Advice: LP to CD conversion?

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

So... my father-in-law has this LP anthology that he'd really like converted to something he can use on a regular basis, i.e. CD or cassette (no MP3s - they do have a computer, but don't really use it).  I'd like to do the conversion for him, but I don't have a functioning cassette recorder any more.  I was thinking it might make a good Christmas present to do this all up nicely with scans of all the pages of the anthology (it's pretty neat, actually: it's done up as a big thick book with about 20 records and several pages describing the music on each one and the composer).

Does anyone know of a utility (shareware/freeware, preferably) that can create an audio CD from an audio line in?  Failing that, does anyone know of something that can do it from some format that I can create straightforwardly (e.g. line in ---> MP3 ---> audio CD, perhaps)?

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I can tell you that a number of CD burning programs make the conversion from MP3 to CD automatically (like Nero). I know there are some programs that can be used to convert LPs into wavs but require a fair amount of time to clean up the noise from the LP.

If I were you I might consider doing 2 things:

1. Get a catalog/list of the music you are looking for and look it on the torrents. Technically you are not committing a crime because you (or in this case your father) own legal copies of the music in question*.

2. With the music already in digital form you can burn it on CDs or buy an MP3 player and give it to you father as a present including a cable to connect the player to the auxiliary of your dad's stereo.

* there is a catch, the main problem of the torrents is that once you download you are sharing which is indeed illegal. My recommendation is that once you download an album you remove it from the list of your torrent client and move the files to a different folder. If you plan go that route I recommend using uTorrent which doesn't have any spyware attached (many clients do).

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

I can tell you that a number of CD burning programs make the conversion from MP3 to CD automatically (like Nero). I know there are some programs that can be used to convert LPs into wavs but require a fair amount of time to clean up the noise from the LP.

Oh... I didn't realize that Nero could do this; I thought for audio CDs, all it could do was duplicate.  Cool.

If I were you I might consider doing 2 things:

1. Get a catalog/list of the music you are looking for and look it on the torrents. Technically you are not committing a crime because you (or in this case your father) own legal copies of the music in question*.

Good point.  I've never gone looking for torrents, so it didn't occur to me.

2. With the music already in digital form you can burn it on CDs or buy an MP3 player and give it to you father as a present including a cable to connect the player to the auxiliary of your dad's stereo.

Nice idea, but I'm not sure if they'd be able to handle that.  My in-laws still have trouble with the CD player; I'm not sure I want to burden them with another new gadget to deal with.   

* there is a catch, the main problem of the torrents is that once you download you are sharing which is indeed illegal. My recommendation is that once you download an album you remove it from the list of your torrent client and move the files to a different folder. If you plan go that route I recommend using uTorrent which doesn't have any spyware attached (many clients do).

Yes... these two issues are the main reason I haven't gotten into the whole torrent thing.  I remember all the garbage that KaZaA had when I was using that, and I figured that its replacements have the same stuff going on.

Thanks, Zono.  That helps.  I think I'll try out uTorrent, but it's good to know there's an option available if I my search comes up empty.

[Aphos]

This is how I went about converting LP's to CD.

1)  Of course, you are going to need a turntable.  Also, you are going to need a receiver with a pre-amp...which the vast majority of receivers on the market no longer have.  I then patched a record out jack to the input jack on my sound card (most mother boards have the sound card built in these days.)

2) You will have to fiddle with the sound card settings to make sure you are using the microphone input.

3)  This is probably automatic, but you have to record in a .wav format, which is what CD's use.  You will need a program to record.  The sound recorder with Windoze is OK, but there are better ones out there.

4)  Once you have the .wav file on your hard drive, you may want to clean it up a bit, since LP's are notorious for rumble, hiss and pop.  There is a great shareware program called "Goldwave" that has filters to do this.  It won't eliminate them entirely, but will make them close to unnoticeable.

5)  Once you have the .wav files cleaned up, you are ready to burn the CD.  The average LP is about 40-45 min. and a CD can hold up to 72 min., so you can add some additional material if you wish, but then CD's are really cheap.  Nero works just fine for this process.

Note:  This is a lengthy process, but you don't have to watch it all the way through.

You will end up with two files, front side and back side of the album.  You can use Goldwave to cut this into individual songs, but that is really, really tedious.

Good Luck.

[Griffin NoName]

You might check out my thread on tape to cd transfers.

[Aggie]

I use Easy Radio for grabbing anything off the soundcard (generally 'net radio, but it will do the line in, too), which drops it to MP3.  Not sure if the sound quality is worth it, coming from LPs, but it'll do the LP->MP3 very easily.  The downside is you'll either have to manually break it into tracks, or just make one MP3/side.

Another alternative to torrenting it would be to request all the albums you want from your local library (Calgary has almost anything from my dad's old LP collection, I'd imagine TO should do for you) and then...   well, duplicates happen. 

[Bluenose]

A word of caution.  I have found that many run-of-the-mill sound cards make lousy analogue to digital conversions and introduce a significant amount of noise.  If budget allows, you are much better off with an external D/A converter, generally these plug into a USB2 port and do a very good job.  Also, they usually come with software that does the cleanup pretty well.