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RSS feedsThere are few areas of computing so immediately rewarding and downright sensible as converting old LPs and cassettes into digital format.
Doing so offers massive benefits. For instance, you can preserve your favourite music in its current condition forever and even improve it by removing scratches and tape hiss.
Songs will no longer degrade with every new play. You can make your own compilations and save them to CD or turn your computer into a fully-featured digital jukebox. No more fast-forwarding through tapes, flipping records or sitting through turgid album 'fillers' while waiting for the next decent track.
Never again need you replace your turntable's stylus or clean those tape heads. And, of course, it saves you a fortune in replacing treasured recordings with CD reissues.
We covered the essentials in our Revive your records on CD feature last September and we know from your letters that many of you successfully converted your music collections. However, we suspect that some readers remain hesitant to hook up a PC to a hi-fi and wrestle with the apparent complexity of audio software.
Well, the good news is that it's now easier than ever to go digital. Here we present an updated overview of the process, including everything you need to know if you missed the original feature, and tips on using the latest technology and software to make the process even easier.
Hardware ins and outs
Unless you are a serious musician with an interest in recording your own instruments, you can pretty much take it as read that any recently purchased computer is more than capable of performing the tasks we'll be covering here.
It doesn't much matter whether yours has a separate sound card or an integrated sound chip (where the audio circuitry is built into the motherboard) as long as there's a line-in socket somewhere around the back of the case.
The only complication is that on some computers the line-in socket can be configured to function as a speaker channel in a surround sound set-up. Check the paperwork or help file that came with your computer for instructions on how to reverse this configuration.
If you need to install a new internal sound card, don't panic: all you need is a vacant PCI expansion slot on the PC's motherboard. This can easily be checked with a peek inside the case.
You can pick up a capable Creative SoundBlaster Live sound card for less than £30. Failing that, you could opt for an external sound card, which we'll look at in more detail a little later in this feature.
Even the smartest sound card in the world will sound atrocious when paired with lousy speakers, though. Although this might not seem critical if you intend to burn CDs for playback away from the computer, you'll probably want to edit and enhance tracks on your PC first.
Invest either in a decent set of stereo speakers - there's no need for surround sound here because you'll be working with stereo (or even mono) recordings - or good headphones.
Existing hi-fi headphones will do fine but you'll need an adaptor to convert the large quarter-inch jack to the smaller 3.5mm standard required by the sound card. Logitech's Z-2200 speakers are a good choice and cost around £85.
To create audio CDs, you will need a CD writer drive. This is now standard equipment on pretty much all PCs or can be easily installed as an upgrade. If your computer has a CD-Rom drive, which will only read CDs, you can replace this with a CD writer in a straightforward old-for-new substitution, even reusing the existing internal cables.
All DVD writers take CD recording in their stride, incidentally, so now might be a good time to bring your PC right up to date with a recordable DVD drive. You can buy a CD writer such as the Samsung SW-252SEA for less than £20 from Dabs.com or alternatively, stretch the purse strings to around the £50 mark and you can have a LiteOn SOHW-832S multiformat DVD writer, also from Dabs.
Connection conundrums
In order to re-record an album using your PC, you'll need to run a cable between the computer and hi-fi system, but it has to be the right cable and the right connection. We'll leave it for you to decide whether it's easier to cart the PC into the living room or the stereo into the study and focus here on the technical aspects.
If you have an integrated hi-fi system with a pair of stereo phono outputs - one for the left channel and one for the right - you can connect them directly to the sound card's line-in socket. You'll need a cable with a single stereo 3.5mm jack on one end and two phono plugs on the other (or an adaptor that converts one type of cable to the other).
If you have a separate stackstyle set-up with a dedicated amplifier somewhere in the mix, use the amplifier's phono output. If your hi-fi system does not have a phono output, connect the headphone socket to the sound card instead.
You'll probably need a cable with a stereo 3.5mm jack on the sound card end and a quarter-inch jack on the other. If you want to connect a standalone or portable cassette deck to your computer in this way, use its phono or headphone output as we have just described.
However, if you want to connect a standalone turntable to your computer, it's not so easy. The problem is that most turntables output only a very low-level signal, which is then amplified externally. Without this intermediary amplification, the sound card cannot 'hear' or record directly from a turntable.
However, there are four ways to work around this difficulty. The first is to leave the turntable connected to your music system in the usual manner and hook up the phono or headphone outputs as previously described.
Alternatively, some turntables have built-in pre-amplifiers, which will solve the problem: you can connect such a device directly to the sound card. Ask your nearest branch of Richer Sounds for advice. The Bush MTT1, for instance, has its own pre-amp and costs between £40-50.
A third option is to use a phono pre-amp. This is a widget that sits between the turntable and computer and boosts the turntable's signal to the appropriate level.
The TerraTec Phono PreAmp Studio costs around £75 and draws the power it requires through one of your computer's USB ports. Steinberg's Clean Plus from Pinnacle Systems is £20 cheaper and includes software for 'cleaning' your old recordings. More on this in a moment.
Finally, consider Magix Audio Cleaning Lab 2005 Deluxe from FastTrak. This does away with the requirement for a pre-amp altogether by providing amplification through software enhancement alone (a virtual pre-amp, if you will). It also features cleaning tools and can take you all the way through the process to disc burning.
Sound card set-up
You're almost ready to start converting, but just pause for a brief foray into your sound card settings. If a loudspeaker icon is displayed in the taskbar next to the clock, double-click on it now. From the Options menu, select Properties and open the Recording settings. Now set the volume slider at about the two-thirds level and ensure that the Mute box is not checked.
If you don't see the loudspeaker icon, open the Control Panel from the Start menu. In Windows XP, click on Sounds and Audio Devices, then under the Volume tab check the box labelled 'Place volume icon in the taskbar'.
In Windows 98/Me, you'll find this option by opening Sound and Multimedia from the Control Panel and looking in the Sounds tab.
Digital divide
Copying music from LP or cassette to CD is a multi-step process but by no means difficult, especially if you use software that helps you every step of the way. One excellent example is Roxio Creator 7, which we'll refer to here as we work through the main procedures.
With the cable connections in place and your tape or album ready to go, launch Roxio Creator's Sound Editor application. Now click on the Record button, start playback on your turntable or tape deck, and sit back while your music is saved onto the PC's hard disk.
You don't need to worry about recording settings here because the program automatically uses the uncompressed WAV file format to preserve the highest possible quality audio levels. Unfortunately, this swallows 10Mb of free hard disk space per minute of music; that's 4Gb for an average 40 minute album.
If space is tight you can get Sound Editor to convert the resulting file to the compressed MP3 format as soon as capture is complete. If disk space is no problem, it's better to keep recordings in the WAV format all the way through the editing process right up until you're ready to burn a CD.
Save the recording as a WAV or MP3 file named 'Album Title Side A' (replacing 'Album Title' with the real title of the album), then flip over the record or cassette, and repeat. You now have two digital recordings on your computer, each representing one entire side of the album. See, we told you it was easy.
Making your mind up
Decision time. You can either split these recordings into separate tracks or leave them intact. The first option gives you more flexibility because you can then name, play, edit, rearrange and otherwise manipulate tracks in isolation.
However, if all you want to do is transfer an old album straight to CD, you might choose to burn these files to disc in their current format. Your CD will then sound exactly like the original vinyl or cassette, with all the track gaps preserved. Just bear in mind that all the CD player will 'see' is two tracks, side A and side B, so you won't be able to skip from track to track during playback.
Let's assume that you do want to create separate tracks. Sound Editor displays a recording as a graphical waveform: the higher the peak, the louder the sound. Flat parts of the waveform represent (near) silence.
Working in automatic mode, Sound Editor looks for these patterns, assumes that they represent gaps between tracks, and inserts track markers along the waveform. To see this behaviour in action, select Auto Locate Tracks from the Tools menu.
However, Sound Editor is sometimes over enthusiastic and commonly mistakes musical pauses for track breaks. To check and edit the results, double-click on the waveform just to the left of a flagged track break and play the file from that point forward. To remove an extraneous track break, right-click on the track marker and select Delete Track Break.
Conversely, you can add track breaks yourself if Sound Editor slips up or, in the case of tracks that run into one another, if it can't tell where one track ends and another begins. Navigate to the appropriate point in the waveform, pause playback, and use the Insert Track Breaks command from the Tools menu.
To save these flagged tracks as individual files, open the Edit menu, click on Select Track, and choose the first track. Now click on File followed by Save Selection. Name the file to match the first song title on this side of the album and choose a format: WAV (preferably), MP3, WMA or OGG.
Select the second track in the same way, repeat the process, and so on. Alternatively you can choose Save All Tracks from the file menu and Sound Editor will automatically split the recording and save the files as '1 - Album Title Side A', '2 - Album Title Side B' and so forth. Rename these later at your convenience.
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