Digital music forum: What's the simplest way I can convert vinyl records to MP3s?

Perhaps in the future, you may be able to refrain from personal insults.

You do understand that the topic here did not involve the fine nuances of any quality difference between analog vinyl recordings and recordings from other sources (or tubes v. transistors, or any other audiophile issues), right, but instead was about converting vinyl records to .mp3 format to use on an iPod or similar device?

You can't play a vinyl record on an iPod.

I was not referring to any insult to me. I war referring to your insult to another, calling their music "noise."

And your comment about .mp3 files was totally inaccurate in a way most people who are aware of various digital music formats, even relative novices, know. The only superiority about the .mp3 format is its nearly universal usability.

If you wish to avoid exchanges with me, you need merely limit yourself to posting accurate information relevant to the topic at hand. It's entirely up to you.

And you can call me "Flat," or you can call me "Worm," but just don't call me late for dinner!

(I was going to use the RayJay line, but it has a connotation that I would prefer to avoid, for several reasons.)

I have what most people consider very high end audio equipment for both recording, reproduction and editing of analog and digital recordings. I truly love my 25,000 LPs and 7,000 78s but I also enjoy listening to my 6,000 CDs. My CD collecting only began in 1995 after I found adequately good sounding digital playback equipment. After that, I have obtained superior CD reproduction equipment short of SACD and DSD quality. Despite the limitations of the CD, I have both inferior and superior recordings of the same performance on each medium. Sometimes, they are both mastered so well as to be hard pressed to tell which is preferable.

When making MP3 files, I use my computer from CD quality downloads. They are generally superior sounding to those which I could purchase on line. I do not like MP3 files but have found them adequate for non-critical listening (backround) for modern recordings (post 78 era). I listen to MP3 recordings for many unavailable performances for download from university archives such as the Florida Atlantic University Music Library (they maintain one collection which has rare recordings generally unavailable). I also listen to CD quality performances of 78 era recordings with excellent audio quality results, especially those engineered by Ward Marston. I cannot reproduce those 78 era recordings better on my own using my analog equipment (just getting the speed of acoustic recordings correct is an almost insurmountable effort).

Steve Hoffman, Robert Pincus and Kevin Gray are fabulous recording transfer engineers who make CDs sound as good as records.

The point is that either analog and digital recordings can sound great, mediocre or something in between. MP3s are generally the latter, mediocre but can be something in between but never great The better the source for the MP3, the better it will sound as an MP3. That's my opinion.

MP3 does not produce the best copy available for digital sound. It employs a lossy compression algorithm to create a smaller file size. Nor does it produce the smallest file size of the various lossy compressed formats.

Many digital formats produce more accurate output, from uncompressed .wav files to the lossless FLAC. Of course, Audacity is capabable of producing fines in these and MANY other formats.

The wise speak of what they know. -- Gandalf

Most of us, I believe (although I certainly do not speak for all) are concerned with audio quality, at least that it be kept above whatever the listener determines to be a minimum acceptable level, and that, as in most things, better tends to be better.

But when the topic is how to convert vinyl records to .mpg files, any argument concerning analog v. digital is completely and totally irrelevant. There is no such thing, even in theory, as an analog .mp3 file.

Now we could have discussed the quality of the output from an .mp3 file made at different sampling rates, or the details of setting optimal amplitude, or the quality of results after using the various depopping applications that are available to minimize the effect of scratches on the record, but analog reproduction is not a matter that enters into it beyond the choice of turntable which, given the lossy compression of .mp3 files, has very little, if any, impact as long as the needle can follow the groove on the record without skipping or exhibiting the distortion caused by dust or by having been worn down to a nub.

There are other places to discuss the nuances of analog audio reproduction. A discussion on conversion to .mp3 files is not it.

it is easy to find convertors, according to your requirement. you may fond these softwears from "download.cnet.com" or "www.filehippo.com". these links will be helpful for you.