Knowledge

How many of you have got dusty, unused copies of old singles and albums of the vinyl variety sitting around, waiting for some love?

Many people didn’t quite get around to trading in their vinyl with the advent of CDs in the ’80s, but over the years they played them less and less, then they couldn’t be bothered changing the needle on the turntable…

Trouble is, many music lovers have copies of vinyl records that they can’t get on CD or digital download, or perhaps they prefer the particular mix and mastering of the original LP rather than the digitally “enhanced” version?

So… you want to transfer those old LPs to digital format, but have never quite figured out how. Now’s the time.

There are a growing number of devices on the market designed specifically for importing analogue audio signals into a computer. These vary in sophistication and price, but for this article I’ll be using the Pro-ject Phonobox USB, connected to a freeware Internet program called Audacity.

You need a computer with USB inputs, a mini-USB to USB cable and a turntable.

Find out how we do it in the full article here

Tips

How to transfer your vinyl to the digital realm

• Step 1: Setup
  Set your playback and recording preferences within Audacity.
• Step 2: More setup
  Start the program and open the audio I/O tab under Audacity preferences – select ‘USB Audio Codec’ as the recording device and select your sound card as the playback device.
• Step 3: Create a new Project/Selecting recording format
  You’ll need to create a new recording project by clicking ‘File-Save Project As’, and then you’ll need to select the format Audacity will write the recorded data as.
• Step 4: Start recording
  And that’s basically it – carefully select your vinyl album of choice (don’t forget to make sure it’s clean and free from warps or accumulated dust), place it carefully onto your turntable and start the motor running.
• Step 5: Splitting the recording into different tracks
  Unless you’re recording 45rpm singles, you’ll need to split the recorded album into different tracks. To do this you’ll be using the waveform screen under the main Audacity menu.
• Step 6: Removing noise
  Audacity also enables the user to reduce pops, clicks and hiss from records. This is done manually using the ‘threshold slider’ on the main waveform screen.

Read the full article on our website

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