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Converting Audio from Vinyl to MP3?
superpat asks: "My father-in-law recently disposed of his turntable, and I foolishly volunteered to rip his vinyl from my turntable to CDs. The process seems to be: rip to WAV -> process to remove surface noise, find track boundaries, encode as MP3 -> burn CD. Presumably I can use sound recorder to rip from the line in port to a WAV (I'm on Windows ME, unfortunately), and I have RealJukebox with Roxio CD Creator to do the last step. Now there seems an amazing variety of software available to do the middle stage, from comprehensive general purpose sound processing packages such as Soundforge to special purpose apps such as LP Ripper. Has anybody has any success with this process? Any recommendations?" Has anyone had luck with a specific program or set of programs that might make this process any easier, regardless of OS?
Only question is why would you encode to mp3s before burning first. That will only decrease the sound quality. Burn straight from the wav files. Then encode to mp3 if you want to keep copies on your computer (and don't have the space to leave huge wav files)
...for several reasons already pointed out by other posters. If you absolutely insist, however, on ripping from the vinyl you have, then you should probably eliminate the step about proccessing out all the surface noise after ripping. Process it out *first* by cleaning the records. Record cleaners aren't terribly expensive (as little as $99 for decent cleaner, last time I looked) and they make a huge difference in sound quality. (Of course, that statement doesn't apply to those stupid felt-like pads/brushes that you wipe across the surface of the record. They only move the dust and pet dander around. Get a proper vacuum-type cleaner that uses a wet cleaning solution, use it properly, and you'll be amazed at just how quiet vinyl can be.)
Garbage in is garbage out. So get rid of some/most of the garbage before you ever put it into digital form. Clean those records!