HOW TO RECORD VINYL LP’s TO YOUR
HARD DRIVE IN DIGITAL FORMAT (WAV)
Transferring LPs to Hard Drive
and finally CD-R: Intro
These notes below are my own
experiences with my attempts to transfer vinyl LP’s to the hard drive, editing the
WAV file, and burning it on a CD-R. I’m not an audio professional, so I’m going
to be explaining things that have worked for me during trial and error
throughout the last year using different software and hardware combinations
that have worked for me.
Preliminaries
I began this desire to preserve
some of my aging vinyl LP collection about a year ago because some are
unavailable on CD or aren’t essential enough to me to be worth spending lots of
money replacing them on CD. Again, these are my experiences with what has
worked for me and I don’t guarantee they will work with your hardware setup. I
can sum up the basic steps to transferring a vinyl LP to the CD-R:
1. Recording the vinyl LP to the hard drive in a WAV format.
2. Clean the WAV file removing pops and clicks using a WAV
editor.
3. Normalize the WAV files.
4. Burn the WAV files to a CD-R.
Things you will need:
1. A stereo amplifier with phono inputs and tape output
jacks. I use an inexpensive amplifier that I purchased from Radio Shack (cat
no. 31-1957) at a cost of ~$60. This saves the time needed to disconnect your
current receiver, which can be a hassle if you have lots of electronic items
connected to it.
2. Turntable.
3. A patch cable from Radio Shack that has the miniature
connector on one end and the standard RCA jacks that will plug into the Tape
Out jacks in the back of the amplifier. The miniature end of this cable plugs
into the LINE IN of your sound card.
4. A decent sound card capable of producing a signal of
44.1KHz 16-bit stereo. I’m using an Aureal Vortex sound card. Most modern sound
cards should be able to do this with no problems.
5. Software – You need software to copy the music to the
hard drive in a WAV format. I began using the Spin Doctor utility found in the
Easy CD Creator Deluxe package. This software is OK, but I’ve switched over to
using Groove Mechanic, and later I’ll explain why and where you can get it.
6. Plenty of hard drive space. I would recommend that you
have 2 gig free for recording one full LP.
This will allow approximately 600 megs for the WAV files and some for
any temporary files created by the program. Afterwards, any modifications done
to the original WAV files using Groove Mechanic will require additional hard
drive space, because Groove Mechanic will make a new file when you begin to
edit the original file, using the word “fixed” in the new file.
Once you have this list of
stuff, then you can begin by right clicking on the speaker icon located in the
tray. Select “open volume controls”. Click on options then properties. Place a
check in the box “recording”, and verify that the “line-in” has a check mark in
the box. If you don’t do this, the sound from the turntable will never be heard
from the speakers or recorded by the software. This is very important! It took
me over an hour to figure this out when I first started this. When you back out
of this box, verify that you don’t have a check mark for the line-in box
because it will mute all sound coming into the line-in jack from the sound
card. See the pictures below:
Without any software running and
you have your line-in turned on as stated above, you should be able to play a
vinyl LP and be able to hear it through the computer speakers. If you can’t,
double-check your connections and settings. Verify that you indeed plugged the
miniature jack into the line-in located on the sound card.
Setting Recording Levels
It’s important to set the
recording levels accordingly. You should get the peaks as close to 0dB as
possible without exceeding that level. Using Groove Mechanic, -3bB will
indicate a green color and then yellow when you hit 0. Any peaks after 0 are in
red and should be avoided. I have found that in order to get close to the –3 to
0dB range, the input level will be almost maxed out (the slider found when you
right-click on the speaker icon and select “open volume controls”). I have also
discovered that I have to slightly correct for improper channel balance, as the
right channel’s level was always lower than the left. This can be done by using
the balance slider found in the “open volume controls” for left and right
balance. By viewing the recording bars in Groove Mechanic, you can adjust the
channel balance as needed to correct for any possible differences. See picture
below:
Beginning Recording
After your satisfied with your
settings, restart the LP and click on the record button (red arrow) AFTER the stylus
hits the vinyl not before. Then sit back and wait until the track you want to
record is finished, or record he entire side as a single WAV file. It’s easier
to record one track at a time then trying to separate them out later using a
WAV editor. When the track is finished, simply press the stop button to
terminate the recording process. Repeat this procedure for any more tracks you
want to record.
Editing WAV Files
When you have finished recording
to the hard drive, you’ll notice that the WAV files consume lots of real
estate. Using Groove Mechanic, open a WAV file you want to edit. Groove
Mechanic will open the file and then give you an option to save the file with
the word “fixed” in the name of the WAV file. For example, If I have a WAV
called “Bon Jovi – Its My Life”, Groove Mechanic will create a new file called
“Bon Jovi – Its My Life – Fixed.wav”. Let the program create this new file
because if you mess up, you still have the original file for editing instead of
repeating the entire recording process again.
Once the file is loaded in
Groove Mechanic, select Repair and then “Analyze Clicks and Rumble”. This menu
item begins the analysis of the audio for clicks and rumble. It may take
several minutes. The estimated time to completion is shown at the bottom left
of the main window. On an old P166mmx PC for a single track of 5 minutes, this
might take 5 minutes to complete. After the analysis is finished, click on Fix
Clicks to repair this selection. This might take several minutes, again depending
on the size of the file and the speed of the processor. After the repair of
clicks, select Repair and then Fix Rumble.
This is where I normally stop
after the Fix Rumble, as I don’t select Fix Hiss because this can take a lot of
time to complete. If you are trying to record music from tape (which is
basically the same procedure as vinyl), then you might want to try this option.
If you don’t like the results, then delete the “fixed” file and repeat the
process again. After the files have been cleaned with Groove Mechanic, select
the play option to listen to the tracks recorded. You’ll be pretty impressed
with the results. After you have successfully cleaned all your tracks, you will
now need to “normalize” all the WAV files prior to recording them on a CD.
Normalizing
I’m using a free utility that
normalizes WAV files. The purposes of normalizing the files are to ensure they
are all at the same volume level before recording them to the CD. The name of
the utility that I use is called: The Wave Normalizer and you can get it here:
From the home page, select
WAV-NORM and go and download the file. Install as necessary on your hard drive.
Load the WAV files you want to normalize and finally click the go button. On a
P166mmx machine, this process does not take that long to complete. After the
WAV’s have been normalized, then you can burn them on a blank CD.
Burning
This is probably the easiest
part of the entire process. Use any of your favorite programs to burn WAV files
to the blank CD. These programs can be anyone of the following: Nero, Easy CD
Creator, and MP3 CD Maker. In your options for burning, select Disc-at-Once.
This option is used to write and close a CD in one operation without turning
the writing laser on and off between tracks. This eliminates the two second-gap
between tracks and write-protects the CD. You can select this option if you are
recording WAV or MP3 files stored on your hard disk or music CD tracks.
LINKS OF INTREST including some
free software and great info:
http://www.pinoyware.com/fliptech/reference.shtml
http://www.fidelitycomputer.com/drives.htm
Groove Mechanic - http://www.coyotes.bc.ca/
http://myhome.iolfree.ie/~mp3workshop/
This guide was created by
Charles Wathen, aka “Executioner” on 1-26-01