body of record collectors are summarily left out when the word 'vinyl' is used exclusively to describe phonograph records. I am referring to the ''shellac'' 78-rpm records. For the first 50 + years of the record industry, shellac (or bakelite) was almost always the material from which these records were made. After World War 2, plastic compounds including vinyl, became available for consumer products, including records. The later 78rpms were made of 'unbreakable vinyl'. When 45s and 33s (33 1/3 rpm albums are as a rule referred to as 'vinyl') were introduced in the late 1940s, all records became 'vinyl'. So, let's give it up for all the 'old fogies' who love the old 78s and include the word 'shellac' along with vinyl when discussing audio restoration of 'records'!
Another step in the process
by RickBee - 10/20/06 5:46 AM In reply to: 10/20/06 Converting old vinyl records and tapes to digital by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I haven't drilled through each and every response, so this may have already been covered. When amassing a digital music library, an important step in the process is to "tag" your tracks so they'll be more usefull. This refers to unseen text space at the end of an mp3 file that stores information about that file: Artist, song title, album etc. For more information about tags here's the Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3
When tagged properly, your collection becomes much more acessable in a jukebox program such as itunes, musicmatch or Windows Media Player. You can search your tracks, regroup them into playlists and generally keep things organized.
When I took up the challenge of digitizing my vinyl and cassette collection, here's the strategy I used; I would record a side at a time of the original material using one of the many great techniques already descibed in this forum. You can set up an album or tape and let it record unattended for the most part, and do a "save as" in .WAV format until you're ready to split and tag. This way I could spend a weekend doing nothing but acumulating album sides, saving them in a pre-determined folder until ready to process. When I had some more time, I would come back to these files to split them into individual tracks and add the tagging information. I personally used software called Goldwave to split the tracks. It's a great visual tool where you can "see" the silence between tracks. After saving each individual track in .Mp3 format I would then open them in a program called "Tag and Rename". (There are many good tagging software solutions offered out there.) Tag and Rename has a function where it finds the album information and auto tags each track , even including album art. I then export them to my main music collection which is stored on an external HD.
One of the great benefits of vinyl conversion is that you can build up a sizeable collection of music very inexpensivly. I still hit the used record shops and pick up obscure or unusual LP's for as little as 99 cents. Library sales, yard sales or even a friend or relative who will give up a collection to a good home are excellent sources for original material.
What about VHS tapes?
by cesareDH - 10/20/06 6:00 AM In reply to: 10/20/06 Converting old vinyl records and tapes to digital by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
This was very good concerning the audio records and tapes, but what about doing the same with VHS? Or is that a different subject for a different time?
VHS Conversions
by GregoryOrme - 10/20/06 6:40 AM In reply to: What about VHS tapes? by cesareDHI'm presuming you are talking about converting the video and audio of a VHS tape, in which case it would be a different subject for a different time. However, if you simply want to, say, pull the songs off a favorite old movie or concert recording, the procedures are very much the same as have been discussed. I currently have a Denon DP-DJ151 turntable with a built-in preamp and digital output that I use for vinyl (it will even do 78s), a Magnavox hi-fi stereo VHS HQ that I use to take audio from VHS tapes, a Technics RS-B905 stereo for audio cassettes, and a regular microphone for live recordings--all plugged to a Niles AXP-1 auxiliary input selector, which, in turn, is connected to an Onkyo SE-U55 USB digital audio processor, which connects to a USB port on my computer. I have a Mac, so I use Peak to record and edit the audio, and Jam to sequence it.
I have been doing this for seven years, and I say "Amen!" to the suggestion that, if you can find an existing digital version, use it instead of transfering the audio from analog. Of course, I have literally thousands of CDs, so I have most things. I am of the opinion that, if you own a vinyl copy, having a digital copy--from any source--is within your rights.
Having said that, there are a few cases where I have discovered that the CD version is audibly inferior to the vinyl. I suspect in these cases that the original tapes could not be located and, therefore, the old vinyl was closer to the original than the CD was.
I have also digitized some very old recordings going back to the turn of the century (no, not the 21st, the one before that!) and found that unless you have a very good noise-reduction system and are skilled, you will do more harm than good. After a period of adjustment, you will not be bothered by the crackling in the background. It's part of the charm of that era--one that has been artificially reproduced in many modern recordings (Christina Aguilera, Nelly, etc.) for effect. Usually, loud, brief "pops" can simply be sliced out with some trial and error. If you do this well, only musicians will notice.
If you want just audio from VHS tapes
by vwmark - 10/20/06 7:20 AM In reply to: What about VHS tapes? by cesareDHIf you want just audio from VHS tapes, then this is the right forum. If you want to transfer video + audio digitally, well, that is probably best for a different forum.
Nonetheless, my answer would pertain to both forums.
I have not (yet) tried to make audio digital recordings from analog video tapes, but I can imagine that there would be a good reason (for example, concert recordings from TV broadcasts that have not been marketed).
My approach would be the following (there may be alternatives):
1) Transfer the VHS tape to DVD. I output my VHS VCR to my Toshiba DVD recorder and make a DVD-R recording. I do not want to take the space here to explain the details, since that would involve a different forum. Copy protection a problem? Not for me. See, I have this, um, little "box" between the VCR and the DVD recorder, which cost me $300 USD a few years ago, that defeats Macrovision. I won't explain here how to get it, but a little internet search will find it for you.
2) I would then put the finalized DVD-R into my computer's DVD drive for playback.
3) I would use an audio recording software program to convert the audio from the DVD in the computer to either MP3 or CD-quality tracks to burn to a CD-R disc. I use Total Recorder from High Criteria
http://www.highcriteria.com/
This will save to MP3 or CD-quality file format anything that comes through the computer's sound system. I have already copied audio from commercial DVD's with no problem in this way. Then, I could either (1)save the audio tracks as MP3 files for playback with my computer's iTunes software or play back on my iPod (I have a PC, not an Apple; this works); or (2) burn a CD with CD-quality sound.
I consider the above part of the "fair use" clause of digital recordings--it's my recording, I am converting for personal use on stereo or my portable MP3 player, I am not marketing my recordings or mass producing them.
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