How to convert your vinyl into mp3s

Playing vinyl may be a long-dead activity in most homes, but we’re willing to bet that you’ve at least a few classic records tucked away in the loft.

Whether you’ve got a working turntable or not, in this brave new world of digital music collections and wireless streamers it’s just too much hassle to get everything out of storage and slide those unwieldy records from their paper sleeves.

With advancement in technology comes lethargy, a callous poke at the remote control now preferable to the laborious delicacy required to place the needle on the record and return to your seat, only to return after the music ends.

On the other hand, you wouldn’t dream of throwing out your collection – there are some classics in there. Your first record, even. Similarly, your lovingly-recorded home tapes of bootlegs and one-off radio shows are rarely listened-to, gathering dust in that stiff drawer under your hi-fi.

A working tape deck is more likely to grace your living room than a working turntable, but as your tapes grow older and frailer, the horror of finding your original recording of Radio Caroline’s last broadcast tangled and stretched in a thin, brown mess around your tape deck’s play head becomes ever more real.

Capture the warmth

Choose to replace your record collection with CDs or download the tracks from Napster or iTunes and you’ll get a perfect digital copy without the crackles and pops, but you’ll lose the analogue resonance you enjoyed when you first placed that record on to the turntable platter all those years ago.

Many DJs still use vinyl, not just because it gives more hands-on control, but because there’s an unmistakable warmth in the sound a record produces that simply isn’t there on CDs. To get technical, this warmth is caused by the way the record is cut – louder sounds create deeper ridges, leading to light distortion.

As the warmth is created through the turntable and not in the amplification stage, no matter what the turntable is connected to, you’ll still preserve that vinyl sound.

When connecting your turntable to your PC, you have a few options. The volume coming from your turntable is very low, and will need to be preamplified before it can be used.

Some guides talk about plugging the turntable directly into your microphone socket on your PC, but microphone preamps are not designed to compensate for the RIAA curve – a form of equalisation used on records since the 1950s.

As a result, you’ll end up with a strange-sounding recording unless you manually implement RIAA curve compensation in an audio editor or purchase specific software that can perform this function.

For basic recording, a preamp designed for turntables such as a DJ mixer or hi-fi amplifier will do well, though if your amplifier is far from your PC, an external battery-powered model may be a simpler option.

These can be found for around £20 online, though it’s worth shopping around, as they vary in quality. The preamp’s output can then be connected to your PC’s line-in socket, ready for recording.

Next, you need to digitally capture the music. This can be as simple or as complicated as you want. The most basic way to record is to use the Sound Recorder in Windows Vista; you’ll find this under Accessories, and it really is very easy to use.

Cue up your record (it’s best to play it through first, to remove any dust from the grooves) and click the Start button to begin recording. When the record ends, hit Stop.

Recordings are stored as Windows Media files, and the artist and album can be entered when you save your recording, ready for identification in Windows Media Player.

Editing and saving

The downside to this method is the lack of editing and restoration that can be done to the recording; any false starts or long silences at the start of tracks will be recorded, and you’ll have no way to get rid of them.

Various dedicated vinyl-recording software packages are available, and these not only enable you to remove silence from the start and end of each track, but also to remove pops and clicks from the recording using complicated techniques.

Once your music is recorded, it can be imported into Windows Media Player and tagged. These tags can then be used to locate any album art and other data online in order for you to build a comprehensive digital library of your vinyl and tape recordings.

Connect your vinyl turntable to your PC