Who burns CD's off of old LP's?

[Boomyal]

Tell me your equipment and techniques. I have a 6 foot row of LP's that got put up on the shelf when we moved into this house, 26 years ago. I never did set up the killer stereo equipment. We just opted for a little countertop tape and CD player. Now, with more time on my hands, I'd like to create some CD's from some of my favorite old alblums. Did I hear, Big Brother and the Holding Company, for starters? Oooh, a little 'piece of my heart'. :hippie:

 

[Tim Frank]

I went through all my albums about 10 years ago, had about 200. I made a list of the songs that I would take the time to transfer and was surprised at how small the list was. Guess i bought more than a few albums for one or two songs.:facepalm:
Anyway, at that time, the technology i used was a copy of Music Match Jukebox a proprietary music organising tool (today's version of Microsoft Media Player is much more powerful than that era's version of MMJ).
The conversion was done with a small preamp (~ $30- at that time) which had RCA jacks- in and out. Turntable plugged straight into the pre-amp, The pre-amp output leads plugged into the sound card input on my PC via an RCA jack to miniphone plug adapter.

All a bit primitive, but it worked fine.

I paid the $30- for the little preamp (only the size of a cigarette pack) so that I wouldn't have to mess about moving stereo equipment around. The computer was in a different part of the house.
If your PC is close enough to your stereo, you could run an output from your amp to your soundcard.

There are wayyyyy more options now than there were....including purpose built LP-CD conversion units.

 

[Boomyal]

I went through all my albums about 10 years ago, had about 200. I made a list of the songs that I would take the time to transfer and was surprised at how small the list was. Guess i bought more than a few albums for one or two songs.:facepalm:
Anyway, at that time, the technology i used was a copy of Music Match Jukebox a proprietary music organising tool (today's version of Microsoft Media Player is much more powerful than that era's version of MMJ).
The conversion was done with a small preamp (~ $30- at that time) which had RCA jacks- in and out. Turntable plugged straight into the pre-amp, The pre-amp output leads plugged into the sound card input on my PC via an RCA jack to miniphone plug adapter.

All a bit primitive, but it worked fine.

I paid the $30- for the little preamp (only the size of a cigarette pack) so that I wouldn't have to mess about moving stereo equipment around. The computer was in a different part of the house.
If your PC is close enough to your stereo, you could run an output from your amp to your soundcard.

There are wayyyyy more options now than there were....including purpose built LP-CD conversion units.

Yeah, TF, that all does sound a bit arcaic. I was more thinking along the lines of a purposebuilt turntable being as I do not have any of the old equipment hooked up. Even if I did, it would have been far away from a computer.

 

[MTboatguy]

I bought a digital interface turntable and upgraded the cartridge and burned to my computer cleaned them up a little, then burned them to DVD and CD, I have several DVD players including one in each one of the cars, once you convert them to digital you can put them on disc, or upload to the ipod or other electronic devises, I paid about $80 for the turntable and it is a USB interface, but be warned it takes a pretty powerful computer to do it, but it is well worth the effort.

 

[Boomyal]

....... but be warned it takes a pretty powerful computer to do it, but it is well worth the effort.....

How powerful is necessary?

 

[MTboatguy]

Well my computer is probably over kill, but it is a Core Duo Quad running at 3.4 ghz, 8 gig of memory and 4 TB of hard drive space, it also has a DVD an upgraded video card with 4 Gig of memory as well as Blu-Ray burner, it is set up do do media, but check some of the websites out there that deal with converting analog to digital and you can find out minimums, recommended and flat out fun configurations. I am also getting ready to build a new computer for doing media, which with have 2 Xenon quad cores and 32 gigs of memory, but hey I am a computer nut case!

:joyous:

 

[bruceb58]

How good is your sound card? If you don't have a good sound card, you can buy a USB turntable that has an A/D in it but those aren't cheap either.

Doesn't take much of a computer to handle sound at all since the sampling rate is very low and the file compression doesn't have to be done on the fly.

Personally, unless the music you are trying to convert is not available in a digital format right now, I wouldn't bother with those albums. If you want to rip every song and make them a separate file, you are going to be a busy boy.

Boomyal, I sent you a PM. Not sure if it got sent or not.

 

[foodfisher]

Naw, you're a looney tunes, albeit adebt, end user.:joyous: The nut cases are developing this stuff.

 

[MTboatguy]

Naw, you're a looney tunes, albeit adebt, end user.:joyous: The nut cases are developing this stuff.

Well I spent about 5 hours today writing a .php plugin for one of my wife's customers.

 

[MTboatguy]

One other thing, quality is a tricky thing, I up sampled all of my LPs, but I do agree with Bruce, if they are available on CD it is best to just buy them, heck around here, I can get good condition CD's in the pawn shops for about a buck a piece, but I wanted to put lots of music on a disc so that when my wife and I are out in the 5 wheel, we can put one disc in and it lasts all day. and I use my media machine for doing Blu Rays, so it is over kill for burning LP's to CD

 

[bfjou812]

I've used Sonys EZ Audio program. It's an older program but will run on Win7 fine. You will need at least a turntable and pre-amp or amp. I bought a Teac all in one unit from Sears for less than $100.00 run that into my computer to the Sony program it will record it then before you burn it to a disc you can clean it up, eliminate pop,hiss,crackle etc. I like it a lot ,it is a little time consuming you have to monitor the volume and the whole deal is at real time, but I don't mind , I get to listen to all the old greats !!

 

[Boomyal]

And here I thought it would be relatively simple.layball:

 

[MTboatguy]

And here I thought it would be relatively simple.layball:

You ought to know better, nothing is that simple these days!.
.
:lol:

 

[bruceb58]

I would assume you would like each song to have its own file right? If you do, you are going to be stopping and starting through the whole album creating each song's separate file.

As far as CDs go, I am going to be getting rid of all of mine. Amazon will but them for $0.5 to $2.00 each depending on condition and how rare they are.

Who uses CDs anymore? Doesn't everyone have a phone or device they pay through their stereo these days?

 

[MTboatguy]

No IPhone, Ipod or mp3 player in this house, we still use CD's in this house!

Actually some of the processing software on the market these days will allow you to designate how they are saved and will break apart the various songs into new chapters for CD recording, just depends on how much time you are willing to give it, and how much money you are willing to spend on software.

 

[bruceb58]

Makes sense that there would be software like that. Just needs to look for a time when there is no signal. I would definitely use that if its available.

 

[MTboatguy]

Bruce,

Here is a pretty inexpensive one, that will divide the songs into tracks for you, by breaking at the silence in the record, the one I have I got from a friend who has a recording studio, I have played with this one, and it is not bad.

http://www.acoustica.com/spinitagain/lp_to_cd.asp

 

[nwcove]

not much into the techy stuff, but wouldnt it be cheaper to download all the good songs than to buy the gear to diy?......or is it about the fun of doing it?

 

[Boomyal]

not much into the techy stuff, but wouldnt it be cheaper to download all the good songs than to buy the gear to diy?......or is it about the fun of doing it?

The fun of doing it plus, with some artists, you can't get the original album mix of songs.

 

[Boomyal]

I dont have time to read all the replies so if this has been said already im sorry.

I read the first 2 and it seemed more work then needed. I have seen them sell USB turntables at CVS designed for this very purpose. Plug the usb into your computer and record the tracks using the software that comes with the player or any other software you choose. I prefer audacity, as it is free.

Thanks skoubah, that is more like I had hoped it to be.