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Friday, November 26. 2010

Have any readers used these?

LP-CD turntables?

Seems to me it would be a good motivation to listen to one's dusty LP collection while putting them on CD where they belong.

Pic is this one.

Lots of reviews of these things say that they do not work well. I'd be concerned about the coordination of the endings of the LP and the CD.

Posted by Bird Dog in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 12:06 | Comments (12) | Trackbacks (0)

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I have not used one of the USB turntables yet, but plan on it in the near future. What I would do is just record all of the LP with the software provided, place it on the hard drive and split the tracks using the same software. That way any noises, such as pops and clicks can be edited out.

#1 Stan25 on 2010-11-26 13:10 (Reply)

I have a similar device. Mine is older and connects to my computer. I also once had one that wored like our old cassette recorders. That was made by Philips. Haven't seen anything like it in years. The software will record to disc each side as one track. There will be some manual way to insert starts and stops, either while recording or afterwards like Stan mentions.

Unlike Stan who seems to prefer clean recordings, those pops and clicks bring back fond memories for me, so I leave them in.

Kind of off topic: back when we bought vinyl, we had not even heard the word license associated with an LP. Since we have the license in the form of an LP, I don't really see why I should have to purchase another license just because of a format change/upgrade.

I'm sure you already know, but if not have Dr. Mercury show you how to find music you own in the binary newsgroups. It can be a much easier way to get your old vinyl in the MP3 format.

#2 Mike (Link) on 2010-11-26 15:00 (Reply)

I bought an M-Audio Audiophile USB.
http://www.core-sound.com/audiophile_usb/1.php

Discontinued, but available used. There must be other similar stuff around.

Connect stereo monitor out (RCA) to input of M-Audio.
USB from M-Audio to PC.

Use free Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) to record sound and create MP3s.

The only problem is that you have to wait while the LP plays (and the PC records). You can then increase the sound levels and/or remove pops, etc...

There IS a feature to slow down a recording made at 45 RPM (not tried)...

#3 EarlW on 2010-11-26 15:51 (Reply)

I second EarlW on Audacity. It is a great recording program - intuitive and easy to use. I've been using it for a year or two now and really like it - better than any other "pro" level audio software I have tried or played with including Adobe's Audition 3 and Apple 's Final Cut. And the best part - IT'S FREE!!! Free's for me.

There are two issues here - how much quality do you want and how "techie" do you want to be?

Turntable output is around .01 volt - a cd player, iPod, mp3 player etc., is around 1 volt. To get a proper recording level, you need to preamp the turntable output to at least .5 volt to get decent audio transcription but not high level transcription. So what you are getting isn't a very good signal and you get some loss in terms of "presence".

Also you have to consider sampling rate which you can control with the software.

The best alternative is this - which I used to transcribe my LP collection to CD [url=http://www.needledoctor.com/Audio-Technica-LP60-Fully-Automatic-Turntable-with-Switchable-Phono-Pre-amp_2?sc=2&category=12798]Audio-Technica LP60[/]. In effect, you have exactly the same thing only better audio.

Just my opinion.

#3.1 Tom Francis on 2010-11-26 16:18 (Reply)

I use a Numark TTUSB turntable and Audacity and get splendid results. It's a little labor intensive, but you forget all about that when you hear your old vinyl music on your iPod.
The Numark USB turntable can be found for as little as $50.

#4 The Oracle (Link) on 2010-11-26 17:38 (Reply)

I'd worry most about the turntable wearing the records, which is a reason to get a high quality stylus and tone arm.

#5 rhhardin (Link) on 2010-11-27 04:30 (Reply)

Just tried audacity - it is very expensive in HD usage on hours-long .mp3 files, quickly claiming 2gb in temporary files that it doesn't delete. You have to hunt them down

C:Documents and Settings/[user]/Local Settings/Temp/audicity_1_2_temp/*

1500 files

I'll stick with my Total Recorder (not free) for trimming Imus programs, I guess.

#6 rhhardin (Link) on 2010-11-27 05:58 (Reply)

That's interesting. Did you try it on smaller size mp3s?

#6.1 Tom Francis on 2010-11-27 08:13 (Reply)

I'm sure it's fine on smaller files.

Apparently it converts to its internal format in 1mb chunks (rather than keeping everything in RAM, which ought to be the default these days), and if you have lots of MB in your file, its internal format conversions take huge amounts of space.

It would not hurt to hunt around in the vicinity of the named directory, though, to see how much has accumulated there.

I don't know its cleanup policies. They may be awful.

#6.1.1 rhhardin (Link) on 2010-11-27 08:18 (Reply)

BD -

Go back to your link, above, read the first review down near the bottom of the page. You'll be convinced there's no better way to spend your money.

Then take a big shot of Jack Daniels for courage and read the second review.
______________________________________

There are a number of factors going on. Some were mentioned above, but there's one huge negative one that everyone misses until they actually do it. Now that I've got some time again (it's been a busy month), I'll do a post on the subject, then you can decide. Look for it soon.

#7 Dr. Mercury (Link) on 2010-11-27 08:23 (Reply)

I just bought (yesterday) a Roxio gizwidget which takes the standard RCA left/right outputs from a stereo, puts them through an A/D converter, and plugs into a PC via a USB port. It's supposed to include software for click/pop reduction and track-marking. That way I can use my PC's CD read/write drive to move the LP's to CD.

Haven't even opened the box yet, but I'm hopeful.

#8 Blackwing1 on 2010-11-29 10:53 (Reply)

Be sure to let us know how it works out. I'd be particularly interested in the noise filter. Does it just attack clicks & pops or does it also attack the background hiss? And if it cuts out the hiss, does it also cut out some of the highs in the music? That's the biggest problem with the standard audio editors.

#8.1 Dr. Mercury (Link) on 2010-11-29 10:58 (Reply)

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Friday, November 26. 2010

Have any readers used these?