LPs to MP3s

[germdoc]

The above replies make clear that you shouldn't get involved in this unless you need another hobby...

[JimD]

germdoc,

For a little while, you are right, this is taking the place of my "normal" woodworking. There is nothing my kids are I are wanting me to make at the moment. It has a finite lifespan, however, because I will not be buying any more music on LPs. So I will convert some of the old ones I have and stop when I get a woodworking project that needs to be completed or I get bored with it. I was thinking just last night that I may want to move my turntable and receiver back to their "normal" home soon (entertainment center in my bedroom instead of on the sewing desk and floor of the guest room where the desktop is) and just leave an RCA cord accessable with the tape out signal. I could possibly plug this into my laptop and make the file on a flash drive to transfer to my desktop. That would make it easier to come back to this later once I decide I've done enough and move things back to where they "belong".

Jim

[HarmsWay]

It typically takes me double the playing time to fully convert. Here's the process.
- clean the LP
- check levels (cannot gracefully clip into digital so you really have to find the loud passages)
- start recording
- in Windows notepad write down song list
- sit and listen, noting approx. start/stop time of every song as well as time of any noticeable click/pop
- stop recording when both sides are done
- go back and clean up the recording (mute dead space between songs, fade out/in where necessary, zoom in and smooth out pops & clicks or use built-in pop/click remover if long sections are really bad)
- once cleaned up note exact start/stop times of songs to fraction of second.
- cut and paste songs as individual .wav files
- import wav files into iTunes and convert to MP3 (I archive the wav files) then get album artwork from Amazon or my own photo.

Occasionally, I'll get a recording that's got a small section so messed up that it cannot be cleaned up as noted above. If it's important I can usually find a similar chunk of waveform elsewhere and I copy and paste that over the bad section.

I'm really torn about how much effort to put into transferring my LPs to MP3s. Is it worth the time? I still do it every now and then so it must be to me. I have a good collection with some pretty unusual stuff so it's not always available in a digital format from elsewhere. Usually I record when I get a craving to listen to one of the old LPs and I have to say that once converted it gets a lot of play. In four years or so I've done maybe 10% of the collection.

Bob

[JimD]

Bob,

My process is similar although perhaps a little faster.

- I clean the LP and usually the stylus too. I use discwasher products (purchased many years ago but still seem to work fine).
- I try a bit of the first song to see the levels but have not re-set them yet. That may not last but has worked for me so far.
- I drop the needle and then push the record button in Audacity. The instructions say to do it the other way around but this works better for me.
- I use low tech paper and pencil to make notes about the play list. I need to start putting the song names on the list to save a little time later.
- I do not try to note click/pop. I do that when I am fine tuning the point at which the next song starts. I have to listen to the last of one and the start of the next to pin it down and in the process I decide if there is something objectionable I need to deal with.
- I do no fades or anything, I just delete extra dead time between songs and clean pops/hiss if it bugs me.
- I do not cut and past the individual sections out. I let Audacity do that. All I do is click where the song starts, then click on "Project" and near the bottom of the menu options is something like "Insert a label here" which I click on. Then I type the track number (01, 02, etc.) and the song name. Then on to marking the next song. When they are all marked, I go to the "File" menu item and near the bottom of that list is the "Export Multiple" command. If you click on that, Audacity splits the file up for you at each label. I do it into MP3s but WAV is another option available. You end up with WAV or MP3 files for each song. Audacity creates the MP3s for me in this step but I had to add "Lame" mp3 converter for it to do this. Lame is also free. If you don't have Lame, you can still create WAV files and convert them to MP3 but that would take more time.

I thus may save a bit of time at the end with my labeling routine and lack of need to convert from WAV to MP3. But still it is 10-15 mintues more than just playing the album.

My last step is probably unique to my desire to play the results in my car. I use a Garmin GPS wired into my bimmer which contains a 4GB SD memory card. Garmins only recognize a unique playlist format. I found a script file which creates it but you need all the songs to be in a directory. Then you place the batch file into that directory and click on it. Then I rename the resulting playlist file the name of the album. Then I cut and paste the songs and playlist onto the SD card. I leave the songs and playlist on the hard drive of my desktop along with the audacity files that created it. If I get short of space (won't happen anytime soon), I may delete the audacity files. The Garmin lets you choose the MP3 player, go to the list of playlists, pick the album, click on it and you are playing. If you want, you can have it autorepeat until you choose something else. I have about half the SD card full at this point (mostly ripped CDs).

Jim

[HarmsWay]

I'll have to look into the 'export multiple' feature. I may be using an old version of Audacity. However most of the extra by far is for cleaning up pops and clicks. I don't like the way that Audacity automatically does it so all that is manual for me (search for spike, zoom in, smooth waveform, zoom out, ...).

I like to archive the wav files because that's as close to the original as I'll get. Perhaps better compression will come around and I'll still be able to use the wav.

[guhor]

Consider Acoustica - "Spin-It-Again"

I have been wanting to convert LPs to CDs for years and have tried Sonys Sound Forge - too complicated for me, and have read everything I could find on the subject. Professional conversion was out of the question because of the expense and I was not willing to let my collection of LPs out of my control. To make a long story shorter, Mr. Paul Lawrence, who has a music store beside Ernest Tubb's Record Shop, on Broadway in Nashville, told me about Spin-It-Again. You can Google it and download it for a free trial.

This software is simple enought that I have successfully converted about 200 LPs to CDs in the WAV format. This program can convert LPs (any speed - even if your turntable only has 2 speeds), tapes, or any signal out of your stereo to your computer. The cost of this product is about $35 if you decide to buy it. It tells you what items you need (the type of plugs, wires etc., where to buy them cheaply (Radio Shack), how to hook them up, etc.

My stereo system is located about 30 feet from my computer and it takes me only a couple of minutes to put on a record and start recording. The software separates the tracks automatically, but sometimes slight adjustments are needed where there is an extended silence within a song, or adjustments may be needed if you want to remove the pop where the stylus hits the record at the beginning of side one and side two of the LP.

Anyone interested in trying this can send me a PM and I will try and help in any way that I can. You can convert to MP3, WAV and about 3 or 4 other formats. It is really simple.

Tom

[Rich P]

"Export multiple" is a key Audacity feature...it creates individual files for each "song" based on the label track and also includes the "meta data" about the artist, album and so forth. Be sure you have 1.3 or better. It may say "beta" but it has been in that status for a year or more. It's stable for LP to MP3 tasks.

I wound up using a freeware tool called "Album Art Cover Downloader" available here...seems to work fine.

[dkerfoot]

If you hunt around on the web you can probably find mp3 bit torrents for a lot of your old albums and save yourself some work.

I like isohunt.com

I am with Rand on this one. I would never pirate a song I hadn't paid for at some point, but if I have owned it on LP, 8-track or cassette, I have no qualms about downloading the MP3 off a torrent site. just be sure you have updated anti-virus (which you ought to have anyway!)

I know the record companies wouldn't consider this fair use, but it passes my personal morality test (which I feel is pretty stringent) just fine.

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