Part 1 – Intro
Part 2 – Home conversion with existing turntable
Part 3 – Using a USB turntable
Part 4 – Have Someone Else Do It

Now that we’ve look at the options for your equipment choice when thinking of transferring your vinyl records, we’re going to look at a different option: Hire a professional to do it for you.

When looking at transferring your vinyl LPs to CD, you not only have to consider the equipment needed to playback your records, but also the time required. Converting your records can be very time consuming as we’ll see in part 5 of this series. First you must playback the record at its normal speed, capturing it into the computer. Next you need to take the time to reduce the background noise and the pops and clicks from the recording. Then you have to split the recording into separate tracks, add meta-data and burn your CD. All together, the whole process for a 40 minute LP could take 1.5 hours.

Before we look the professional services, lets come up with an approximate cost for converting the records yourself.. We’ll start by assuming you go with a middle of the line USB turntable for $180. If you have 50 records you want to transfer, spreading the cost of the turntable out over each record, it costs you $3/record (assuming no maintenance/record cleaning, etc). Not a bad value and you’ll have a hard time finding someone to do it for you for that price. But lets assume our time is actually semi-valuable to us and as a trade-off for doing the record transfer versus spending time with the wife, we have to spend $10/hour to buy her flowers to keep her from  smashing our record collection. If we take on average 1.2 hours/record, our 50 records take us 60 hours. At $10/hour, we’re now at $600, plus the $180 for the turntable gives us a total cost of $780, or $15/record. Still not a bad price. However, if we only have 15 records, then we end up at $24/record (18 hours=$180 + $180 for turntable). You can of course do your own calculations based on what you value your time at, etc.. But as you can see, it can get time consuming and costly.

Now lets look at the costs and considerations of having someone else do the transferring for you. I’ll put in a little self promotion here and use my own company as an example here. Recapture Your Memories charges $20/12″ 33rpm record transfer (different rates for different sizes/speeds). This puts it right around the costs for doing it yourself. So what are the advantages of paying someone else to do your work? Well obviously if you only have 1-10 records to transfer, considering the costs of equipment, the learning curve and your time, its much cheaper to have someone else do it for you. If you have more than 10 records you want transferred, things get less clear when looking at the basic economics.

So if you have more than 10 records to transfer, what are the advantages to hiring a professional? A professional company will (should) have high end equipment, experience and will also have some extra tricks up their sleeves.

Equipment

Professional transfer companies should be using equipment from the high end of the turntable options discussed in parts 2 and 3 of this series. At Recapture Your Memories, we use a Pro-ject Debut III (with Ortofon OM-5e cartridge) turntable along with the Pro-ject USB Phono Box. This gives us a high-quality, true to original copy of your records. We don’t have the issues that come along with plastic parts or low end needles.

Before bringing your irreplaceable records to someone, make sure you find out what quality of equipment they’ll be using to playback your records. Refer to part 3 of this series to find out more about what the different levels of turntable quality means. (It talks mostly about USB turntables, but the same advice applies to analog turntables)

Experience

The trained professionals you take your records to will know their hardware and software in depth. They’ll know the shortcuts and tricks to clean up the final digital recordings of your albums. They’ll know which setting to use and how to adjust them to reduce the noise and pops and clicks from your albums without losing the quality of the music behind the noise.

Tricks

Most professional transferrers will also have additional equipment and tricks the give you a better quality transfer result. Vinyl has a tendency to pick up dirt and dust and fingerprints which all affect the outcome of the digital copy (this is what causes most of the pops and clicks you hear). Most professional transfer companies will use some sort of a cleaning system on your records, whether it is just a basic dust/static removal, a light cleaning, or a full deep cleaning using a record cleaning machine. If you talk to any vinyl loving audiophile, they’ll tell you a clean record is better sounding record. You can hear deeper sounds and sounds which you haven’t heard from your vinyl in years. (We’ll talk more about this in part 6 of the series)

So, depending how many records you have and how much time and money you want to invest into the process and all the extra parts needed to do a similar quality job (cleaners, quality turntable, etc), you may  decide to do the record transfers yourself. However, for the majority of people out there, you’ll probably find that it makes the most sense to have a professional company do the transfers for you.

What do you think? Is it worthwhile for you to do your own transfers? Leave a comment and let me know!

Part 1 – Intro
Part 2 – Home conversion with existing turntable
Part 3 – Using a USB turntable
Part 4 – Have Someone Else Do It

Part 1 – Intro
Part 2 – Home conversion with existing turntable
Part 3 – Using a USB turntable
Part 4 – Have Someone Else Do It

In part 2 of the series, I talked about hooking up your existing turntable to your computer in order to transfer your vinyl records to CD (or MP3). One option I mentioned was getting a Phono Box II USB (~$199 US) which allowed you hook up your turntable to your computer to through USB. If you don’t have a good turntable which you’ve invested time and money into already, you should consider the new breed of turntables which have USB connections built into them.

If you go with a USB enabled turntable, to connections process couldn’t be easier! All you need to do is hook up your power connection and plug your USB cord into the turntable and the computer. Any computer using windows XP or newer shouldn’t have a problem recognizing the turntable as an audio input device. Now all you need to do is use Audacity (a 1.3.x version or newer) to record your albums to your computer. Check out the next part of the series for details on how to do this..

A couple years ago, there weren’t many options out there for a USB turntable, but in the past couple years, your options have greatly increased. Now you have to decide how much money you want to spend and what you want for quality of the turntable (both in terms of audio quality as well as build quality, though they are related in many ways).

Some of the things to pay attention to when comparing turntables are the “Wow and flutter”, “speed variance”,  and cartridge type. Wow and flutter refers to the variation in pitch on your albums. Speed variance is the difference in speed at which the turntable will spin. If this number is too high, you get wow and flutter due to the record changing speed while it is playing. The cartridge type is also an important consideration since it is the part of the turntable that is in constant contact with the grooves of your records. A cheap cartridge will often have a graphite or plastic needle which is more prone to breakage and damage. A higher end cartridge will have a diamond tipped needle which gives the highest quality, longest lasting cartridge. A diamond tipped needle will also cause less wear and tear on your irreplaceable vinyl and is also cleanable easier than a graphite tip.

Lets look at a few options..

For the budget focused consumer, both Ion Audio and Grace Audio make turntable for between $90-$130 depending on features and software included. These units will do the trick of converting your records to digital, but the old warning about getting what you pay for still applies here. These cheaper turntable are usually built from lightweight materials like plastic and the important parts of a turntable (tone arm, cartridge, etc) are also usually built from lower quality materials (plastic/graphite) and to lesser specifications. Often these turntables will also have limited adjustment options as well as few replaceable parts, so there is no option for upgrading or fixing parts if something breaks. Usually this class of turntable will also have a light plastic platter. These lightweight components mean the turntable is more prone to picking up vibrations from the area around the unit (people walking) as well as motor vibration, etc. If you look at the specs for these low end turntables, you will see they don’t list numbers for wow and flutter or speed variance. The ION units don’t mention what type of tip they have on their cartridge needles and the Grace unit uses a graphite tip.

Stepping up to the next level, you’ll find offerings from familiar audio names such as Sony (~$229 CAN) and Denon (~$299 CAN). The difference between these units and the lower end units from Ion and Grace is that this class of turntable will be built with higher end components. Usually they will be made of heavier materials and/or have higher quality platters, cartridges and tone arms. The analog to digital converters which take the sound from the cartridge and convert it to binary information for the computer is also made to give a higher quality sound than the less expensive units. All of these factors will give you a higher quality, truer sound when capturing your vinyl LPs. The Denon turntable has a 0.15% wow and flutter rate and the Sony has a 0.25% rate and neither note the type of cartridge tip used.

To step up to the high end USB turntables, the main option is from Pro-Ject (~599 CAN). The other main option for setting up a high quality system is purchasing a separate high quality turntable along with the Pro-ject Phono Box II USB. The Pro-ject Debut III has a wow and flutter rate of 0.12% and a speed variance of 0.8%. It also has a 1.8kg platter and belt-driven decoupled motor and uses a diamond tipped needle. All this allows for a very high quality playback of your vinyl which is least likely to be affected by external factors.

Check back for the next part in the series where I’ll talk about having your records transferred professionally and things to ask before you trust someone with your vinyl!  After that I’ll explain how to actually do the record conversion, as well as a few other things to consider!

Part 1 – Intro
Part 2 – Home conversion with existing turntable
Part 3 – Using a USB turntable
Part 4 – Have Someone Else Do It

Part 1 – Intro
Part 2 – Home conversion with existing turntable
Part 3 – Using a USB turntable
Part 4 – Have Someone Else Do It

Do you have an old record player which is still in good quality and produces a good sound? This is an option for you!

Before you think about playing your records, you want to make sure they, as well as your player are in good condition. Nothing is worse than playing your record in a turntable with a damaged cartridge and scratching and damaging your irreplacable records.

Another consideration when using an old turntable is its output. Standalone turntables usually had a phono output which you would connect to the phono input on your stero amplifier which then connected to your speakers. Standalone turntables have such a low volume output, the amplifier is needed to boost the output to proper listening volumes. When considering connecting your turntable to your computer, if your turntable doesn’t have a high volume output, you will need to invest in a phono stage, such as the Pro-Ject Phono Box II (~$159 US). This allows you to boost your turntable’s output to a volume which can be recorded by your computer without distortion.

What else do you need? You will also need a computer with a line-in jack as well as a converter plug which on one end has a 3.5mm male headphone jack and on the other has 2 male RCA plugs. This cord allows you to connect the turntable (or Phono Box) to your computer. You will also need to download a copy of Audacity. This is a free, powerful program which allows you to record from the line-in connection on your computer. I recommend the 1.3.x versions over the 1.2.x versions as the 1.3 line has additional features which make converting our records much simpler!

How to! Once you have all the necessary parts together, hook your turntable to the phono box using the supplied cables. Then hook the phono box to the computer using the 2 RCA->3.5mm cable mentioned earlier. You are now (almost) able to convert your first record!

Other Option: Rather than connect your turntable through a phono box and into your computer from there, you can upgrade from the Pro-ject Phono Box to the Pro-ject Phono Box II USB (~$199 US) which has a USB output along with the amplified phono output. If you do this option, check out part 3 of this series to learn how to connect your turntable to your computer.

Check back soon for the next part where I’ll talk about hooking up a USB turntable to your computer!

Part 1 – Intro
Part 2 – Home conversion with existing turntable
Part 3 – Using a USB turntable
Part 4 – Have Someone Else Do It

Part 1 – Intro
Part 2 – Home conversion with existing turntable
Part 3 – Using a USB turntable
Part 4 – Have Someone Else Do It

For 6 decades, records were the most common music format and turntables and players were commonplace. Now however, unless you’re willing to spend hundreds of dollars, it is very hard to find a quality turntable, not to mention a good sounding cartridge and needle.

Compared to today’s technology of MP3s and MP3 players, records are big bulky and inconvenient. They only hold around 12 songs, you have to flip them over half way through, and don’t forget about trying to blow the dust out of the grovves before you play them! Even compared to CDs, records still require a lot more work. If you want to listen to track 4 on side 2, you have to flip the record over and try and count the track lines on the vinyl to figure out where track 4 starts, then drop the needle in the right spot. Not easy compared to just hitting the ‘next’ button on your CD player.

Despite all these shortcomings, there is still a huge collectors market out there for LPs. There are thousands of albums which were never re-released on CD and oly exist in someones record collection. Then there is the audiophile’s argument that the sound quality of CDs and MP3s are no match for the rich full sound of vinyl pressings. They claim the compressing of MP3s and the over-produced sound of CDs just don’t cut it.

But for the rest of us who love our vinyl collection, or even just have a few treasured records which were passed down from our parents, or that we listened to as kids, the inconvenience of records and rarity of proper playback equipment often prevents us from enjoying the music which we only have on records.

So how do you go about converting our vinyl to CD or MP3? There are a few options out there depending on the equipment, time and skills you have: home conversion with a standard record player, home conversion with a USB record player, and professional conversion. In the next few blog postings, we will consider each of these options, their drawbacks, advangtages and how-tos! Check back soon for the first posting!

Part 1 – Intro
Part 2 – Home conversion with existing turntable
Part 3 – Using a USB turntable
Part 4 – Have Someone Else Do It

Hello and welcome to this new blog! On this blog I’ll be discussing the art of converting analog media to digital. We will look at transferring photos, slides, cassettes, vinyl records, VHS and a variety of other home movies. Anything else you want to hear about? Let me know at joel @ zineer.com. I look forward to helping you learn more about digital transferring and am sure I’ll learn a thing or two from you as well!