Moomoo48 Loc: Boston

I do a lot of slideshow for family and friends and would like to convert my lp’s to wav or mp3’s. I am wondering if anyone has experience and recommendations on what device I should buy. There are a ton of them out there and I would like to find one reasonably priced.
In advance thanks for any input

mp97070 Loc: Central Oregon

I used my turntable and amp and instead of speakers, I input it into my sound card. It did very well, one of my records had a long but tough life (little scratches and such) but actually sounded a better after I changed to mp3. I did about 10 of these.

dick ranez

Go mp3. you can buy a mp3 turntable for about $100 that has a small preamp built it. You can use any existing stereo out to the sound card on your computer. Look at "audacity" software (freeware) for any editing you may want to do.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

You have several options. If you have a conventional analog turnatable, and an amp/preamp or receiver, you can use the analog line out from your receiver or preamp and connect to your sound card line in on your computer. You can then use the application of your choice (such as Audacity which was suggested) to create a digital file. You can generate an MP3 which is small but compressed, both in terms of DR and bandwidth, or a larger audio file format (such as FLAC, ALAC, DSD, AIFF) that will maintain the DR and BW of the original LP. Caveats: You may encounter hum (caused by ground loops) attaching an amp or reciever directly to the sound card. The answer is either a ground isolation transformer (Radio Shack used to make one which you may still be able to order online) or use a laptop running on battery power. Another potential issue is that many computers (especially laptops) no longer have a line in, just a mic input.

Alternately, you can purchase a USB turntable (AudioTechnia makes one) which you can plug directly into a USB port on the computer. The A/D conversion is done by the turntable so you just need an application (usually supplied) to create the MP3, Wav, or other file - the soundcard is not involved. These are typically of mediocre quality compared to a good turntable, cartridge and analog preamp.

Finally, at the bottom end of the quality scale, are the players that convert directly to MP3 format (and often have a Bluetooth link as well). These are the cheapest and easiest to use (no application required), but the quality will be less than desirable.

If you have a good turntable, cartridge and amp, that will provide the best results. If not, you have to decide if it makes more sense to spend $125-150 for mediocre results or whether it makes more sense to just buy/download the music (assuming it’s available) in MP3 or CD format.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Sam's Cub, Costco and Walmart among others all have turntables designed to plug directly into high end amps or computers to transfer LP to digital. Some of them are in cabinets that make them look "old fashioned" for those who use them to listen without the dubbing to digital.

For those recommending MP3, remember MP3 actually drops a lot of the tonal range.
That is why old scratched records seem to sound a bit better.
But a lot of what was recorded on the LP or better yet Tape/CD/DVD is not there anymore in MP3.

That said for those of us who are older or have hearing loss from other things (noise, ear infections, fungus infections etc) it may not make any difference. We can't hear it anymore anyway. But for younger people or those fortunate ones without hearing loss the difference is there, esp if you listen with a good set of studio grade headphones.

Back in the 60's, in Vietnam, one of the guys brought back a set of high end headphones from R&R in Tokyo and we all tried them with a stereo setup in the barracks. Astounding is all I can say. The music we tested the phones with was Symphony No. 9 in E minor, "From the New World" by Dvorak. It has violin passages so low you have to strain to hear them followed by LOUD sections where the full orchestra comes in. On speakers the difference seems to blow windows out. With those phones on we could turn the volume down and still hear the soft violins. Oh, what were a bunch of young GIs doing listening to Dvorak instead of Rock or Country? You might be surprised, we listened to everything. Plus the PX system sold a lot of "High Brow" Music on vinyl or tape at really low prices and we just plain liked to push those fairly high end stereo systems we bought cheap from the PX or on R&R. We would buy them, set them up and play with them in the barracks and then ship them home to be waiting for us when we went back to "The World".

Moomoo48 Loc: Boston

Thank you

Moomoo48 Loc: Boston

Great insight thanks for the information

Moomoo48 Loc: Boston

Interesting thanks and thank you for your service

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Boy, that brings back memories. I bought a Sansui 5000 receiver, a Dual 1019 turntable and a pair of AR speakers at the PX at Freedom Hill (DaNang), and shipped them home when my tour was up. Like a lot of us, I’m nearly deaf in my right ear - there were no hearing protectors in the jungle or in a fire fight. Several decades later, I bought a pair of the original KOSS ESP Electrostatic headphones which came with an individual calibration chart for each ear speaker. They are heavy (and were expensive), but to this day, they are the best reference transducers I have ever heard.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

That set of phones we played with (don't remember the brand) had cost the guy $150 in Tokyo, in 1967. They were the huge over the ear size with padded rims to seal out noise and had tone and volume dials and an instruction manual on how to set the amp and use them.

Part of my hearing problems came from tropical fungus infections - for most of my time there the base showers got their water straight from a stream that came down the mountain and fed a creek that went right through the middle of the compound. A lot of guys got fungus in their ears from those showers. We were told the fungus got in the flesh inside the ear and was permanent and every so often moisture in the ear would activate it again. Then about 10 years ago when I had a flareup the ENT Dr at Kaiser told me they now had stuff that would kill most of it off and leave the rest crippled and weak. Haven't had it real bad since, just a little irritation and inner ear bleeding a few times a year.

Of course my hearing loss is not documented - part of my records went up in a fire at the St Louis records center in the 70s. So no % added to my Partial VA Disability from Agent Orange.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Yep, they lost my records in the fire also. So sorry to hear yet another one of us is suffering from the effects of agent orange. I have lost several friends and two family members to agent orange related illnesses.

Dan Mc Loc: NM

Stories of list records are all over the place, but here is the actual loss by category, date, etc.

On July 12, 1973, a disastrous fire at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) destroyed approximately 16-18 million Official Military Personnel Files (OMPF). The records affected:

Personnel and Period Affected

Estimated Loss

Army Personnel discharged November 1, 1912 to January 1, 1960 80%

Air Force Personnel discharged September 25, 1947 to January 1, 1964 (with names alphabetically after Hubbard, James E.) 75%

https://www.archives.gov/personnel-records-center/fire-1973

JeffL Loc: New Jersey

I can attribute my hearing loss to years of jets on flightlines and listening to Cold War enemies on headsets. However, the OP wants advice on converting LP’s to digital. If you can manage the attachment of a turntable to a computer, you can use Audacity (or other software) to digitize the output. Now for the controversial statements: Convert as WAV, not MP3! A wav file is uncompressed, lossless and provides a digital sound quality equal to the analog. An mp3 file is a greatly compressed and lossy version of the music. Sort of like the difference between a RAW file and a basic JPG. WAV files can be 20 times the the size of an mp3 file, but storage is cheap these days. If you are a critical listener, you will be disappointed by the sound of an mp3 cut. The very best compromise is to record as a WAV file and then convert to a lossless format, such as FLAC. That way you retain a perfect copy of the original, uncompressed, with no loss to sound quality. Flac files are much smaller than WAV files, but preserve the sound that’s captured. You can always convert to mp3 later to load on your smartphone or other mobile device. Once converted to flac the WAV file can be deleted. The flac file can be converted to mp3. I have 47,000 songs on a hard drive, most of them in flac format.

rustfarmer

I disagree that any digital file is truly "lossless", however, I have not (nor do I know how to) experimented with WAV and FLAC files, so perhaps I should STFU?

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

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