How to convert LP collection in CD or DVD? How can I do it?

[vagnermarks]

I have a collection of LP and I would like to save them in CDs.
How could I do it?

1) Is this a good suggestion?
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 VALUE PCI Internal Sound Card - OEM - 7.1 Channels, Max Sampling Rate: 192kHz, 24-bit, 1024 Voices, Connectors: Line level out, Microphone in, Line in, Telephone Answering Device in, Aux In, Digital I/O. Model# SB0400.

2) What kind of free program should I use?

3) Which is the best mode: MP3, Monkey, Lame, MPC, WMA, Ogg ? Which one could give me the best sound quality ?

4) It is important to have enough memory and free space in my HD !?

5) Is there something more that I should take care before go ahead?

6) Which kind of midia I have to use?

Somebody could give me some instructions because I really don´t understand nothing about it and it is my first time !

Tks

 

[Gigantopithecus]

1. Connect turntable to receiver.
2. Connect receiver to mic/audio in of the mobo you already own.
3. Start up windows recorder. Set to save as *.wav.
4. Drop the needle.
5. Hit record.
6. Save the wav files, mass convert them to mp3s with CDex.
7. Enjoy!

I know of no way to automate this process - it takes a lot of time but is really fun to listen to a bunch of LPs you probably haven't listened to in a while.

 

[disperse]

1. Creative's line of soundcards are very good consumer level cards. If you were mostly concerned about sound quality and less concerned about the game/multimedia features of the Audigy card, you can do better for the same amount of money:

http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/PCI/MiaMIDI/index.php
http://www.midiman.com/products/en_us/Audiophile2496-main.html

You can spend a lot more, but those are two examples of cards in the same price range that are designed for recording.

2. I haven't used any freeware recording software that I could recommend. However, the SoundForge series of software is very good:

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/products/showproduct.asp?pid=945

3. Because you are looking to burn the music to a CD (I'm assuming to play in your CD player) you will want to record in a 16bit 44KHz WAV format. However, if you want to keep the music on your hard drive as well, you might want to look in to a lossless audio compression format such as FLAC:

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

4. A 45 minute album recorded in stereo, 44.1 KHz, 16 bit, will take ~475 MB. If you are recording a lot of albums and want to keep them on your hard drive you may need more disk space. However, 100GB+ Hard Drives are cheap these days so you shouldn't have any trouble. Althought not necessary for recording stereo audio, you should probably have 512MB or more of memory with today's operating systems.

5. A couple things to keep in mind. Some record players have a lower level output than most stereo equipment. If this is the case, you may need to buy a preamplifier to go between the record player and your sound card. If your record player is currently going into the "PHONO" input of your amplifier, your amplifier may already be taking care of this step. If there is a "TAPE OUTPUT" output on your amplifier you can plug this into your sound card and assume that it is putting out reasonable levels. Also, if your records are old and scratched, you may want to invest in a set of plugins for sound restoration. I don't have any experience with these plugins so you'll have to do some research.

6. A regular blank CD-R will work fine. If you want to back up a bunch of albums on one disk (perhaps in the FLAC or other compressed format) you might want to use a DVD-R.

Hope that gets you started,

Mark.

 

[minofifa]

the m-audio audiophile is probably your best bet as far as quality/price goes. A strong competator might be the emu 0404.