my late teens were a big waste of time. no, really. i wasn't working, only half-ass studying, and not really doing much of anything except accumulating debt by doing stupid things like buying tacos on credit. i sometimes joke that i'm alive today because of ramen noodles. i ate a lot of ramen noodles during this time.
anyway, one of the things that i WAS doing was perfecting a technique to record lp records digitally. in the pre-napster days, this was one of the ways i added to my digital music library.
at the time i had a sony vaio pentium 3 450mhz machine, and it was actually pretty well up to the task (granted i'm not an extremist when it comes to audio quality). i don't remember the model, but i used a cheapie aiwa turntable and the version of sony sound forge that came with the vaio. additionally, i used my home stereo as my pc speakers.
in short, the process wasn't too much different from using a stereo to dub an lp to cassette. however with lots of time on my hands and more options available with software it only made sense to try and make the recording as best as possible. i spent many hours experimenting with sound forge to try and figure out the best solution. eventually i came up with a decent combination of recording levels, equalizer filters, volume boosting, and other things to have good quality in a short amount of time.
well, skip ahead to 2008 and quite a few things have changed. an unknown cause made that cheapie turntable start playing at fast speeds (also it would have been pointless to replace the belt when the time came). i replaced it with a technics sl-d1 (direct drive, no belt!) purchased on ebay for fairly cheap. the vaio was eventually replaced with something better, faster, stronger, and i ended up selling it in 2007 when i was unemployed and in need of some cash. for the record, if you have money problems, remember that computers really have nothing special about them...most material things that can be replaced.
anyway, this turntable is cool but it requires a phono pre-amp. its the first one i use that doesn't have it built in. i was able to get one at fry's to get me by...but in general its better to have less things between the player and recorder. i think one of these days i'll look into getting a very good modern turntable.
so...i have new equipment now and i'm having to learn what works all over again. its been some time since i've transferred any record. my current recording setup is going like this:
technics sl-d1 -> l.k.g. solid state phono preamp pre600 -> aiwa stereo (aiwa headphone jack) -> input on my creative zen nano plus mp3 player using the cable supplied by creative and an adapter for the larger size headphone jack
the volume is set to 10 and i'm not using any eq. the zen nano plus is set to record at its max of 160 kbps mp3. actually, the files i've heard so far sound pretty good. i haven't applied any restoration filters on the files yet. i think i have sound forge on my desktop still, and i'll have to see if i take it off of there so that i can put it on my laptop. if not then i will just edit the files on my desktop...
anyway, this all came about because my uncle came into town on saturday and is leaving on tuesday. during his welcoming party i was using my desktop to play the music, and when everyone left we migrated to playing some records. he was really surprised that a lot of them are in good shape considering their age, and also he was surprised at my music selection. we found a record entitled "raphael canta..." by raphael, and he sort of lit up as he asked if there was a way for him to have a copy. given my previous experience with the whole process i assured him it would not be a problem. now i'm finding that i'm a little rusty and have actually forgotten a lot of the process.
i guess it gives me good practice since i want to try and transfer in rainbows from the lp with just having to play the vinyls once. so...wish me luck. and if you can think of some other software i can use besides sound forge or adobe soundbooth, please let me know! please, no search engine recommendations though...only first hand experience recommendations!
i don't know why i find this cool....the record player (like many others) has a red light and some marks to guide you for playback speeds. i think its because of variations of weight or something, but basically you have the right speed when the marks appear to be staying still. its pretty hard to take a picture of this with just a basic camera setup like mine...but i did my best. you can kinda make out the marks at the very bottom. there are other marks too for various speeds. i'll try and take one during the playback of a 45, since these appear higher up and may be easier to photograph. i guess i did a decent job of getting the speed because the turntable was on, the lens was open for some time, and you can make it out in the picture.
technorati tags:forgetting, how, to, transfer, vinyl, to, digital
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