Vinyl-to-CD: an old man writes . . .

[IanB]

Can anyone tell me whether it's possible - using my reasonably powerful PC - to transfer audio from some of my ancient but well preserved LPs to CD? I have a Traxdata CDR, 2Gigs of spare hard disk space, W98, and a turntable with digital-output preamp.

The software I have acquired - WinonCD and Easy CD Creator - look fine for doing CD-CD copies, but nowhere can I find any help or advice available for an oldie like me to preserve his treasured albums on another medium.

Any tips very gratefully received and acknowledged.


Ian B
Sunderland, England

[Roy]

The line-level input of most sound cards will take the "tape" output of most receivers. It would take a special card to accept your digital output. I believe your software will let you transfer the cuts as files into your HDD. From there you can edit as necessary and program a burn to a CD.

Storage is about 10MB/minute, so you have room for a few LPs at a time.



[This message has been edited by Roy (edited 07-20-99).]

[Ed_S]

According to Adaptec, the deluxe edition of CD Creator includes software to do this, something called CD Spin Doctor. Also instuctions and comp to stereo cable.

http://www.adaptec.com/products/overview/ecdc.html

Never tried doing this, would be interested in the results.

[800XL]

CD SpinDoctor (part of Adaptec CD Creator Deluxe) does help a lot to remove any noises, pops, or hiss when transfering from tape or LPs to CD. You can do most of it with the software you have though. All you need to do is pipe a line level output into your sound card, record each track to a WAV file with some kind of sound editting software, then CD Creator can burn a track from a WAV file. Sound Recorder in Win98 could do the recording, but some better software would help.

I've only done a couple tapes in the past, but Spin Doctor did help cut the hiss and pop and made for better CDs in the end.

[Harryh]

I have a Friend who does alot of this. He has a cheap AMP which he plugs his Turntable into and use the tape output into his soundcard.

He records the entire album as one .WAV file, thens uses COOLedit to chop the album into tracks and remove pops and hiss. What he ends up with is a number of .Wav files which he burns on to a CD. Viola!

Sounds pretty bloody good too!

HarryH

[Willie]

I would definately go with a good audio editor, like COOL EDIT 96. (Available at their WEBsite: www.syntrillium.com) This software is only $50 shareware, and worth it's weight in GOLD! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Record the LP's via the sound card, at 44.1 Khz, 16 bit stereo. Edit them to remove noise (and a good idea to filter anything below 30 Hz, to get rid of turntable rumble, etc.) then save as WAV files. Let your CD software take it from there. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Not having a CD burner, I haven't taken that step, but I certainly HAVE recorded some songs from vinyl into my machine. I compressed them with an MPEG-3 encoder, and now have about 350 songs on the HD, occupying only about 1.5 gigs! (Most were direct digital copies from CD, but a few are from vinyl.) With MPEG-3 compression, songs only use 1 meg per minute of AWESOME sounding STEREO audio. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Willie...