Digitising LPs and Cassettes

All the images will enlarge when clicked.

 

People of my age were raised on recorded music that was available in two mediums (or 'media', if you are pedantic!): vinyl records and the later cassette tapes.

When CDs came into vogue (circa 1983 here in Australia) the three formats ran side-by side for some years until first vinyl records (45s and LPs) were phased out then, much more recently, the cassette tape disappeared.

So the population gradually changed over to CDs, building up a new library but in the meantime the LPs were rarely played and ended up gathering dust in the corner of the living room and the stereo-system made way for a new system that featured a CD player in place of the turn-table.

Roll the clock forward to the 21st. century and the evolution of computer technology and we now have a situation where those old recordings - vinyl and cassettes - can be played, recorded, converted into digital format and more than 2000 individual songs stored in such a way that they can be carried in a shirt pocket in the form of an eight-gigabyte USB stick.

Over the past few months I've been doing exactly that for people who have dusty LPs and cassettes that have not been played for years.

Those people are now able to listen once again to the favourite music from their younger years and can do so in the home, in the car, when travelling on public transport or when out-and-about cycling, walking, hiking, climbing mountains or jumping off cliffs!

Many folk have asked me how this process is carried out, so I thought I'd give a thumbnail description as follows below.

Firstly, it's necessary to play the record (or cassette) and record the tracks whilst it is playing.

One minute of playing time equates to exactly one minute of recording time; there is no shortcut.

So the record is popped onto the turntable (or the cassette into a special USB-output cassette player).

I prefer to use a Dual 1229 turntable from the 1970s, which had a very good reputation for quality output and accurate speed and mine is fitted with the type of Shure cartridge and stylus recommended by the manufacturer back in the day.

I use the Dual if I am planning on doing something else whilst the record is playing because I can walk away and leave it, knowing that it will shut off (and the recording software on the computer will do likewise) when the record has finished playing.

The output of the turntable is connected to that little black box in the corner......

This device takes the analog signal coming from the record and passes it in digital format to the software used on the computer via a USB outlet in the NAD and a corresponding port on the PC.

At the same time I also take a feed out of the NAD device to the stereo amplifier seen in the first photograph, in this case a lovely 1970s Pioneer SX-750 which has given me excellent service for the past decade.

I don't need to do this but sometimes I just play a record for the sake of listening to a record, so it's easy to have a permanent connection to the stereo system

If I don't have anything else to do whilst a record is being digitised and if I'm happy to pick up the arm when the record comes to the end, I may use the Pro-Ject Genie turntable seen below............

This is a manual unit, where the arm is picked up and placed on the record and then manually removed when the record comes to the end of the last track, and features the recommended Ortofon cartridge and stylus.

Irrespective of which turntable is used, once a side has been played and recorded the LP is flipped over and the same procedure gets underway for the second side.

This technique also applies to cassettes.

The software program (Vinyl Studio) displays details about the record/cassette, which are input by the user.

 

Once recording is finished the saved digital file is taken into another program (Audacity) for editing.

Many records have accumulated dust and scratches over the years which result in "pops and clicks" being evident in the playback.

With an editing suite it is surprising how many of these extraneous noises can be removed without otherwise affecting the quality of the recording.

The editing program displays the recording as a linear graph........

The start of the record is at the extreme left-hand side, the long "lumps" are the tracks (in this example there are six) and the short, narrow bits are the transitions between one track and the next on the record.

This example also shows that the record (Paul Mauriat's "Mauriat Magic") was in stereo - the top trace is the left channel and the bottom trace is the right channel.

If you look closely you may also see several spikes - single straight lines - which project from the tracks.

These are sharp noises most often due to damage and or dirt in the track and are usually capable of being removed.

I will run the recorded file through a filter, selectable in the software, to remove the noises above a certain level.

Once filtered I then break the recording into its separate tracks, naming each one exactly as they are named on the LP (or cassette), and save them as individual MP3 files.

Then the last step is ready to place in operation and that is burning a CD, for which yet another computer program (Sonic) is used..............

This allows the CD to be created as either a conventional audio CD or one which is played in a computer.

The edited files are taken into the program, a CD placed into the CD drive and ten minutes later out comes a modern recording of an LP last played 30 years ago.

If the owner prefers to have the files stored on a USB stick rather than burned to a CD then the final step is much faster as it then just becomes a simple matter of copying the files across to the stick - in essence, just another minute or so.

To digitise an LP (or cassette) from go to whoa can take around an hour, sometimes longer if there are more than six tracks per side (or more than 30 minutes per side for a cassette).

It's an interest that I enjoy doing; it's very rewarding seeing the smiles when people know that they can once again listen to their favourite recordings.

And it keeps me off the streets.