Transferring Vinyl LPs to CD

[Tosh McCaber]

I want to save my unwieldy collection of 33 LPs onto CD. My late 70's highly specified state of the art sound system has been gathering dust for quite a few years now. It consists of a Yamaha radio/ amplifier, Technics turntable, and Aiwa tape recorder/player.

I have just reinforced my PC inventory with a Sony Vaio laptop, which I can sit beside my Hi-Fi setup. The Sony has a couple of (small) sockets for headphones and microphone. I intend to use Roxio Easy Media Creator or Nero as the software- I seem to remember that they have an LP recording facility.

My question is- do I take a connection from the outputs from behind my Hi-Fi amp, to the mike input on the laptop, and then run the programme? I don't know whether the sockets on the Sony would be stereo, and, more importantly, suitable?

Any suggestions will be welcome!

Thanks,

Tosh

[Bre901]

You should connect the OUT sockets on your amp and plug them into the LINE IN socket on your PC (light blue IIRC).
You need to get a 2xRCA (most of the time) to male stereo minijack cable.

I did do that some time ago, but I quit as it's a very tedious process :
- recording is in real time
- there is some editing to be performed if you want to have the songs properly laid out (otherwise you might get anything between one tenth and five songs per track )

[Tosh McCaber]

Thanks, Bre,

I wondered though, whether my MICROPHONE socket on the laptop is a) stereo, and b) the same as a LINE IN socket on a desktop PC?

[goates]

The mic jack may and may not be the same as a line in. The same goes as to whether it is a stereo in or not. The only way to tell really, is to see if the manual has any information, or go to Sony's website.

There are external USB sound cards that work with laptops, as well as one or two PCMCIA sound cards. Most of these would have a proper line in jack.

[TheOddOne]

I went through this exercise a while ago. The MIC socket is most definitely NOT suitable for this job. The impedance and sensitivity are all wrong.

I bought a purpose-designed USB external box which can either take the 300mV line out from most systems or the non-corrected output direct from the turntable arm. This is the better option, if you've gat access to that signal, as it applies the appropriate correction to the signal from the cartridge.

It's worth doing for a limited number of albums. Bre901 is right about how the tracks get chopped up in an arbitary fashion unless you do some work on it afterwards. The software that came with by USB device is quite good at cleaning up the recording for scratches, pops, bangs etc but it is quite time-consuming. Google for the latest devices - I spent about £60 but you can spend hundreds, depending upon what you want to do.

I found it also gobbled up hard drive space. A 120Gb drive might not be too big!

I did some of Mrs Odd One's 1980's vinyl stuff a while back and she's now got it on her iPod. How we've made progress in the past 25 years!

Cheers,
the Odd One

[Tosh McCaber]

TOO,

I've had a look in Google, and unfortunately didn't come up with any external hardware results. Can you let me know what hardware you bought, to put me on track?

Thanks for the help, guys.

Tosh

[P.Pilcher]

I think the kit you need may be this one.
I should do one LP at a time (both sides) then cut your CD delete and start again. I've been doing this sort of thing for ages, and when I started spent a considerable sum on some decent digital editing and "declicking/dehissing" software. Such stuff is probably available for free now from the web or at considerably reduced prices, but you will certainly need something like this to enable you to do a decent job.

P.P.

[Tosh McCaber]

Thanks for all the info, guys,

Tosh

[newswatcher]

Hi Tosh, did you see this on your travels?

[Jhieminga]

There are quite a few tutorials on the net about this subject:
- Here is one
- This one is quite extensive and may be a bit over the top for the uninitiated, still there are quite a few good tips in there.