Best Method to Covert Old Albums...?

FicmanS

Anybody know anyone who has converted the old album collection into a digital format? A friend of mine wants to covert a rather large collection of albums, any idea which method works the best? There are several solutions out there, USB Turntable or Directly into your PC sound card seem to be popular. But what is really the best process for a quality result?

Lot's of folks out here, thought I'd throw this one up and see if anyone has any thoughts?

audiobliss

I plan on experimenting with my Yamaha CDR-HD1300 to convert tapes and albums to a digital signal and then to CD's. Haven't tried it yet so I can't say anything about it, but I'm looking forward to doing it maybe over the summer.

Polkersince85

I use a Harman Kardon CDR 26 which has an analog input. Put a blank in, play the record and finalize. Real time and full fidelity.

pblanc

The Creative soundblaster X-Fi Platinum soundcard (rather pricey but now available intermittently at steep discount with rebates) has a pair of stereo, analog, RCA inputs on its breakout box that can be set to apply an RIAA equalization curve to the input. That would eliminate the need for an external phono preamp or receiver.
You can also use software to apply the curve. In theory, you could hook your turntable directly into your sound cards input, but I think in reality you would still want to boost the signal with some type of device since the amplitude of the signal coming from your cartridge is so low. There are a wide variety of small phono preamps available for this purpose, either flat transfer amps (no RIAA) or small phonopreamps. They run $50-80 (obviously you can pay much more) and many run on battery power (DC) which eliminates the potential noise source of 60 Hz AC. You can just use your soundcard to record the input as a .wav file, use software for noise reduction, if desired, and burn it out as an audio CD.

jkn

I converted a few albums a few years ago - very scratchy ones. There's got to be easier ways to do it now - but back then I hooked the turntable up to a mixer (that had phono inputs) - routed that into my soundcard - and removed some of the pops and hiss with a noise reduction plugin in Sonic Foundry's (now Sony) Sound Forge. Finding the sweet spot on the noise reduction was part of the trick - too much and you lose the presence, making it sound a bit flat and compressed.

This was the same aunt that I loaded her entire Dan Fogelberg cd collection onto an iPod for her... a Dan Fogelberg 'only' iPod... she's a bit obsessed.

apc

I would consider the "INport"in your mix. It bypasses your soundcard. You'll require a TT, amp, the INport, software such as Adobe Audition.

See link:

http://www.xitel.com/product_inport.htm

edit - You'll still need to clean up the inported file to reduce noises and pops, etc.