Digitising my 12"s

[NastyD]

I've been digitising my 12" collection over the last couple of weeks. A lot of cheese in there (why did I ever buy that?!?!?), but some real classics too. Lost Entity, Hibrid, 80 AUM, Mental Overdrive - old skool techno. Some of them are worth a few quid too.
Who would have thought that my copy of Freeez - Southern Freeez would be worth over Ģ15?

[GregWhelan]

Re: Digitising my 12"s

How are you digitising them out of interest? Does the mp3 quality sound good enough to play out? Or do you lose some sound quality on conversion?

[NastyD]

Re: Digitising my 12"s

Audio-Technica AT-LP120 line in to my soundcard running an old program called CoolEdit 2000 (but I could just as easily use Audacity), then convert to mp3 320 kbit/s.
So it's analogue right from the vinyl into the PC and quality is good enough for my ears. No reason I couldn't save to wav or flac but mp3 is good enough for me.
I suppose I should experiment with the USB facility on the turntable...

[NastyD]

Re: Digitising my 12"s

OK, I've had a look at connecting the turntable to the PC via USB and it looks as though this gives no benefits over line-in. You have to select the USB audio driver in your devices (I'm using Windows) and then play records as normal. I think that this may mean that the sound is being compressed twice - once by the turntable and again to save to mp3, and even if not you're still doing an extra processing step.
The only reason I can see for doing this is if you're using a laptop and don't have a soundcard so I'm sticking with line-in.

[Funky Dredd]

Re: Digitising my 12"s

Don't record using USB, you will wish you didn't. I've been ripping vinyl (and tapes) for approx. 20 years. Years ago I used to use Soundforge but now I use iZotope. If you can afford a copy of it then I would recommend purchasing it. There's a lot of useful tools to use in it.
My YouTube page. All are vinyl rips: https://www.youtube.com/user/Floorquake
Have a listen to what I've done for tapes: https://soundcloud.com/andy-hughes/a...a-mastered-320

[GregWhelan]

Re: Digitising my 12"s

^Thanks for the above both. It's deffo a project I will be undertaking at some point.

[DIDI]

Re: Digitising my 12"s

Audio-Technica AT-LP120 line in to my soundcard running an old program called CoolEdit 2000 (but I could just as easily use Audacity), then convert to mp3 320 kbit/s.
So it's analogue right from the vinyl into the PC and quality is good enough for my ears. No reason I couldn't save to wav or flac but mp3 is good enough for me.
I suppose I should experiment with the USB facility on the turntable...

I love audacity, and you are inspiring me

I actually have all the tools I need to do what you are doing. But mine will be from my Lps

[diegoff]

Re: Digitising my 12"s

Nice work! I used to do it many years ago, when vinyls were something from the past and you couldnīt find those albums on CD.
The key is to use a very good pickup, and a very good pre-amp. Then, of course, you can do many digital processes, but for that better get the digital version of the song if available. Nice thing about the vinyl is the dynamics imo.
My two cents

[NastyD]

Re: Digitising my 12"s

I love audacity, and you are inspiring me

I actually have all the tools I need to do what you are doing. But mine will be from my Lps

Yep, the LPs are next This is a long project.

Should mention too that it's easy to mark the start and end of each track and save as individual files. Then look up the catalogue number on Discogs to copy the info for tagging (and see if they're worth anything).

[barski]

Re: Digitising my 12"s

There's a plugin for Cool Edit to quickly fix clicks and pops, you may want to give it a try:

https://www.jdklein.com/clickfix/download.htm