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Digital Copies of LP's

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Kyocerafan

Active Member
I am a relatively old guy with limited computer skills trying to archive my music into digital to primarily make it available on my Sonos system. I'm not trying for maximum possible fidelity or settling for junky MP3 quality, just trying to find a reasonable compromise to try to make what I already own more convenient to use. I find myself living in two locations, both with pretty extensive Sonos setups integrated into my more traditional old school CD/turntable installations. I make use of all formats depending on my mood or available time to devote to critical listening, or just having music to listen to, although my music obsession rarely makes anything truly "background music". Sonos actually works really well to allow me to listen to whatever music format in any room I want as long as I have a Connect in at least one of the old school stereos. It's obviously just not practical to haul my CD and LP collections back and forth between the two locations. I know there are many ways to stream whatever I want into my Sonos system but it seems like a shame to have an extensive music library just sitting around when the technology exists to do what I need. Besides, just like the old days with my cassette copying of my records I'm trying to minimize wear and tear on them. Very few of them have probably been played more than 4 or 5 times.

All that said, I have seemingly successfully stumbled through the process of ripping all my CD's onto my laptop using DB Poweramp. They are FLAC encoded and in Windows Media Player and my Sonos music library. That part of my music collection is now available to use the way I want in what I consider to be acceptable fidelity. It was remarkably easy for even this Bozo to do. I'm ready to add my LP's into the process but research indicates this is much more involved. Not afraid, but I have a few questions regarding the needed hardware, what kind of files these will end up being and how to turn them into something with similar fidelity and accessibility.

I'm leaning toward VinylStudio as the software. I will need something (hopefully) reasonably affordable to make the analog to digital conversion. I have plenty of receivers with fairly competent phono stages I could use at that end but nothing with a usb interface. Something like a NAD PP4 or an ART USB Phono Plus would be an easy all in one solution but is there anything that would take the line level out of a receiver and get it into the USB input of my laptop? As always, I'm looking for a reasonable compromise for fidelity for these less than critical listening needs.

In a perfect world these files made from LP's would be as close to my CD rips as possible as far as fidelity and accessibility is concerned. I think "CD" quality would be just fine for this job. I'm an analog fan but I can listen that way when I want/need to. Is there any point to doing this in anything beyond 16/44 "quality"? I've adjusted my "audiophile" expectations over the years in the interest of more content. This is primarily about portability with reasonable fidelity.

How many steps are there in this process? Create a digital one to one master copy of the record and then convert that into something like a FLAC file to use that can end up on the WMP and Sonos? Would one keep these "master copies" for possible use down the road, devoting considerable hard drive space to such an archive? What are the steps in the workflow depending on the desired results?

I'm pretty confident I can handle the actual needle drop process. I just want to understand what these files will be and how to make use of them in a similar fashion as my CD rips.

All of this is obviously fairly elementary to a lot of you folks. Once I do it I'm sure it will all make sense but I'm trying to avoid simultaneously overthinking this and ignoring obvious gaps in my knowledge.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully not being too much of a bother...
 
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A great project -- the biggest difference I see moving from ripping CDs to ripping LP's is the time factor ... as you know, ripping/tagging a 1 hour CD can take as little as 10 minutes. Those LP's will need to be done in real time, then each track will need to get edited and tagged..manually (unless there is an automated process for LP's) ... you will need to track down the Artwork as well... without knowing the size of the LP collection to encode to mp3 (320 recommended) -- I think it is a worthwhile mission ... we listened to a bunch of LPs recently in the car going down to Philly -- sounded great, and every not was just like we remembered it when we first heard it so many moons ago .. no remixing etc..(which is one reason I enjoy vinyl since I grew up with it ..)... so the portability is a big plus for the project ...

If going MP3, be sure not to use anything less than 320 -- storage is cheap. You cld, of course, go with lossless FLAC ... With LP's, not sure one cld hear the difference between flac and 320 MP3...
 
One thing I would suggest is to find as many of your records as you can in CD this will save you a great deal of time. Discogs is a great resource to do this. Also it will quickly tell you if a CD edition even exists. Discogs has an apps for both Android and Apple. You can also purchase long out-of-print recordings, it is my go-to source for this.
 
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transmaster said:
One thing I would suggest is to find as many of you records as you can in CD this will save you a great deal of time. Discogs is a great resource to do this. Also it will quickly tell you if a CD edition even exists. Discogs has an apps for both Android and Apple. You can also purchase long out-of-print recordings, it is my go-to source for this.
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What he said.

"Ripping" an LP is so time consuming I rarely do it. I can buy a used CD for ~$2 rip it in 5 minutes and I'm good to go.
 
With early CD’s always try to get the Japanese-issued ones. The CD took off big time in Japan before it did in the States. Sony and company came to the US with open checkbooks. They purchased all of the top-quality masters they could get their hands on. State-side recording companies didn't see the value in the old masters so the sold them too these roobs from Japan. Then the CD took off in the USA. Guess were the masters they needed were.
 
Kyocerafan said:
How many steps are there in this process? Create a digital one to one master copy of the record and then convert that into something like a FLAC file
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That's about it, yes.

I've used Audacity. It's free.
Set up the recording quality in Audacity (16/44k1, or whatever).
Set up file naming and location settings.
Set the output format (FLAC).
Experiment with the gain setting, picking the loudest part, and ensuring you don't clip the digital range.

Play the vinyl, recording in Audacity.
Optionally, do volume levelling and de-click processing.
Split the recording into tracks, either selecting tracks manually, or using the 'silence finder' to find the inter-track gaps.
Set the basic metadata for the album.
Export Multiple.

I use MusicBee for my library management, as it's very good at getting metadata, so I no longer have to type track titles in; it will just fetch them, given the basic metadata of album artist and album title. Not sure how good WMP is for this.

That's it.
Once set up, the recording tool will usually remember the settings.
 
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Thanks for the feedback. I guess a case could be made to find CD copies of my LP's instead. The only CD's I find for $2 are thrift store stuff. I don't often find a CD I'm specifically looking for at a thrift. It's usually a CD that "finds" me and there's nothing wrong with that. I've generally gone on the Bay for specific titles. Sometimes I find them for $5-6 shipped. Any more than that would be hard to justify to me for something I already have a clean LP copy of. Perhaps I need to find other places to find them too. I do have some stuff on LP or 12 inch 45's, etc that might be hard to find.

Your message, cpt paranoia, sounds a lot like what I was anticipating the process to be based on my initial research. The initial recordings just stay on my computer after exporting to my library?

Are there any devices that will take the analog output from my receiver and turn it into USB with good fidelity? Or should I count on a USB capable phono preamp?
 
Kyocerafan said:
The initial recordings just stay on my computer after exporting to my library?
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Your initial recordings can be saved, or discarded, once you save the FLAC versions of the tracks; up to you. FLAC is lossless, so is a perfect copy of your digital sampling. The only reasons to keep the 'original' digital samplings would be a worry that you somehow split the recording into individual tracks incorrectly, or an OCD desire to preserve the recording, or perhaps to allow perfectly gapless playback of an album.

Kyocerafan said:
Are there any devices that will take the analog output from my receiver and turn it into USB with good fidelity?
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That's potentially a contentious issue, with those who believe vinyl always trumps digital...

But, realistically, any half-decent 16/44k1 ADC will have a lower noise floor, and lower distortion sampling than the best vinyl media and playback can achieve. You might want to sample at a higher rate, and downsample (with a suitable downsample filter & dithering), to relax the specification of the anti-alias filer the ADC has to apply to the input, but you might find that a good, modern ADC does that for you anyway.

If you enjoy the sound of your existing phono preamp, I would suggest using a USB ADC, rather than USB phono preamp/ADC; the ADC is likely to capture the sound you like quite accurately, and your playback DAC system will reproduce that sound accurately, too.

As for replacing vinyl with CDs, I'm not sure that is necessarily beneficial, as they often sound quite different, due to different media masterings and pressing/playback characteristics. Depends how keen you are to preserve the sound of your vinyl.
 
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I'm not assuming, or necessarily needing to preserve the sound of the vinyl perfectly beyond being the equivalent of a nice CD rip in FLAC. I'll still have the originals when I have a LP hankering. I think I've got equipment with a good enough phono output for this job. I'm familiar with DAC's (have a basic Schiit) but haven't found much that goes the other way-analog to digital. Have I missed any affordable possibilities?
 
Kyocerafan said:
Have I missed any affordable possibilities?
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I haven't used anything other than a PC's audio input, because I was recording cassettes, so quality was the even less important. I don't have a standalone ADC. What do you consider 'affordable'? People can chime in with suggestions.
 
A UCA-202 is virtually the same as a UCA-222. Good luck.
Audacity has a learning curve but will give great results and it's free!
 
IMO, too much work. Digitize the unique stuff that only you have, everything else stream or download. Yes, the masterings can be different, but spending one hour per LP just to have this very mastering would be too daunting for me. Torrents still are there.
 
The Rega Fono Mini is a great little USB phono preamp. You can get it at Amazon. Plugs right into your computer. I use Vinyl Studio but I can't say it's really much easier than Audacity. The auto-split function rarely works perfectly and needs constant tweaking of the track splits. But it does tag the tracks nicely and if you can find the album on Discogs (which you usually can) it automatically names the tracks.
 
I remember recording LPs onto cassette .. would do only when I wanted to listen to the album ...would be a listening/recording session on a Saturday morning .. can't say I have any of those cassettes anymore (!) ...
 
I'm lucky enough to be mostly retired and have a little time for my hobby now. No question it will be time consuming but I'm not sure I can call it "work". I'm kind of excited to dive into the modern digital world. I might actually learn something. I dabble in most formats, no matter how obsolete. I find the gear and the process almost as fascinating as the music.

Funny how a format as functionally as obsolete as cassette used to accomplish much the same thing I'm trying to do now. Get my LP music out of the house and into my car. Save wear and tear to the records. Create my own mixes (playlists!). Fidelity was not necessarily 100% but with a solid deck and a real good blank cassette it was close enough. Real time recording was part of the deal and it didn't bother me. I'd still be fooling around with it but the machines are kind of fussy and more maintenance intensive than my skill set. I must have at least 8 pretty good decks and NONE of them are functional.

All the formats have their quirks and charms. Pick your "poison".
 
cpt_paranoia said:
Otherwise known as 'listening to music'. Isn't that what we're about...?
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If you happen to listen to a particular LP, dubbing it while listening is not much extra work, although it still ruins the mood, because you need to check recording level, stop recording in timely manner, etc. But dubbing one LP after another just to have a digital copy is boring work.
Kyocerafan said:
Funny how a format as functionally as obsolete as cassette used to accomplish much the same thing I'm trying to do now. Get my LP music out of the house and into my car. Save wear and tear to the records. Create my own mixes (playlists!). Fidelity was not necessarily 100% but with a solid deck and a real good blank cassette it was close enough. Real time recording was part of the deal and it didn't bother me. I'd still
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So, cassettes are not functionally obsolete after all. :) They are technologically obsolete.
 
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