Bob Hartmann wrote: > > I'm about to start doing a similar project. Well, identical. One > thing to look out for is the fact that most turntables do not have > built in preamps. That means the signal coming out needs some serious > EQ on the low end. (standardized by our friends at the RIAA, the > people who want to jail us for doing this.. ) Check out > http://www.platenspeler.com/background/riaa/uk_riaa_background_1.html > If you have a receiver with a phono input, make it easy and just go > from the aux out on your receiver. Otherwise, I imagine one could > record direct and then use ReZound to approximate the curve shown on > the page I linked above to get similar results. Gramofile sounds > interesting but I hated their website immediately. Doesn't say > anything about preamps or filters, anyway. As I've said, I am going > to doing this soon, so I would certainly appreciate anything anyone > has to say about the process. > Oh, btw, I use Ardour for capturing audio, ReZound for post and k3B > for burn. I came from the Cakewalk crowd, so I like to see stuff on > screen. In color! ;> > > Erik Anderson wrote: > >> On 10/29/05, Kraig Jones <jkjones at tcq.net> wrote: >> >> >>> I want to record and convert some old LP's to MP3 or ogg. I've found >>> one way to do it -- turntable to sound card's line-in, using >>> Audacity to >>> record and save to .wav, .mp3, or .ogg. The only thing is, it seems to >>> me that Audacity is more complex than necessary. I was just wondering >>> if anyone has used any other methods? >>> >> >> >> You have a few options here...you could use either arecord or ecasound >> from the command line to record the wav and then encode to mp3 using >> lame. Alternatively, there's an open-source project called >> "gramofile" which was written specifically to help people do the >> vinyl->mp3 conversion. I've never used it, but it might be of use for >> you. >> >> -Erik > Thanks everyone, for the ideas. Project status report so far: Had to get a new turntable. The old good quality one with the cracked base was the one thrown out at last basement cleaning, old cheapo turntable with nice base was saved, but doesn't work. So I picked one up at Radio Shack. Turntables sold at local retailers all look the same -- different names, but appear to be identical. It works OK, obviously not top-of-the-line hi-fi, but it has a built-in preamp. Either Audacity or Gramofile work well to record to .wav. Gramofile doesn't look as pretty, but it's simple to use and the menu is set up to do exactly what I'm trying to do: Record to .wav, process audio (filters to remove LP noise), and split the sound file into tracks. Export to compressed formats (ogg or mp3) isn't implemented in Gramofile; KAudioCreator does that. Gramofile's filters help reduce cracks and pops from scratchy LPs. Not entirely, but my first sample LPs are in bad shape. Audacity has filters that allow more tweaking, but are not as one-click simple to use as Gramofile. I experimented some with RIAA and other equalization in Audacity, but I couldn't hear any differences from the straight recording. Rezound crashed a couple times while I was trying it, but it looks promising so I'll see if I can get it to work. Kraig