Recording Vinyls to MP3

[johntherevelato]

I have a load of vinyl that I need to record on to MP3 - about 20 EPs.

I know the basic process of basically connecting an amp out into the microphone jack of the computer and then using a recording program to capture the sound input.

However, when I did this with a cassette recording, using the sound recording program Polderbits, it turned out that the resulting file was very large (480mb for a 45 min recording). So if I was recording singles, that would be the equivalent of 11 tracks at about 45mb each.

The equipment I am using quite basic i.e. basic sound card, basic amp and record player.

Are there any special techniques I can employ that will help me get the most out of the recording experience? Also, what about the file sizes? Is there a way I can make them smaller?

Thanks in advance.

[AGCurry]

Not without losing fidelity. MP3 is a tradeoff: More fidelity = more data.

And you should be using the line level input on your sound card, not the mic input.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

First of all, you should be coming line out of your amp into the *Line In* jack of your soundcard, not the microphone jack.

Just record in, keeping your levels about as high as you can before the peaks or hit 0dB and you'll be doing about as good as you can.

As far as file sizes go, what's happening is your softwar is saving the files as WAV files. This is typical/standard. These are not the MP3 files you're looking to wind up with; these are the raw, uncompressed recordings in all their glory and full sound before they are squashed into smaller MP3s. Once you have recorded the WAV files you need to take them that final step of creating MP3 copies of them for portability (think of the WAV files as the "digital masters", so to speak.) If your recording software doesn't have an MP3 converter to do this, you'll need to get one (Google or Teoma the Internet and you'll be deluged with them. )

No, there is nothing really to be done about the size of the WAV files; that's simply how big WAV files are and need to be. But don't let those scare you, the MP3s made from them will be of the standard size (~1MB/minute @ 128K.)

HTH,

G.

[Jeyan]

Like AGCurry said, use the lineinput not the mc input. usually even the basic integrated audio has line input,if not you may have to change a jumper in the mother board which will turn a line output or mic input into line input.
Usually if you are recording audio, on average you will get 10mb file size for every minute of stereo wave. If your sample reate is higher you may get a even bigger file. First record in PCM wave format and then convert it to mp3. Some basic softwares and players lets you record straight in mp3, but yourquality will be less when you convert in real time.

[blackdiscoball]

you might also need a RIAA pre amp to get the levals acceptable, I dont know to much about those but I know that if you dont have one then your volume from the record player willn't be right.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Good point. If they are using a standard home stereo preamp/receiver to run the turntable through, then the RIAA curve is built into the phono preamp in the stereo component.

They definitely don't want to use a mic preamp like we're used to talking about in here.

G.

[Confusitron]

Most likely, if you use your line-in (preferrably) or your mic input, you should only record at a sample rate of 44.1 kHz in stereo, as most likely your inputs only support a max sample rate of 44.1 kHz, unless of course you have a better sound card. And again, most likely, if you record at a sample rate any higher than 44.1 kHz, then it will be 44.1 kHz resampled to the higher sample rate, resulting in a larger file size for no increase in quality.

For encoding MP3s, I would highly suggest using the LAME 3.90.3 encoder. It is not the most recent version of LAME, but it was the most tested one of all and is trusted by many. You should probably encode in 320 KPBS constant bit-rate or encode in "--alt-preset standard" variable bit-rate.

Also, you might want to consider a lossless codec like Flac or Wavpack. This would probably only reduce the files sizes of the original WAV files by 50% or less, but, the audio would be the original audio.

[johnnymegabyte]

With freeware CDEX you can record directly to any type of file ( WAV, MP3 etc )