Can anyone please help.

I have a great selection of singles and LP's, but I want to transfer these to disc form.

Can anyone please tell me how I should go ahead with this, any help would be appreciated.

Regards John.

You will need a "pre-amp", unless you have a record deck that has one built in (that works at normal line level), if you have, all you need is a phono to 3.5mm jack and use the "line In" on your PC

I'll try to find details of a pre-amp for you.....

MM

Here you go....

http://www.maplin.co.uk/SEODynamicPa...sp?ModNo=35941

I'm not so hot with the software side, but can help with the wiring. (I'd also appreciate advice on free software as I have a load of great audio tapes I want to convert to MP3, with auto splitting of tracks).

Connect your turntable to an amp, if it isn't already. Take the line-out feed from the amp and connect it to the line-in feed on your computers sound card. You may need an adaptor or lead to convert 2 x phono to single 3.5mm stereo jack.

Provided you've got the right software, you can then record from the turntable to the amp. The software will record from the sound card and convert to MP3 and save on your hard-drive. From there, you can use software like Windows Media Player to burn the MP3 selections to a CD.

Or use that!

A few years ago I set myself the task of putting my LPs onto CD. I have now almost finished. I looked up a lot of info and found Wave Repair - www.waverepair.com. I suggest you have a look and buy his software, it was only £20 when I got mine and it is superb. The practicalities involve coming from a line-out socket of your pre-amp (or a tape-out) and going into the sound card via line-in and that's about it.

The beauty of Wave Repair is that it has a very easy to use record interface - on-screen slider volume controls and level meters. After you have made the recording you can normalise and remove DC offset and then set about removing all the clicks and bangs. You can perform a multitude of filter and equalisation tricks.

You will become a perfectionist and the first LP will take you a week, but one does get faster as one gets to recognise the shapes of clicks, etc..

Some sound cards are a pain, but this is described on the web site. At the start of 2003 I made a new computer and put a sound card in rather than use the on-board and then I found it could not go to full level, it prematurely clipped. I switched to the onboard and it was perfect! (got a refund on the card!). This syndrome is also fully explained on the Wave Repair site.

I have had an awful lot of experience at this, learned the hard way so if you want to PM me then don't hesitate.

PS - also get a scanner, part of the joy is making the jewel case look like the LP sleeve. Cover Designer, which comes with Nero gives you an easy way of doing this.

You need to record in .wav. a) to be able to edit it and b) to get the highest quality to put on CD. Also it's best to use Nero to burn - much easier to organise the tracks and adjust intertrack gaps.

Here are a few:

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/20/cddisplayah7.jpg

Thanks to all for taking the time to reply, I will have a go and let you know how I get on.

Kind regards John.

The above processes are exactly how I archived my old records to WAV files.

I agree that Nero is good, not only for burning, but for editing (Nero Wave Editor).

All my vinyl was archived to DVD then ditched years ago.

I've always used Audacity for any external sound ripping to my PC. It's freeware and does the job nicely.

All the above advice about a pre-amp is spot on.

Only other thing I would say, it's probably a lot easier to see how much of what you have you can find on file sharing networks first.

Downloading then is an awful lot less time consuming than doing all the ripping yourself and as you already own the originals it's not like you're doing anything wrong .....

Not some of the stuff I've got...
Anyway, by downloading copyrighted material you are supporting illegal activities even if you already have a copy of the material.

How would I be supporting illegal activities if I downloaded it off usenet?

One way of making this process a bit quicker - if you're not too bothered about resolution - is to record albums at 45rpm, then stretch the wav down to the correct speed using something like CoolEdit Pro. I forget the percentages... anyone?

you can now get a usb turntable, dont know if thats any help

I just saw one and remembered this thread, never saw that someone had mentioned a USB turntable before!

Anyway heres a link

http://www.firebox.co.uk/index.html?...howAllImages=0

If you didn't want to do it yourself, and for anyone else maybe who only has a couple of albums to convert, I can recommend this bloke - he did a couple for me last year, and I was well chuffed. -http://uk.geocities.com/soundrediscovery/

Nero 6 and Nero 7 complete suites have all the software you need from recording to editing to burning.