Vinyl to CD

D

David_UK

New Member
Our PC soundcard is basic. I can use the 'line in' to record our old vinyl using Audacity, then burn to CD but the quality is poor. Even with a bit of equalisation on the PC the sound is tinny and thin.

I have seen turntables which connect via USB to the PC for this purpose but I want to know this:

Do you think the data from the turntable still have to go through the soundcard (and therefore still lose quality)?


Comments appreciated, thanks.
 
What you need to do depends on the cartridge and needle on your turntable.

If your cartridge is ceramic, you can connect your turntable to the Line In jack on your sound card, set Audacity to use Line Inputs, set your Windows Recording Properties to Line In, and rip away.

If you have a cartridge that is magnetic, you need a stage of amplification and phono equalization. Your best bet would be to connect the turntable to the magnetic phono input on your amplifier or receiver, connect the amplifier's Line Out to your sound card's Line In, and continue as above with Audacity.

Tom
 
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I'm no turntable expert, but with the info you gave it sounds like your turntable has a magnetic cartridge, seeing as you said the sound is low and of poor quality. And OvenMaster said that it will then need amplification, which should produce a stronger sound when recording.

There...I repeated everyone. Haha
 
Could someone please tell me what the point of a USB recorder is when every soudcard has some sort of line in or microphone jack...
 
I dunno...people are lazy? Maybe they are too dumb to sue the soundcard interface, and want the USB ease of use.
 
You people are still at this and haven't figured it out yet? :confused: If the turn table has a cartridge not small plastic looking needle the use of a component cassette recorder put in line between the table and the line in will boost the signal enough for the Win sound recorder. You would have to leave any old blank cassette in the recorder with that put on pause to adjust the recording level there. Most of the old decks have "DOLBY" to filter static! :rolleyes:

Once you start recording the tracks or entire whatever you will need a file converter to go from wav to mp3 afterwards. With many cd writing softwares you then burn the tracks with an audio not data type burn to disk. That method alos helps with old cassette tapes too. It is time consuming more then anything. The 3rd Audacity isn't needed if you have a wav to mp3 file converter.
 
How do you think I was able to save old family recordings off of reel to reel or cassette tapes to have on cds.
 
Woah! Thanks for lots of input. If I can clarify the situation further:

1) The output from the turntable is not the issue. I run a cable from the headphone socket of the amplifier to the line in (or, in fact, the mic socket - the sound is a little better quality in this card) of the soundcard. There is a change in sound quality AT THE PC. The input selected for audacity is either line in or mic as appropriate. I have no difficulty in burning the resulting wav.s to CD.

Impr3ssiv3 - thanks for your input. This is what I am interested in. So if the signal goes in via USB, it does not have to pass through the soundcard?

Thanks
 
Actually, hang on...
I think the problem might be the equalisation at the headphone output from the amp. The soundcard seems to really exaggerate it. If I change the equalisation the quality seems to stay the same through the sound card.
Thanks anyway.
 
Here the sound from a turn table or reel to reel went into the dual cassette recorder first and then directly to the line-in on the sound card. There was no amp inbetween just straight signal. That was then recorded in wav files at first. conversion to mp3 format came later. With everything recorded direct the player then filtered the output.

The cleanest output will not come from an amp to the input of a sound card but with a slight boost of the output signal coming from the turn table. WIth something like a cassette deck you can turn the input level right up to give a slight clean boost to the signal strength where it wiil be picked up by the sound card and it's mixing software.
 
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