Turn Your Vinyl LPs Into CDs

Turn your old albums into CDs without losing the snap, crackle, and pop of vinyl.

With a good sound-recording and sound-editing program you can take those old scratchy LPs and 78s and record them through your sound card and then burn the music to an audio CD or store it as an MP3 file. You can even filter out all those clicks and pops. Many old 78s and LPs are irreplaceable, so it pays to preserve them in a digital format. If you have ever recorded a cassette or reel-to-reel tape, you should be comfortable with this process and delighted with the ability to improve the quality of the audio.

The following process also works for recording audio from other external sources, such as cassette tapes and microphones.

Before you start, download a program such as Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit) for the PC. Demo versions can be downloaded for free. It pays to experiment with a short clip before you record and clean up an entire album. Find out which settings work best for different types of recordings and write these settings down for future reference.

Connect adapter cable

Connect the adapter cable from the tape out (or record) jack of your stereo receiver to the line input of your sound card. Newer turntables with line-out jacks can be connected directly to the sound card.

Create new file

Create a new file in the sound-editing program you're using. If you intend to create an audio CD, you must choose a sample rate of 44,100, two channels (stereo), and a resolution of 16 bits. This will create a file that takes up approximately 10MB of space for every minute recorded, so you will need plenty of free disk space.

For voice or music to be embedded in a webpage, you can use a lower sample rate, a single channel, and 8-bit resolution to create a much smaller file.

Set volume control

Play part of the track and use the volume control program to set your recording levels. In Windows, the first screen of the volume control program is for playback levels. To get to the recording level screen:

Choose Properties from the Options menu.
Select the check box for Recording.
Make sure the check box for line-in volume control is also selected.
Click OK and the record level screen will appear.

Set record level
Set the Monitor Record Level option in your recording program to On, and, as the track plays, adjust the slider for line-in so the level meter shows a strong signal, but not too strong, because any peaks will cause the meter to go into the red area.

Record
Be sure all background applications are turned off while you record.
Lift the stylus and queue up the beginning of the track.
Click the record button in your recording program.
Lower the needle to the album.
When the track is finished, click the Stop button and lift the stylus.

Playback
Play back the track to hear how it sounds. Trim off any silence at the beginning and ends of the track. If you have an audio cleanup plug, use it to automatically remove any clicks, pops, and hiss.

If you don't have an audio cleanup plug-in, try this:
Zoom in to each click or pop.
Select an adjacent cycle of the waveform at the zero crossing points.
Copy it to the clipboard.
Paste it over the cycle that contains the click.
Listen to the track again and run the hiss removal if necessary.

Normalise
Normalise the track to adjust the volume up or down so that all tracks will play at a similar level. A value of 97 percent usually works well if your software normalizes by peak level. More advanced programs, such as Cool Edit Pro, can normalize by average levels, which is much more accurate.

Fades
You may want to add a fade-in or fade-out. Some CD recording programs, such as Nero, can automatically crossfade tracks as the CD is recorded.

Save files
If you intend to record the track to an audio CD, save it to a PCM format WAV file (PC). Save the file to MP3 format if you want to play it from your computer or on a portable player.


Once again, before you record an entire album, experiment with a short clip so you can determine which settings work best for different types of recordings. Write the settings down for future reference.