So, I’m looking for a decent one. I own an old style turntable, and a Mac. But I know that there are a ton of the turntable to USB machines. Big question is, do any of them come with software that automatically marks track start and stops as it goes?
From what I read, lacking that you’re going to invest a ton of time with clumsy edit systems. Anyone using one of these? What should I avoid? What works best with a P.C. opposed to a Mac?
Cartooniverse
In terms of identifying the spaces between tracks, they are just looking for a drop in volume for a period of time. The software, like Audacity, can find the spaces and mark what it thinks are tracks - but inevitably any software is going to make mistakes and you’re going to have to manually correct them. Compared to naming each track and editing out pops and clicks and trying to do something about surface noise, setting the in and out points is the easy part. The only good technique I’ve found is to digitize each LP side and manually cut the side into tracks. Learn the keyboard shortcuts and it will go very quickly.
I have the Ion USB turntable. It retails for $150 or so and includes the Audacity software for recording and CD mastering. I’m happy with it - it worked as advertised out of the box and the software plays nice with Windows Vista.
Audacity will allow you to place tracks breaks where you want, or you can have it make its own best guess as to track placement. I found that the software was quite good at finding the tracks on its own.
I tried a cheep device for a regular turntable and it was terrible at finding the tracks. (sorry I can’t remember the brand) The static was enough to fool it so it thought ever side was a single track.
If you already own a turntable, you might consider getting yourself a little pre-amp box that you can plug in between the turntable and the computer’s sound card. When I first started ripping my LPs to CD, I bought one for about $50, thinking it was cheaper than buying a whole new turntable. It worked great until my turntable died about a month later and I had to buy a new one anyway.
Or if you have a preamp with a phono input (most older preamps do), you don’t need any of those add-ons. Just take the output from the preamp (sometimes marked “tape out”) into a sound card.
Here’s as good a place as any to pimp the M-Audio 2496 sound card. It has RCA input and output jacks for full-strength line-level signals straight from or to a receiver so you can hook it straight to your stereo system and digitize LPs, cassettes, radio broadcasts, and play your digitized stuff through real speakers to boot.
Love it, love it, love it.
Toast’s CD Spin Doctor does this, but my experience with it has been mixed - it sometimes mis-identifies quiet spots as track separators.
Also, as other’s have mentioned, if you have a working turntable and a pre-amp, you don’t need anything else, just feed the audio into the audio-in jack on your Mac.
Oh, and BTW - if you are going to do a lot of this, buy "Click Repair " - it’s truly amazing!
I’ve only ever used virtual dj, and it works great on a PC. Don’t know if it has the features that you need, but it’s free to try for a 20 day trial period.
Since my laptop doesn’t have audio in, I bought a box that goes from the audio out on my amp to USB. This was $50 also. It comes with software for cleaning up cassette and phone inputs. I used it for some tapes I had recorded 35 years ago and moved to cassette 30 years ago, and it worked great.
The track recognition works pretty well for records, but I sometimes crammed two songs on the tape close to one another, so I usually note when each track ends and manually insert the track split. The software shows the waveforms, so it is pretty obvious usually.
Thanks for the great input- keep it coming !