Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Chaos
I'll second Katysax's recommendation: Copying LPs is a pain. If you factor in your time, you're better off buying the CDs if they are available. I only do LP transfers for records I can't find on CD.
I am, however, thinking of buying LPs of CDs that were remastered badly with the current fashion for very LOUD mastering.
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I disagree. As with all things - it depends. Most new LP's are mastered by great engineers and contain a much different mastering approach to CD's. For some people the sound difference alone makes it worthwhile.
I personally love to spend a couple of hours transferring one LP. The sound and more importantly - what you learn about manipulating sound - is what makes it worthwhile to me. I can now fix so many "duds" and can make a lot of music shine like a polished diamond. It is part art, part science. More importantly, it allows me to relax and to listen to great music.
Copying LP's to CD is only a pain if you want it to be a pain. Let me give you an example. Norah Jones - Come Away With Me. The SACD cost me about $20.00 new. Let's not include tax, gas, shipping, time searching, etc. The LP cost me $30.00. That's a $10.00 difference.
So in short here is what you get:
SACD = nice, professional package, stuffy sound that clips, bad imaging and good music = $20.00
LP = Very nice
collectible, with nice warm sound, fantastic depth and imaging, about 3 hours work for a nice transfer and 1 to replicate the artwork = $30.00 + 4 hours worth of work.
Here is an SACD rip compared to my needledrop of the LP. (Both are WAV files under 1 minute)
SACD
LP
Was it a pain for me? No. I only wish I would have purchased the LP first before I purchased the SACD. Would have saved me $20.00!
Keep in mind that this only a short clip and that the sound difference is greater when played back on a hi-rez system. Huge difference IMHO.
This is only for a modern LP too. There are many, many more LP’s which contain music which is not available today. In many, many cases such as the Sinatra Capitol Years catalog, the sound quality on the old original LP’s completely kills the modern CD sound.
In other cases, the music is simply worth the time and effort,
like in this case. This is Jean Goldkette & His Orchestra playing My Little Girl. Try to find dynamics like that these days!
Old analog formats really are worth all the trouble. I have found many gems for under $1.00 – a little bit of love and care and time for polishing and you get top notch audiophile music
like this. This LP cost me $0.25 (YES – 25 CENTS) and took me about 2 hours worth of work to polish up. Not bad if you ask me.
While the initial start-up price to transfer LP’s may be a little high – the rewards you get in sound quality and the knowledge you gain for fixing sound is truly priceless.
In short – my advice would be to get a used but working Technics turntable, an AT440MLa, a nice vintage integrated amp like a Fisher 500-TX and an EMU 0404USB. You can use headphones to monitor. Use a program like Adobe Audition to capture and your choice of de-clicking software to remove the noise. This should all run you under $200.00 if you shop carefully.
Once you have everything hooked up properly and transferred and polished, just save to WAV and encode to MP3.
If you don’t want to go through all of this – you can always pay someone to do it.
