Disclaimer: I am not looking for this information in order to commit piracy, or to sell copies of anything
I would like to do this as a Christmas present for my mother. I thought about doing it last year, but it was already mid-December and I didn’t have time to do it.
The record is called “The Little Star of Bethlehem”, narrated by Kenny Bowers, Story by Paul Tripp. It’s a really cute story about how the angels are searching the heavens for the perfect star to give to the baby Jesus as a birthday present. My mother has had the record ever since she was a kid, and it’s really sentimental for her. We have always listened to the record every Christmas morning after opening the presents (even though we’re not particularly religious - it’s just a nice story).
Anyways, I was wondering if it is possible to copy track(s) from a vinyl record to a CD. Unfortunately, our record player died during the last year, so I no longer have one at home. I do have a CD burner on my computer.
I don’t know if not having a record player would be an impediment to this plan, since I couldn’t have hooked the record player directly into the computer.
Is this idea at all feasible? Is there somewhere I can go to have them transfer it onto a CD?
I’ve tried googling the record title to see if they sell it on CD’s, to no avail - there’s tons of hits for “Little Star of Bethlehem”, but none if you include “Kenny Bowers” or “Paul Tripp”.
Any help/ideas would be appreciated… or am I just SOL?
There are services that will copy the albums to CD. They ain’t cheap! I remember seeing one company offering various levels of service from straight copying with no enhancements all the way up to cleaning up the sound (removing pops & clicks, etc) and making covers and booklets.
Do you have any friends with a turntable?
connect amp/receiver ‘line out’ or ‘rec out’ to ‘line in’ on sound card
start sound recording software - look under cd burning package or sound card package - they often have such an application.
click ‘record’
play record
save as .wav
burn audio CD from .wav
some packages (Adaptec CD Creator Deluxe (spin doctor)) can detect the silence between the cuts, and split the recording into separate tracks - nice touch.
I copied all my albums to MP3 a few years ago (actually, I copied them directly to CD, not wanting the lousy MP3 quality).
Basically, you need a sound card with analog inputs, probably with RCA-type jacks. Get your hands on a phono player, and plug its cables into your sound card. There’s probably a ‘ground’ wire as well - attach that securely to your PC’s chassis to prevent hum.
Then you’ll need a program to record the input on your analog ports to your hard drive as WAV files. Your sound card probably came with one, and I’m sure there are free ones around on the net. I used Sound Forge, a commercial program, which also has some great filters for removing pops and hiss and such. I copied the albums to directories on the hard drive, cleaned them up, then used my CD burner’s audio CD creator to transfer the WAV files directly to the CD.
If you want the files as MP3, you need to get an MP3 encoder. A really good cheap one is called “LAME”, and it’s available all over the web. Just go to Google and search for “LAME Mp3” and you should find it.
It’s a fairly tedious process, but I’m glad I did it, because many of my albums have never been released on CD and I didn’t want to have to keep a turntable in my audio rack any more.
HappyHeathen makes a good point which I overlooked: You have to make sure the inputs your using are correct. Most soundcards won’t accept a turntable’s inputs directly - you need a preamp. So his solution is best - connect the turntable to your stereo receiver and use the line outs to connect to your sound card.
I’ve just gotten into this lately and it’s pretty easy. Just run a set of cables from the “tape out” of your receiver to the “line in” of your computer’s sound card. You’ll need a special cable, but they are available at Radio Shack.
You should have some sort of software that will record from the line in jack. I’ve been using Movie Maker and using the “audio only” part. I have had great sucess in copying tons of old vinyl. There are programs like Cool Edit, which will let you clean up the recordings, but if you don’t plan on doing this a lot, it will probably not be worth the money.
Whatever program you use, remember to shut down any running program that could access the hard drive while you are recording. It could cause the recording to “hiccup”. Such programs would be antivirus software or screensavers.
If you have Roxio’s Easy CD Creator 5, you can use the Sound Editor to trim the excess bits off the recording. I usually start and stop recording a few seconds before and after the actual song.
Hit the pawnshops or flea markets in your area for an inexpensive turntable. As a last resort, you can pick one up at Circuit City for $80-100.
Hook up your turntable to your reciever, your reciever to your sound card, and get a freeware app that’ll let you record .wav files. Like Simple MP3 Maker.
Play your album, hit “record” in your wava recorder, save the files, then burn them to disk. Easy.
If you want better quality, you can spend more money on turntables and software.
Transferring vinyl to CD has been addressed on this board in previous threads. Do a search for additional information. You will definitely need a turntable, an amplifier (or pre-amp, or receiver with phono input), a sound card and software to do this. I bet you could find a friend or acquaintance to do this for you. I’d offer but I no longer have a setup to do this.
Thanks everyone… that was pretty quick! (Mental note - server is very quick on a Sunday afternoon). Good advice from everyone. BTW, I did try searching the archives but I couldn’t think of keywords besides “vinyl to CD” - needed more words longer than three letters. I haven’t really done anything with music before, besides hooking up a basic stereo and burning a few CD’s, but this doesn’t look too difficult.
I think that the biggest problem will be finding a turntable to use. I might use black455’s suggestion and hit a pawnshop or flea market. We still have quite a few records around, and I’ve been missing our old turntable.
You might also try out your local used record shop (they are pretty common) for a used turnable, they may know where you can get one. Pawn shops and consignment shops are a good idea too.
One thing to remember, you really should make sure to run the turntable through the phono inputs on a stereo before sending the signal to your computer. Records are recorded with reduced levels of bass, that reduced level is equalized by the phono inputs, the song may sound odd if you go straight to the PC.
If you have a CD recorder separate from your computer (and they do exist… Phillips/Magnavox tried to market them right before the Napster boom), you could also just plug your turntable into that.