question about recording LP to cd

[derlco]

Hi

First of all I want to say that I'm glad for finally find this kind of forum and I hope I could get some real answers to my problem. Thanks for your help.

well this is the case.

My dad is a 65 year-old man and he love to play with his old music most of it LP's. He had built his technics stereo through the years. The last thing I got was a Sony compact disc recorder (RCD – W500C) so he can save his LP’s music into cd´s. By now he is dealing with his recorder unit, he knows how to used it and he had saved some music. Nevertheless, I think It’s troublesome because is not as fast as a computer could be when the idea is to record from many LP’s to one cd and when the idea is to tag the songs, albums and artist and many other issues. What I have always wanted is to get a brand new desktop (the one I own is a little bit old), get I decent soundcard and software so he could do the same thing easier with a graphic interface without losing sound quality.

Now these are the questions that always came to my mind with this case and I would like to get answers for each one if it is not a problem:

1. if I make him change his way to record from his “record unit” to a computer, is he getting the same sound quality? (this is the most important one to my dad of course !)
2. what are the parameters of a good sound quality?
3. if I use the computer, does the equipment involve in the process make significant differences? For example when I use a soundcard with RCA input or when a just use a RCA-to-jack converter and use the build-in soundcard of a laptop?

I’m sure the “computer way” is the best way to work so…
1. What kind of soundcard can I get to record with a very good sound quality without expending as a PRO?
2. what about getting and external soundcards and any computer (so I have not to worry about configuration) ?
3. what kind of software can I get to record LP’s, make some sound settings, tag the music and burn it? I know that maybe for the tagging and burning is better a second software but..

I’m sorry I know I’m asking a lot but I need to try it.

Thank you so much four your help.

[fmw]

What he has is excellent. I use a Teac standalone CD recorder myself. Then I simply rip the CD-RW on the computer and use them again. I don't think there is any benefit to changing what he does. Just rip his home made CD's to the computer as WAV or Jpeg or whatever suits your fancy.

[fortyseven]

You can do it both ways. You can use an RCA to stereo converter and record it via your onboard soundcard. However, your onboard soundcard is not always the best at converting analogue to digital but I dont know if your dad would be able to tell the difference or not. Otherwise you could buy a cheap ass external interface and use that. On paper it would probably do a better job than the onboard but once again, I dont know if your dad will notice the difference.
Obviously you would need software to do the recording but I doubt you will want to spend hundreds of dollars on software. You could use Audacity which is free.
I recorded some vinyl for my dad a few years ago and I used the then named Cool Edit Pro. It has the useful function of removing clicks and pops so I was able to clean them up very nice for the old man. Once recorded I simply saved them as mp3's and could edit the tags as needed.
I've also seen packages for sale that include software and hardware to do the exact job you want to do; maybe look into that.
Good luck.

[derlco]

thank you so much for your help

now I'm thinking about the external soundcard because we decided to change the desktop (some other reasons....).

what do I need to know before buying this device?

in the moment that I am going to buy an external soundcard, is the hardware and config from the new computer as important as when I am getting an internal soundcard?

which external souncards brands do you recommend? which are the parameters of a soundcard ready to provide good sound quality?

thanks again

[hugo_zair]

Originally Posted by derlco

Hi

First of all I want to say that I'm glad for finally find this kind of forum and I hope I could get some real answers to my problem. Thanks for your help.

well this is the case.

My dad is a 65 year-old man and he love to play with his old music most of it LP's. He had built his technics stereo through the years. The last thing I got was a Sony compact disc recorder (RCD – W500C) so he can save his LP’s music into cd´s. By now he is dealing with his recorder unit, he knows how to used it and he had saved some music. Nevertheless, I think It’s troublesome because is not as fast as a computer could be when the idea is to record from many LP’s to one cd and when the idea is to tag the songs, albums and artist and many other issues. What I have always wanted is to get a brand new desktop (the one I own is a little bit old), get I decent soundcard and software so he could do the same thing easier with a graphic interface without losing sound quality.

Now these are the questions that always came to my mind with this case and I would like to get answers for each one if it is not a problem:

1. if I make him change his way to record from his “record unit” to a computer, is he getting the same sound quality? (this is the most important one to my dad of course !)
2. what are the parameters of a good sound quality?
3. if I use the computer, does the equipment involve in the process make significant differences? For example when I use a soundcard with RCA input or when a just use a RCA-to-jack converter and use the build-in soundcard of a laptop?

I’m sure the “computer way” is the best way to work so…
1. What kind of soundcard can I get to record with a very good sound quality without expending as a PRO?
2. what about getting and external soundcards and any computer (so I have not to worry about configuration) ?
3. what kind of software can I get to record LP’s, make some sound settings, tag the music and burn it? I know that maybe for the tagging and burning is better a second software but..

I’m sorry I know I’m asking a lot but I need to try it.

Thank you so much four your help.

from one 65 year old dad to another First you don't have to worry about your old computer. If it's running stable it will do eat the job. Right back to win98 folk were doing amazing things with audio - and editing video as well.

For software and hardware compatibility thou, it's now simpler to be on something that can run XP. LP transfer is a deathly slow and tedious process because, as you already know, it has to be done in real time. I don't know how the stand-alone equipment he has deals with the issues I'll mention next but the pc route will be more flexible even if it's not faster.

Personally I would recommend one cd per vinyl disc. More protection from later disc failure/loss, easier to catalogue and easier to make content labels. You can easily make complilation afterwards on other cds or rip them to mp3.

Quality. Provided you take the line output ("to tape" on many hifis) and not the pickup (which is very low level and requires equalisation) and feed it to the line in of a soundcard this will be fine. Even an internal soundblaster will be just great for this as it's not being asked to amplify low level signals. If you would be happier with an external on you can get a Soundblaster Live external 5.1 USB card. I got mine on Ebay for £15. None listed today but an alternative is the Toshiba Multimedia Centre which is just the same card repackaged. Don't pay more than £15.

Re Q1, quality. cd are burned using a file type very similar to wav files. at 16 bit resolution and 44.1Khz sample rate. This is the minimum quality usually available on any audio card and it's 100% ok. (it's CD quality !) Mp3's have a range of quality settings starting much lower than CD quality and I wouldn't use them for archiving.

Re Q2.answered above.

ReQ3. Not a lot of difference. A huge amount of patience is required. If you use software, or the standalone, it pays to be around at least half listening to the transfer, listening for groove jumping, patches of "wow" and clicks etc. Also computer glitches. It's surprising what can happen in an half hour recording - disconnection from the internet is a must.

Re Q in your second post. I think I've covered them. Any soundblaster will make good enough stereo recordings thru "line in" to archive to CD. Try you current one and decide for yourself..can dad hear the difference.

As for a method....well most people will settle for one long recording...say in Audacity for example..and chop it up into separate tracks. Save each section separately with the song name.

Watch your levels to avoid clipping. CD's vary a lot in peak level (especially newer ones) so quickly check a bit of each one before going ahead. You can get other software to de'click and denoise but I havn't used any since using the excellent CoolEdit and a plugin mentioned by another poster. No longer available but I just Googled and found this Download MAGIX Audio Cleaning Lab 14 9.01 Free Trial - A powerful audio mastering solution for copying and editing LP and cassette recordings into digital format music files - Softpedia. There is a free trial, It's worth a look as their MusicStudio12 software that I do have works very well.

I found this usefull precis at the same time:
How to Convert Vinyl to CD or MP3 - Soundware.co.uk

Hope this helps a bit...