Converting Vinyl to MP3

[ROH]

hey guys

just wandering if anybody has a guide on how to convert vinyl to MP3? or a good program for it?

any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you

[Newton]

I've always used Rip Vinyl from Wieser,

Allows you to rip your record, it also splits tracks based on the level of silence you setup in the software or the duration of the pause.

[Jason_dinAlt]

One thing to note when converting from vinyl is unless your turntable has a built in phon preamp then you will need to either go through a phono preamp (usually built into older stereo amps) or use a reverse RIAA filter in the software or your recordings will sound "tinny"

All records produced after the mid 50s had the RIAA equalisation applied to the pressing, this was a fix for the poor bass response due to the physical limitations of vinyl.

Going thru a phono preamp will reverse the equalisation and the record will have a better bass response and dynamic range.

From Wiki:

RIAA equalization is a form of preemphasis on recording, and deemphasis on playback. A record is cut with the low frequencies reduced and the high frequencies boosted, and on playback the opposite occurs. The result is a flat frequency response, but with noise such as hiss and clicks arising from the surface of the medium itself much attenuated. The other main benefit of the system is that low frequencies, which would otherwise cause the cutter to make large excursions when cutting a groove, are much reduced, so grooves are smaller and more can be fitted in a given surface area, yielding longer playback times. This also has the benefit of eliminating physical stresses on the playback stylus which might otherwise be hard to cope with, or cause unpleasant distortion.

A potential drawback of the system is that rumble from the playback turntable's drive mechanism is greatly amplified, which means that players have to be carefully designed to avoid this.

RIAA equalization is not a simple low-pass filter. It carefully defines transition points in three places - 75 µs, 318 µs and 3180 µs, which correspond to 2122 Hz, 500 Hz and 50 Hz. Implementing this characteristic is not especially difficult, but more involved than a simple linear amplifier. The phono input of most hi-fi amplifiers have this characteristic built in, though it is omitted in many modern designs, due to the gradual obsolescence of vinyl records. A solution in this case is to buy a special preamplifier which will adapt a magnetic cartridge to a standard line-level input, and implement the RIAA equalization curve separately. Some modern turntables feature built-in preamplification to the RIAA standard.
Digital audio editors often feature the ability to equalize audio samples using standard and custom equalization curves, removing the need for a dedicated hardware preamplifier when capturing audio with a computer. However, this can add an extra step in processing a sample, and may amplify audio quality issues of the sound card being used to capture the signal.

[ROH]

thank you for the program newton and Jason_dinAlt for the helpful information

[Newton]

Or you can find it

the password / serial number is in the nfo file. ENJOY

[acejas]

Thanks Newton & TNA

[porkop]

Audacity is a good proggy as well

[BCNZ]

Find yourself an amplifier like a Technics or similar - something made in the 80s will do nicely as it will have a phono stage built in. Take the line outs from the amp into your soundcard.
I use Adobe Audition to rip vinyl - then I go through and clean up the audio. The click and pop eliminator built in to Audition works pretty well and if you are particularly fussy or there are spikes that Audition won't remove automatically then you can manually edit the waveform and usually remove them yourself.

Be warned however - editing audio ripped from vinyl can be a time consuming process. I have spent in excess of 10 hours on one side of an LP alone - but the results justify the time.

The album was a rare, out of print recording that has not been released on CD and chances are, never will.
In these situations it makes ripping and editing worthwhile.