What is the best way to make MP3s for playback on my RioCar from my album(vinyl) collection?

I'd like to use my turntable connected to my PC in order to remove the clicks, hiss, etc noise on the albums. I'd also like this program to do this automatically if possible.

Essentially, I am looking for the program which is the best and the easiest to use for this purpose.

Thanks for your help and suggestions!

Take Care,
merc
PS - I searched in the FAQ but didn't find anything specific to recording LPs?

Greetings!

While not in the FAQ, this question has come up a few times. Check out this thread for some best practices.

Thanks Paul.
I searched for turntable and MP3 but didn't see this thread.

Looks like AudioTools will do the trick.

I've always used CoolEdit for that purpose. Very cool program, and very easy to use. It isn't free though.

Note : I've only just found out now that Syntrillium (the company that made CoolEdit) has been bought by Adobe. It seems that the CoolEdit software bundle still exists, but that it's now called Adobe Audition 1.5.
http://www.adobe.com/special/products/audition/syntrillium.html

And, on that same thought, Sound Forge has been purchased by (shudder) Sony...

What is the best way to make MP3s for playback on my RioCar from my album(vinyl) collection?

Purchase them on CD.

I'm serious.

Remember that CDs have greater potential dynamic range and frequency response than LPs. Back when LPs were made, they knew the limitations of the playback equipment, and the LPs were mastered with those limitations in mind. So LPs are EQ'd and compressed a lot worse than a CD would be. An album that's been remastered specifically for CD will usually sound significantly better.

Also keep in mind that when a record company remasters an old recording for a CD, they are using the original master tapes going straight into a digital system at a multimillion dollar mastering facility. So there is much more direct sound reproduction without the pops, wow/flutter, overdrive distortion, level problems, etc., that you're going to run into when trying to grab an LP with your cheap $20.00 sound card. Not only that, but the mastering engineer doing the job is a professional who knows what he's doing and has many years of experience at it. You, on the other hand, had to ask on a BBS how to plug a record player into a computer.

Weren't you the guy worried about the quality level of your MP3s? Surely you know the concept of garbage-in-garbage-out. You try to run your beloved LPs through a cheap PC sound card and you're not going to be happy with the results.

Note: Above discussion is moot when referring to an LP that isn't available in CD form. In this case, you can attempt soundcard sampling, but it's going to take a learning curve on your part before you can start to get something that sounds like what you want it to sound like.

Hmmm! Can't fault your reasoning, but I took a rather different approach:
Make quick, straight run, rough copies, using no filters and gizmos, but tag them properly, so that you have them in your MP3, or whatever, collection. This gives you the chance to see which ones you really want:

a. Why the hell did I ever like this?
b. That's really great, I haven't heard it in years.

Then, over a period of months, without getting bored by rushing in to wall to wall vinyl cleaning, you can decide which CD's to seek out and buy, and which to spend time editing. Then keep the rest just for reference purposes.

Saves a lot of time working on stuff you'll probably never listen to. In a lot of cases, I've just picked the odd track from an old album and really polished it up and left the rest alone.

........and you're never going to be satisfied with anything that you've been keeping on cassette, even if you used the best chrome tapes on a fantastic Nakiamachi CD deck!

Oh, and I have a back catalogue rule, never spend more than £5.00 a CD, if it's not in this clearout, leave it on your list and come back for the next one: If it's twenty years since you heard it on vinyl, six months to a year isn't going to hurt!!!!

> your cheap $20.00 sound card.

Keeping things in perspective.. that "cheap" sound card is likely to be at least as good as the original recording equipment was for LPs of the 60s or 70s..

Cheers

The quality issues aside, the LP to soundcard route also means that you'll be splitting .wav files into tracks by hand (not much fun) and typing in all your tag information instead of merely error-checking the data downloaded from CDDB et. al. by your ripping/encoding software. If you have a lot of time and enjoy doing this sort of thing, great, but it is time consuming.

-Zeke

Keeping things in perspective.. that "cheap" sound card is likely to be at least as good as the original recording equipment was for LPs of the 60s or 70s..

I respectfully disagree. Sure a PC sound card is more technologically advanced than the mixing equipment they used at the time, but its analog stages are not necessarily higher quality.

Recording engineers from 30 or 40 years ago were not cavemen. They knew what THD means, they knew what a noise floor was, they knew how to make good clean recordings with what they had. And so did the people making the equipment. They knew how to build the equipment to provide the best recordings with the least amount of noise possible. Most PC sound cards don't have those kinds of specs. Ask anyone in the business of home recording. You shouldn't do home recording with a soundblaster (although I've done it in a pinch, I'm embarrassed to admit).

I agree, some of the best sounding kit I've heard is at least 20 years old if not more. I have a Studer A807 Mk II tape machine at home which is still my reference recorder.

you'll be splitting .wav files into tracks by hand

Audiotools splits your analog recording into tracks, it's not perfect, but very near, if you do a little adjusting first to match the background noise level on your set up.

I agree, some of the best sounding kit I've heard is at least 20 years old if not more

Oh no, you've started me off on the, must have a Revox line of thinking again!

Assuming the LP recording isn't much different time-wise from the CD version, you could also use a .cue file for the album to cut up the tracks with a reasonable mp3 splitter.

Where do you get the .cue files? I've only split up a few files - and these were ~30 minute .mp3's. I used the tools available in Nero (as that's what I've got) to modify the files into songs & commentary (it was an old radio show of swing tunes for my grandmother) and broke out the tracks that way before burning to Audio CD. It wasn't much fun, but Grandma deserves good CD's!

So, say I have a lot of these old radio show .mp3's (I do, perhaps 20), what tools automate this process, and do some of them work w/o decoding to WAV and then back to mp3?

-Zeke

FreeDB Easy Navigator is great for creating cue files. You can use it to find the album you're interested in and then save the track info out to a cue sheet. Or you can make the cue files yourself. The format is very simple. Once you create one with Easy Navigator, you can see what the format is.

As far as splitters go, there are a ton out there. A google search for wav splitter gave me CD Wave which looks like it's perfect for the job. I've only ever split mp3s, though. I've used MP3 Splitter & Joiner in the past with success.

Edit: Ah, I didn't read your post very carefully. You weren't interested in splitting WAVs, so MP3 Splitter & Joiner is exactly what you'll want. CD Wave looks pretty cool, too, though.

Audiograbber (http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/) has the ability to record from the soundcard to mp3, detects track start/end etc. I've used it to encode a CD that had a particulally nasty copy protection I couldn't rip directly

Hi Everyone. I've just discovered the Empeg devices and this wonderful forum and have already received help from members here.

I too am here because I want to transcribe my vinyl collection for listening in the car.

But I can't read some of the comments above without saying something.

There seems to be an assumption that anything old is inferior - 60s tape machines and vinyl. Well I listen to vinyl at home out of preference to CD or MP3. Whatever technical arguments you throw at me, it just sounds better to my ears - more detailed, more 'realistic' and natural. Yes, there is hiss, pops, clicks etc and I understand anyone weaned in a digital era might find this alarming but I grew up with LPs and my brain filters these out. I also know that *some* recordings were manipulated to fit the technical limitations of LP but the underlying quality to me sounds better. This opinion has been formed from over 20 years listening to (home) hi-fi systems, some of them (often unjustifiably) costing huge amounts of money, but also some of the best kit out there.

I don't want to get into a technical debate - I am quite open to the possibility that vinyl's 'superiority' is some kind of 'nice' distortion. In fact, when I record vinyl to digital, the recording often sounds better to me than an original CD of the same music. My own opinion is that both systems have flaws but vinyl’s are easier on the ear.

If this makes you recoil with laughter, can I suggest trying some of my WAV files rather than starting a technical debate.

I hope this won't make all you nice people shy away from helping me!

Out of curiosity, do you find this to be true with all music, or just a certain set, or do you only listen to one kind of music, or what?

In general, it applies accross the board but there are variations from title to title. I don't listen to a lot of classical and many people who do say the noise on vinyl is a showstopper which I can understand. Also, a lot of music especially pop sounds bad on any medium to me. Interestingly, some of the worst sounding vinyl comes from the early 80s when CD was becoming popular.

I agree with tfabris when he says garbage in, garbage out just not what is garbage!

Has anyone seen that show "How It's Made?" They had a segment about how LPs are made, from the lacquer blanks, to the record lathe and on to the actual pressing. It was very interesting to watch. It seems that at least at that facility, that the lacquer master was being produced from a digital source.

Stu

This is an interesting article on CD reproduction of high-frequency noise, especially the graph. I hadn't realized that the approximation was that far off.