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VINYL TO CD's?
Over the years, techology has changed so dramatically that what we once thought was really 'cool' is now totally out dated, out moded and superseded by things even more mind boggling than we could have imagined even a meer 10 years ago.
Take music for instance. How many of you have old crates, boxes,cupboards whatever, full of vinyl records, be they LP's or 45's, some even 78's?????
I know I have hundreds of LP records and many of them will never ever be re-released onto cd's let alone be available as mp3's or Ipod tunes.
After much research and fiddling around with different software, I have finally been able to start recording my precious vinyl onto cd's. Below are the basics with links to where you can get software and information/tutorials on how to do this marvellous act!!
Ah never throw those old LPs and singles away. If they are too far gone to re-record you can always reinvent them as something creative, say clocks, cards, platters etc. I've been wondering how they'd melt with a heat gun, but I can't think of doing that till I've recorded them, LOL.
Firstly, you need a turntable that has an amplifyer. Without it you just can't use the RCA jack to plug from it to the computer.
You must have a particular RCA jack that will have 2 male plugs, a white and a red one that goes into the speaker plugs of your stereo. I've a 5 in one that has the turntable on the top. The other end of the RCA jack must be a small male jack (3.5mm). I bought mine from Jaycar, an electronics shop in North Parramatta, Sydney. FYI, there is now a Jaycar on Sunnyholt Rd at Blacktown. It was all of about $7.00. Jaycar also have a website and do mail order. You can find them at this web addy:
I'll give you the code on it if it helps, WA7015 and it's a 3 metre one. The details on the pack say 3.5mm stereo plug, 2 x RCA phono plugs, male-male, for playing personal audio sources through an amplifier. Here is a picture of the packaging label so you know what to look for.
Any electronic's shop worker worth their salt will know exactly what you are after when you tell them what you want to do with it. Then you must know which plug to put into the computer. The information I got could be a little confusing coz I had about 4 websites open at the same time looking up all the hows, wheres and whys. At the front of my pc I have 2 jacks that the small male plug will go into, these are not the extra USB ports. One should be pink the other blue, and they are small round female sockets. Depending on what kind of devices you are using, you'd probably need to plug it into the pink one (I believe it is the microphone plug, the other is the headphones one) I was going wrong because I'd plugged into the blue one according to a website I was on. When I switched over, wham, blast, out came the recording I'd been trying to make, woohoo. Now, the software is called LP RECORDER and can be found at this website: The site I got lots of useful information from was by a fellow who writes columns for some techo site, his articles can be found here: You need to look at the 2nd, 3rd, 4th articles, but don't worry about the software he recomends coz I've tried them, the LP Recorder is very very simple, get that one. The trial version will only allow you to record about 4 minutes at a time, but I bought the license straight away. It's in Australian dollars, $54.95 (as at 8th April 2005). I have a cd/dvd burner so I didn't bother with getting them to send me the cd copy coz I can burn it straight off my hard drive if ever I need a backup copy. You save $15.00 by not asking for a cd too.
Secondly, there's also a program called LP RIPPER. If you do not have cd/dvd burning software, you'll probably need this AS WELL. I have software by NERO which came with my Sony dvd burner. It's the best you can get in my eyes and I've been using Nero'S software for about 4 years now, it can't get any easier. You need this kind of software to burn from a .wav format onto your cd's. To get Nero Burning Rom, this is their website address:
You may want to put labels on your cd's. Seeing as many of them are not available on cd anyway, all I did was digitally photograph the album covers and reduced and convert them to cirles to print onto matt cd labels. The LP record covers are too big to fit on my flatbed scanner which only scans up to foolscap size anyway. I have a little system called CD Stomper which has a nifty little program that has all the layouts for the cd's, the jewel case inserts, as well as labels for mini disks and floppys if you still use them. I purchased CD Stomper from OfficeWorks, but I believe it is available over the net and at many other stationery outlets, even BigW stores. Here's their website if you want to have a look: I hope this hasn't been too confusing. A lot of what I have done was trial and error, and I'm thinking, seeing as the original software I had (Goldwave) was so complicated, that was half my problem. GOOD LUCK and happy recording!
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