how to decide what product to convert vinyl

[happyinorbit]

Hi All:
This question has probably been asked a million times, so please dont be upset with me!
I read through some of the forum posts, but all the technical language was starting to make my head spin . Since I was not able to decipher what applied to my situation and what did not, I thought I would start with a fresh question and hope to get some targeted advice.

My son would like a contraption that will convert his old vinyl. He wants this machine to create cd's that he can play on his portable cd player, and also for the cd's to be ripped into ITunes so that he can load them into his IPod.

I am looking for something up to about $150.00, but aside from price...do not know what to look for to ensure the contraption works as my son would like.

I've seen products that covert to cd...but do not know if those cd's will then only play on a pc.

I have also seen products that convert to MP3, but do not know if that means IPod as well..

Any help, suggestions of products that fit the mold, or specifically what I should be looking for when searching for this product would be immensely helpful.

By the way, the Ipod my son has is a Nano. I purchsed it the first year that the colors came out For Christmas 2006. I do not know what generation this makes his IPOD, but do know that when I purchased it, it was the first time they came out with the various colors. His happens to be Red, in case that matters.

Thanks~ Happy

[bobb-mini]

Your son is into vinyl???? at the risk of being politically incorrect, how old are you people?

Now that we took care of the comedic bit.......

Ideally there will be a turntable, with everything integrated, so all u have to do is to mount the record, hit the play+rec button, and walk away. Repeat for how many records u have, then at the end plug in your laptop into the gadget's built-in computer port, and with a few mouse-click, BAM, all your stuff are transferred into iTunes. My feeling is, if such thing exists, $150 wont be enuff, but hey try Googling see what happends.

But since we don't have all day, lets jump directly to what mostly is what I think it's going to happend.

You plug in your computer aux-in port into your receiver, play your records, and use any number of recording application on your computer. At the end of playing a record, the computer has captured a .WAV file, then use any .WAV -> .MP3 converter. Better recording software will output directly to MP3 but u will probly have to pay for that. Then repeat process infinitum until you obtain all MP3 and at that time just tell iTunes, "here, put these into the library."

Second method extremely time consuming but it's free. Hope those vinyl are worth it.

[S2_Mac]

The $150 tables are OK for making lo-res mp3s, and pretty seamless (so I hear). Also, dak.com has a "your turntable, our mixer/software" deal for $70. Unfortunately, the step up from there is about $1,700 last time I checked.

The OP should check out Hyprogen Audio forums; MacInTouch.com has some good reader reports on this stuff as well (applies to PCs as well as Macs). Maybe convertfromvinyl.com would make a good starting point; Audacity's not a bad entry-level tool. Bottom line, it takes a bit of cash to do it well, and there's a learning curve for handling the pop/scratch filters and such...

It's just me (to whom vinyl is precious), but converting to MP3 is just wrong -- convert to lossless so that you never have to do it again.

[bobb-mini]

Just a sidebar.

I recently trashed all my vinyls, about 30 of them, not a huge collection. There were a few that were mastered particularly good, but when I compare to the CD version, the CD always wins in dynamic range. The vinyl version had appeared to me warmer, but only on rarely nostagic occasions. For practical reasons, I've decided to move on... lots of new things to sample... social networking, texting (just started to, I mean regularly!), Facebook (hey if Obama says it's OK, am not gonna be left behind!).

[happyinorbit]

I am grateful for all the feedback so far, and will follow up on the suggestions.
Regarding the crack at our age; my son is 14 and very into his obscure music, some of which he can only get on vinyl. I gave up on vinyl when cds' were invented, so I find it interesting he is attracted to a technology that has not been a prevalent medium in his entire lifetime! I know he also prefers to hear this music on vinyl, but cant take his record player on the go...such as long road trips with his sister, where dark, Norwegian, black metal is preferable to listening to her. And on that note, I probably dont have to cover the fact that distortion or clarity is not of huge issue. Since he listens to his music at an intolerable decibel, of which I would consider unintelligible, distorted jibberish anyway, the lack of clarity is probably a bonus!

[honeybee1236]

Another method that will work: if you have a DVD recorder then you can use it to record audio. What I am in the process of doing is using what I already have at home for this process.

I used an audio cable and plugged it into the headphone jack of my stereo and the red/white end into the audio jacks of my DVD recorder. While the album is playing I record it along with the video I have on my iPod which was also plugged into my TV. Then rip the DVD and separated the audio.

I was adding audio to some video because a family member purchase a memory card that recorded the video but not audio. So I'm adding music to it but decided to test out using albums I needed to transfer to CD. This was the cheapest way to do the transfer since I don't have a whole lot of albums. Most of my albums I was able to buy the CD or download for but some are not available in digital format only vinyl.

[Cold Irons]

Couple of additions to what is already here (and, yes, I still have my 300-400 LPs in a cabinet in the back room ):

1) I've done a bunch of vinyl via my existing turntable - running output (tape out) from audio receiver to PC sound card input. As above, there are a number of applications that will read this audio card & record a WAVE (or other format) to the PC. Most of these utilities do pop & scratch removal, etc. Problem here is that you are limited by the Analog-to-Digital conversion done by your sound card - most are not that good (and a lot are real crappy).

2) Lately, I've gotten lazy. When I've got an analog source (cassette tape, LP) that I need to get to the PC, I just record it to the DVD recorder conneted to my audio system, then take that DVD to the PC & rip the audio & go from there.

If you've already got a turntable & DVD recorder, maybe #2 will work easier for you.

[Cold Irons]

Oops... I see honeybee beat me to the DVD recorder suggestion......

[skruggie]

resurrecting an old thread as I just purchased a record player/cassette deck stereo for the same purpose - to transfer vinyl and cassette to mp3.

Imic does the trick from everything I am reading, it is supposed to work better than a direct audio connection with the standard RCA jack.

I am going to be transferring over a couple hundred records and cassettes when all is said and done. I prefer the analog sound to digital, to me it sounds warmer and closer to the intent of the music for pre-early 1990's recordings.