1 of 3

Write now Article Tools

Vinyl records may still be the preferred music format for some, esp. DJ's or certain audiophiles, but there's many people who got rid of their turntable because they just couldn't be bothered to play records once they'd grown used to the length and convenience of CD players, esp. ones that hold multiple CDs, or their turntable broke and for awhile only Technics and Denon were still making them. Fortunately, there's been a resurgence of interest in vinyl records and many people have realized that they have albums that will possibly never be re-issued on CD.

Some may advise hooking up your turntable and amp to the soundcard in your computer, but having done quite a few record-to-CD transfers this way in my audio studio, I'm happy to say that there's now dedicated turntable systems that are specifically designed to play albums and capture the music on your computer, and allow you to easily edit and clean it up. Right now there's two major products available, and interestingly the less expensive one is the by-far better. But before we get to that, there's an very important point to cover: cleaning your records.

Clean records will make for better recordings on CD and/or converted to MP3, and the software included with the products I'll be mentioning can help remove hiss, crackle, pops, clicks, and other noises, but the cleaner your record is, the better the end results will be; as they say, "Garbage In, Garbage Out".

So I highly recommend buying a decent record cleaning set, or you can do as a local record-only shop does where I live, and take each record out, lay it on a very clean, soft surface, and spray a mix of ammonia and water (basically "Windex" watered down even more) onto a chamois cloth, and carefully wipe around the record twice with the wet portion, let dry, then wipe with the dry side of the chamois.

You can also buy a number of cleaning kits which are basically the above in an easy-to-use but more expensive package. Do a Web search for "record cleaning kit" if you need one, there are many.

1. Audio Technica LP To Digital Recording System (available from Amazon, J&R, etc.)

Retails for about US $100. Converts records into WAV (lossless) or MP3 and WMA formats (lossy). A solidly-built belt-driven turntable, it comes with a very easy to use version of Cakewalk's Pyro 2004 software, which not only lets you edit, clean up and convert your recordings, but you can also use it to make full-color CD case labels and inserts and burn the recordings to CDR. Other features

• 1
• 2
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about How to copy vinyl records onto CDs?
We want to hear your view. Write now!