Vinyl records making a comeback

Posted By LORNE VANSINCLAIR

It's somewhat ironic that in an era when more and more people prefer to get their recorded music digitally, vinyl records are making a comeback.

It's not about nostalgia; young people love them too. Vinyl records are suddenly cool again and part of the reason is they sound better. There's a warmth to analogue sound that digital can't match.

That means you were right to keep your vinyl records for all these years despite the digital onslaught. Digital music has some advantages; it's portable and lightweight. A digital player will run through your entire collection and continuously play songs in any order you want, you can even broadcast them over the Internet.

Part of the reason vinyl records sound better is the way the music was mixed -- they needed to sound good on cheap radios. That means if you record your vinyl records on to a computer, the digital files you create still sound a lot like vinyl records.

Now you need to be aware of copyright restrictions. In Canada, making a copy of a recorded work that you already own is considered "fair use" as long as keep it for yourself. If the work is more than 50 years old, it is no longer protected by copyright and you can do whatever you want with it.

Some people find the task of converting their records daunting, but the rewards are well worth it. I have been digitizing my collection for years and people are always asking me how it's done, so I've put together some pointers. I don't want to get mired in tedious details here so I'm posting a more detailed version of this article on the web, just go to www.vibrations.ca/articlesif you want to see it.

First, it's not a good idea to rely on recordable CDs to store your music, they only have a life expectancy of about five years. You really want your music on a hard drive, then you can transfer it anywhere you want. I recommend buying an external hard drive, they're cheap, reliable and have unimaginable amounts of storage space.

You will need a good turntable with a magnetic cartridge, a funky old record player won't do. Fortunately you can still buy them new and the best deals are on-line. Most sellers are U. S. based and many won't ship out of the country, presumably to keep turntables out of the hands of terrorists, but some will. You can get a good, three-speed turntable delivered to your door for around $300.

Numark makes turntables with a USB connection that you just plug into your computer and you're set. If you want more control, Stanton makes a line of digitally controlled turntables for DJs that have both USB and normal connectors and do many weird things like play backwards. I also love this fact: they don't have a 78 speed but 33 and 45 add up to 78, press both speed buttons at the same time and voila, it's 78 RPM.

If you use an older turntable then you'll need a small preamp to bring the sound up to line level and you will likely need to upgrade the sound card in your computer. The most basic card will do and you can get one for under $50. You'll also need a connector that converts your turntable's RCA style jacks to a stereo jack that goes into your sound card -- you can get one at The Source.

Finally you need software to make the recording and there's a lot out there. One of the most popular is Audacity, which works well and is free.

Now you're ready to start recording. The first decision you need to make is what sample rate you're going to use. To make a file that is compatible with CD players, chose a rate of 44,100 and a resolution of 16 bits.

Once you record the selection, you'll want to remove the noise at the beginning and the end, so you just have the music. That's really easy, you'll see a graphic representation of the sound on your screen, you just highlight the part you don't want and delete it. It's just the same as taking an unwanted word out of a text document.

Most recording software includes a "noise reduction" feature but none of it works very well. It will take out some noise but will often make your music sound like it's playing under water. If you have clean records in good condition, noise reduction isn't necessary.

Occasional clicks and pops can be edited out manually. You just zoom in on the offending spot and cut it out. You want to cut out as small a portion as possible or you'll hear a jump in the sound.

Usually you can't control the volume while you're recording so you'll need to "normalize" it when you're finished. That adjusts the volume to the highest level possible without clipping or distorting any of the sound. Records have wildly different volume levels. If you normalize every file when you're recording, they should all play at more or less the same volume.

You need to decide on a format for saving your files. The best-known format is mp3, which is sometimes pronounced "empeg".

The mp3 encoding takes out some of the detail and compresses the file to a much smaller size preserving most of the sound quality. It's good because the file is small and it will play virtually anywhere.

Another common format is called the wave file, which ends with the extension ".wav".

A standard wave file does not does not compress the digital information at all so it is better sounding than an mp3 but it is often 10 times as large and needs special software to play it. For archiving purposes, you might want to save all your recordings as wave files for best quality, then make mp3 copies of them for portability.

Most software allows you to add information that is not part of the audio.

You can put in the artist name, the song title, the LP title, the genre of music etc. It's a good idea to do this as the player will display it, otherwise you just see the file name. You should also decide on a standard way to name and organize your files. You'll appreciate it when you're looking for a particular file a few years from now.

All this may sound like a lot, but digital archiving is a great way to get to know your record collection again.

You'll find you listen to your music more without even touching the vinyl records, you can put them in storage or sell them. The market for vinyl is strong right now, if you have a good collection, you'll make enough to more than pay for all the do-dads you had to buy to digitize them.

Lorne VanSinclair is organizer of the Toronto Musical Collectables Show & Sale, Canada's largest record collectors' event and is a website designer.

SOURCE: http://www.orilliapacket.com