How to: Digitalizing records
May 16, 2008
There are many ways one can digitalize records. The easiest one would be getting an USB turntable that connects straight to your computer via USB interface and it also comes with a software that helps you with the whole process of ripping and editing music from LP records. That approach works great, it’s fast, easy and reliable. In my opinion however, it’s better to get a mixing console and hook up your turntable to it. The price of the analogue mixing console is around $US 200 which is about the same as the USB turntable. It’s better to get a mixing console because it is more versatile and can be used for recording live music, podcasting and live broadcasting of audio over the Internet. A simple 4 channel audio mixer is more then enough for digital re-mastering. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to hook up your turntable to your mixing console, rip and digitalize your music.
Requirements:
- Turntable
- Speakers / Monitors
- Analogue or digital mixing console
- ADC - Analogue to digital converter (optional if using analogue mixing console)
- Hi-Fi stereo receiver / AMP (optional)
- Chinch cables
- Software for digitalizing music (In this tutorial I’ll use CD spin doctor. It’s a part of Roxio Toast suite)
Tip: Computer itself performs analogue to digital conversion. If you want to achieve better quality, use external ADC converter.
Before we begin, please, make sure that you’ve connected everything as shown in the Figure1:
Click to enlarge
And here is how everything looks when it’s connected to a mixing console:
When you have connected everything, you are ready to start setting up your system. In this tutorial I will use CD Spin Doctor software for digitalizing music. If you are not familiar with it, please refer to help files.
When you run CD Spin doctor, click on “Start a new recording” button and set preferences like this:
Input Device -> Built-In Audio
Recording Quality -> CD Audio
Input Source -> Line In
Now, you are ready to start recording. Prepare the record and make sure it plays well on the turntable and that you can hear it plays trough the speakers / monitors. Hit record when you are ready. Digitalizing music is a real-time process so you have to wait until all songs are played. When recording process is done, you will get a new dialog where you will be able to split songs, name each track and fine tune audio quality. You can use “Auto Define” option to split songs, or if it does not work, you can split songs manually.
If you want to additionally tweak your audio, click on “Filters” and play with “Noise Reducer” sliders until you manage to clean your file as much as possible. I don’t usually mess with “Sound Enhancer” and “ EQ10 filters, but If you are not happy with the sound of your files, you can tweak those as well and see what happens. In the end, export your files as AIFF if you want loseless files or mp3 if you need to compress them. For additional questions, drop a comment or contact me.
Download loseless sample (AIFF) 10,9MB
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