Slashdot Mirror
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)
Not tried it myself but there was an article on this on O'Rielly network:/ 05 /record_cd.html
http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2001/01
Which reccomended Gramofile:
http://panic.et.tudelft.nl/~costar/gramofile/
Don't be put off by the Linux-centric title - gramofile works on DOS/Windows too. Looks to be more fully featured than LPRipper and costs a whole heap less (ie nothing) than SoundForge _plus the noise reduction plugin_ ($290 on top of the cost of soundforge).
At that price it's got to be worth a go!
If you must sample the LPs, do *not* use Sound Recorder. It does not have the necessary granularity to record accurate sound, and you *will* end up with terrible skips and pops. Use a specialized audio editing program like SoundForge or CoolEdit. Trust me on this one.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
...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!
Just as a warning, most turntables do not output the same signal stength as a line-in is expecting. If you can, connect the turntable to a tuner or pre-amp that has an input jack labled "Phono" (which is probably wired to accept the lower phono signal) and then use one of the Rec outputs from the tuner to go into your computer. Otherwise, your recordings are going to sound even worse.
My problem was that I grew up listening to Firestone Christmas albums from the '60s (I listened to them in my youth in the 70s and 80s). Anyway, they're in short supply, and have not been transferred to CD. But I wanted my siblings and parents to have copies on CD. Unfortunately, I have not found a nice Linux solution yet, but here goes:
Buy a copy of CoolEdit 2000 and the Audio Cleanup tool. This will run you a total of about $90, but well worth it. CE2000 is $60, with the cleanup tool being about $30. You can demo both CE2000 and the cleanup tool to see how they work for you. The visualization is pretty nice too, as you can quickly see the big pops or clicks in the audio.
Use something other than your laptop to record the audio from the turntable (be sure it goes through an RIAA amp on the way). Most laptops have only mono input. I used my Nomad Jukebox to record to WAV format. Be sure you crank the gain up a bit.
I recorded a full album side per WAV, making really large files. Drop said files into CoolEdit 2000, then use the audio cleanup tool to filter out the clicks and pops. This takes about 15 minutes per WAV file. Other pops/clicks can be handled if you find them, but CE2000's algorithm is pretty good.
Once you have that, normalize the volume, then split each song into separate WAV files.
You now have raw WAV files you can either burn directly to CD, or convert to MP3. Don't convert to MP3, then burn, as you lose some of the quality (yeah yeah, they were crappy vinyl first...)
You plug the turntable to your PC's line-in, start gramofile, which will begin recording when it hears sound and create a big wav per side. It then finds the silence spots to break into tracks, has a large number of filters for noice reduction, volume normalization and others, and you can run the resulting wavs through oggenc or whatever encoder you want. It's pretty cool, free as in willy, works on linux, what else do you want, a GUI?
Well, when I used it, it had no Gui (had a text-mode interactive interface, bit ugly, but more than sufficient). Recommended.
You do know that you can't just patch the turntable into the card's line in. You need a pre-amp to boost (and equalize) the turntable's output to line level. Patching the turntable into an amp and taking the signal from the tape outputs should suffice.
In addition to pops and clicks, keep an ear out for subsonic artifacts (rumble) and make sure your turntable is physically isolated from the speakers to prevent feedback.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank