Turntable to computer

[Loggerman]

Guess I might be showing my age with this question.
I want to hook my turntable to my computer,
AMD 500
S/Blive
Win XP pro
The guy at the new(only)shop here in town says,
To run the T/T through an amp first
then some kind of music mixer(?) to set some kind of levels
I guess you can't run it straight into the computer.
All I want to do is put my lp's on cd's

 

[Stutz]

Hi!
I too had a number of LPs and wanted to get them into my computer. The gent you talked with about needing to run the TT through an amp is correct in that the signal coming out of the phono cartridge is not equalized, and the amp will supply this internally. It is not necessary for making the signal louder. You'll need to acquire a stereo RCA jack to mini-plug cable at an electronics shop. The RCA plugs go into the output jacks of the amp and the stereo mini-plug goes in to the line-in jack of your sound card.

You then must run the volume control applet of Windows. You hit Options -> Properties, click on the choce for recording and specify line-in. You will now be able to record the signal in a .WAV file. I prefer to record the WAV file using the recording facility in Exact Audio Copy (aka EAC, primarily a CD audio ripper, available for download at http:\\www.r3mix.net). Once the WAV is captured, I use EAC to process the file. By that I mean I first normalize the file, then trim the beginning and end of a song and clean up any obvious clicks or pops in the file using the built-in sound editor in EAC. When I'm satisfied with the recording I, save it as a WAV and close EAC. I then use RazorLame to encode the WAV to MP3 using the --r3mix parameter (the --r3mix switch gives the best compromise between file size and quality).

Best,

Stutz

 

[darth maul]

Dang I thought you were changing a turntable into a computer, I came here wondering how you were gonna squeeze all into a record player's case.

Ya, you can go into in any phonograph/record players input on a receiver. Or radio shack or other audio salon type store should be able to sell ya a phonograph amp for as little as $30 or as much as you want to spend . That little amp will give you record player in, and regular line level out on RCA jacks, which ya can get an adaptor from RCA to 1/8" stereo jack your computer will accept.

 

[Ronstang]

I personally use a little preamp I bought at Best Buy for about $25. It hooks to the TT and then to the sound card with an RCA to Miniplug cable, like stated earlier. I also use EAC to record the entire side of an album. I then use the WAV editor that comes in Nero 5.5 to save the individual songs to their own WAV files that I then open in WinOnCD to do click/pop removal and final editing before I use lame to make each into an mp3. I also make CDs from my recorded/edited tracks using Feurio before I delete the WAV files from my hard drive.