Convert Vinyl Records to CD

It would have been nice to have more insight into the sound quality produced. The warmth of the vinyls are due to higher than 24 bits 44 kHz quality of CD's or MP3 files.
To get something much closer to the real vinyl sound, one would use 32 bits and 196 kHz.
So before digitalizing the vinyls, it is advisable to look at the sound quality.
Once I tried to copy a vinyl to a CD quality sound and copy a vinyl using a video cassette (VHS) using an average video recorder. The sound was obviously better on the video cassette despite it's being analog.

As a subscriber to these pages, I am delighted that this subject has been technically analysed by Bob. There have been so many poor examples of detail over time on this subject that based on what I have seen on these pages to date, I feel confidetn that the recommendations enclosed above will be worthy of careful reading.

It is a subject that interests me as I have a collection of perfect records justifying some effort to keep them alive. I will read and digest. Many thanks

Regarding the hookup between your turntable and your preamp, Bob wrote, "Connect the color-coded outputs from the turntable to the corresponding inputs on the stereo receiver using a stereo RCA cable, ideally one that includes a third wire with U-shaped connectors that can be secured to grounding terminal screws on each component."

That third wire does NOT need to be part of the cable. Any piece of wire - a piece of lamp cord, for example - will do. There won't be much amperage traveling through that wire, so don't worry whether you touch it or not.

How do you know if you need that third wire? You'll know! When you're playing your record, if you hear a loud hum, try using a piece of wire to connect the chassis of your turntable to a metal part on the back of your amplifier. Chances are excellent the hum will intantly disappear. That's how you know.

Alternatively, you might eliminate the hum by giving the AC plug of your amp OR your turntable (but not both) a half-twist before plugging it in to house current. Sometimes that eliminates the hum.

I agree with Luc. Those who still listen to vinyl on a regular basis have good reasons. As the software edits out "white" noise, maybe it's editing out the magic as well. I have a question from ignorance. My CDs don't seem to have aged well either. So I'm missing out the CD step and storing my records straight on to a hard drive. Are CDs better in any way? For best quality, does it matter what format I use? Luc implies MP3 is not ideal. And which software in the free or amateur price range gives the best quality?

I'd like to know more about which of the units is best. Also, how do these units handle warped or scratched LPs? Can Audacity be easily used to help eliminate the 'noise?'

I bought the DAK system a couple years ago and think it is simply fantastic. I'm not a professional type listener, but to me it sounds better than what I remember the vinyl sounded like. I hooked the DAK hardware to the earphone jack output of my amp and therefore can record records, tapes or any other thing I play through my amp. DAK also gives you a DePopper program that, to me, is the real meat of the whole system. It cleaned up all the scratches and pops from about 50 albums that I copied and the output now is amazing. I've used this to create regular CDs and MP3 CDs. This was the best audio equipment I have purchased in quite some time!

I bought a turntable similar to the ION pictured in your article, except that it converted to USB file, not to CD. The problem was that the machine has no volume control and I couldn't find any way to change the volume on the software provided with the machine. The resulting USB files are a lot softer than my CDs.

EDITOR'S NOTE: USB files? Maybe you're thinking of MP3 files?

Thank you very much for informative article with helpful hints. While reading your article I checked the price of Teac LP-R450 here in Japan and it is more than twice as compare to what you have mentioned (about US$250).

CDs are also being faded out. Isn't it better to record the LPs to mp3 or better yet to flavor files and store on a portable disc drive or mp3 player?

I have many grand old LP albums that I haven't listened to in years for the exact reasons you mentioned. Thank you for the detailed how-to description.

Y'know Bob, the one thing I never seem to see with any turntables anymore is stylus weight, or wow and flutter, or facts relating to stylus adjustments and their importance to recording from vinyl. I sure do miss my old Technics direct drive....

I feel obligated to let everyone know that - contrary to what Bob has said - vinyl has not "faded away". More new vinyl was sold in 2010 than any year since 1992. New albums are available on vinyl, and interest in used albums is strong. Quite a few manufacturers make good turntables for playing your records (not just transferring them to digital). You can get new cartridges for old turntables anywhere from under $20 to several thousand. Vinyl is alive and well!

The article and comments are very informative. I have the machines and software to import the music. A big problem is that records are often dusty. What is the best way to clean a record before trying to copy it? I had a dust bug but the bristles have all been eaten. Starting with a clean record should give the best final results.

A couple of points on the equipment.

If you're going to get a turntable don't under any circumstances get a unit with a ceramic stylus. The sound quality will be inferior, the stylus will damage your records in just a few playings, and a ceramic stylus is a prime indicator that the turntable is of mediocre quality at best.

If you're going to convert to digital and then store or dispose of your records, get a used good quality turntable from Craig's list or elsewhere, do your conversions, and then sell the turntable for what about what you paid for it. The Technics SL-1200 is the most widely available reference-quality unit and with a little patience you can usually find a used one for a couple of hundred dollars. The SL-1200 also commands a good resale value. You don't have to become an audiophile or spend many hundreds of dollars for quality, but make sure the whatever unit you get has an elliptical diamond stylus for good quality conversions.

If you want to get a new unit without spending too much money, the $169 DAK unit is quite acceptable, and is far above the commonly available USB turntables.

By the way, if you're converting vinyl using an external turntable, you need a preamplifier with a "phono-in", while if you're converting from cassette tape, you need a preamp with a "line-in". The signal from a turntable's stylus is non-linear based on frequency and the "phono-in" circuitry adjusts the signal to make it linear. The "line-in" circuitry does linear preamplification.

I got my phono preamp from phonopreamps.com/ many years ago. The preamp finally died last year and phonopreamps.com/ diagnosed the unit and replaced a failing op-amp at reasonable cost. They're good folks.

I'm also a firm believer in using an external audio to USB converter rather than trying to use a sound card. With an external unit you eliminate any possibility of ground loop noise as well as quality issues you may have if you have a low end audio card or basic built-in audio. My choice of converter is the Xitel InPort, great audio quality and it's worked flawlessly for many years. Griffin also make a great unit, the iMic, and there are many others.

Although the free Audacity software can do track splitting and other audio editing as needed, I suggest looking at Spin It Again, which makes ripping, separating and editing almost effortless. Definitely worth the price if yo have more than a few records or cassettes to convert.

Forget RCA plugs. Most old integrated turntables have a 1/4" stereo headphone jack.
Use :
radioshack 1/8" Stereo Jack to 1/4" Stereo Plug Headphone Adapter
Model:274-367 | Catalog #: 274-367 $4.99
Then you can use 1/8" male/male plug from your turntable to the INPUT on your computer.

I purchased a unit to convert my albums to disk some time ago. The pops and crackles were so loud on the recording I just could not listen to the digital recordings. Is there anyway to cut the the noise? I have a huge album collection and don't want to part with it but I would like to convert it to digital format.

Re noise reduction, many audio editing products either have built-in noise reduction filtering or have the capability to load add-ins. As an example, Spin It Again (SIA) has a number of sophisticated noise reduction capabilities built in as well as the capability to incorporate standard vst plug-ins. The DAK solution also has intelligent noise reduction, although with somewhat less sophistication than SIA. If you're looking for afree solution, Audacity has capabilities to incorporate filtering, although it's not a plug and play solution and you're more likely to have to buy a plug-in since free vst plug-ins tend to be more basic in function.

One type of noise that either hardware or software filters generally don't do well at is ground loop hum, but you can eliminate that by configuring your hardware correctly. Make sure all components are properly grounded to each other and to earth, and consider converting audio to USB with an external device rather than your computer's sound card.

Needless to say the stand-alone units don't incorporate noise reduction. You'll need to go with a computer-based solution to get sophisticated algorithm-based filtering. Stand-alone units are generally limited to simple high-pass and low-pass filters, which severely degrade audio quality or they lack filtering altogether.

Thanks for the great roundup. I tried the DAK system and was generally pleased with the results. The DePopper really cleaned things up in most cases, but can be a little unpredictable if you start tweaking the option settings.

I ended up going with Audacity because it's free and it gives you more options for MP3 encoding such as variable bit rate encoding.