Put The Needle To The Record

[The Computer Audiophile]

Alright, I'll put the needle to the record and kick this forum off. I originally thought this topic would never take off and that very few people were interested in this. I have since learned otherwise and I am excited to have a great discussion about converting vinyl to digital music that sounds as good as possible. I know we have another topic about this but since we have a whole forum dedicated to this now we will start over fresh.

 

Who has done vinyl to digital conversions? How many albums? What software? What hardware?

 

Many people are wondering about this!

 

[Lord Chaos]

Over the years I've been doing LP transfers, I've done about 25. The reasons vary. Some of the records won't, I believe, make it to CD. Some of them just sound really good so I see no reason to buy the CD.

 

In some cases the commercial CD has a problem, such as Mike Oldfield's "Incantations." To make this fit on the then-current 72-minute CD they trimmed some of the music off. So, I looked around and got a clean copy of the double-LP.

 

Over the years I've been surprised. Charlie Dore's "Where To Now" came out on CD, so I checked it and replaced my LP transfer. Same for Renaissance's "Novella." Just recently the "Dark Crystal" soundtrack came out on CD, so I retired another LP transfer.

 

One nice aspect of LP transfers is that they're once-for-all, so getting physical with the record doesn't matter. Many records are "swingers," not having the hold centered for at least one side, and I can fix this by carving out the hole a bit and manually centering the side. I check for centering by putting a bottle of cleaning fluid by the tone arm and watching the gap. If anyone ever comes out with software to fix this I'll be all over it.

 

I do cassette transfers too, of "bootleg" tapes and other irreplaceables. So far I'm doing all of this with a lash-up of equipment that's described on the "hardware" thread. I'm not using any software other than Itunes to import the final CD.