A Treasure Trove of Vinyl in my Dad's closet - Tiki Music

Q quickiki Member Stockton, CA Joined: Dec 29, 2005 Posts: 140	Q quickiki Posted posted on Wed, Sep 9, 2009 9:56 AM JenTiki, it's really not too hard to get vinyl to CD. All you need is a way to connect your turntable to your computer and some freeware/shareware software to record it. I think a company called Griffin had an interface which allowed you to connect a turntable to a Mac which was called an iMic. It was pretty cheap too if I recall. There's also interfaces available for PCs as well. If you can spring for 100 bucks there are a couple of USB turntables out there as well that do a very adequate job and many of those come bundled with software. As for software, it seems the hands-down shareware/freeware software is Audacity (google search for the site). It takes a little bit to noodle the settings the way you like it, but is very deep considering it's basically free. There are also a bunch of filters you can download which can do some interesting things to clean-up the tracks. All this sounds a little tedious, but once you do it a couple of times, it's not that bad. The most time consuming part of the process is just physically recording the vinyl (well, maybe a little hyperbole there). BTW, for all those 78 fanatics out there with old Hawaiian records, Audacity allows you to record them at the 45 speed (since most modern turntables don't have 78), and then converts the recording to the proper speed through software processing. Pretty cool, eh?

JenTiki, it's really not too hard to get vinyl to CD. All you need is a way to connect your turntable to your computer and some freeware/shareware software to record it. I think a company called Griffin had an interface which allowed you to connect a turntable to a Mac which was called an iMic. It was pretty cheap too if I recall. There's also interfaces available for PCs as well. If you can spring for 100 bucks there are a couple of USB turntables out there as well that do a very adequate job and many of those come bundled with software.

As for software, it seems the hands-down shareware/freeware software is Audacity (google search for the site). It takes a little bit to noodle the settings the way you like it, but is very deep considering it's basically free. There are also a bunch of filters you can download which can do some interesting things to clean-up the tracks. All this sounds a little tedious, but once you do it a couple of times, it's not that bad. The most time consuming part of the process is just physically recording the vinyl (well, maybe a little hyperbole there).

BTW, for all those 78 fanatics out there with old Hawaiian records, Audacity allows you to record them at the 45 speed (since most modern turntables don't have 78), and then converts the recording to the proper speed through software processing. Pretty cool, eh?

Post #482326 by quickiki on Wed, Sep 9, 2009 9:56 AM