Tips & Tricks

Convert Your Records & Cassettes to CD - Part 1

I got into music during the summer of ’79. I still remember driving across the country with my parents and hearing the Bee Gees and Donna Summer on the radio (before they would change the station to something more “suitable”). I’m happy to say that my musical tastes have gotten better since then, but there are many old recordings in my collection that are either on vinyl record or cassette tape that I would still classify as good music.

Many of these older recordings will never be re-released on CD, so I have decided to convert all of my old music to CD. I started this conversion process a few years ago (back when CD recorders were selling for $2000) and have learned a few things (and spent a lot of money) in that time. In this article I will explain this conversion process and pass on some helpful hints for making the best possible CD’s.

The first choice you need to make is between a standalone CD recorder from one of the major hi-fi manufacturers or a CD-RW drive that you will install in your computer. Since this is a computer related newsletter this article will concentrate on making CD’s with your CD-RW drive. I have gone both routes, and while a component CD recorder may seem attractive because of it’s ease of use, it will not give you the flexibility to do everything needed to make good recordings from your records and tapes.

To start the process you need to get the music onto your hard drive. This involves connecting your stereo to your computer. Typically you will need a cable that has a pair of RCA connectors at the stereo end and a 1/8th inch mini stereo connector at the computer end. You will need to plug the 1/8th inch mini plug into the line input on your sound card and the RCA ends into the output of whatever source you are recording from.

Important note: If you are recording from a turntable you will also need to have a phono preamp between it and the computer. This can be a standalone box or you can use the phono stage in your hi-fi receiver or preamp. If you are doing this, keep the turntable plugged into the phono input on your receiver or preamp and connect the cable going to the computer to the connections marked “tape out” or “record out”. Then select phono on your stereo and it will route this signal to these outputs.

Once all cables are in place you should be able to hear the sound of your stereo through your computer speakers when you play your source. If not, you will need to go into the Sound Settings on your computer and make sure that the line input is selected and the volume is turned up.

You will need some sort of recording software to capture the sound coming from your stereo and turn it into a “wave” file on your hard drive. I use Sonic Foundry’s Sound Forge 6.0 for this (www.soundforge.com). It is expensive, but since I do this professionally I need what it has to offer. If you need a lower priced option, I would recommend CoolEdit 2000 from Syntrillium Software (www.cooledit.com). Whatever software you end up with, I would also recommend that you get their plugins for noise reduction as well as click and pop removal. For Sound Forge you will need Noise Reduction 2.0 and for CoolEdit you will need Audio Cleanup. I will go into more detail in Part 2 of this article, but these plugins are imperative to getting a good sounding CD. All of the following descriptions will relate to Sound Forge, but the same principles apply no matter what software you are using.

Once you have launched your recording program press the Record button. A window will come up with more buttons and settings. You will use this window to make your recordings. At the top of this window you should see something that says “Recording Attributes: 44,000Hz, 16 bit, Stereo.” If not, press the New button and select these settings. These are the settings needed to record an audio signal that is going to be made into a CD.

Now you will need to set the record levels correctly. To do this, start playing the record or cassette on your stereo that you want to transfer. The record level meters should start flashing in time with the music. If they don’t, make sure the monitor box is checked.

To set the record levels, you will need to go back into the sound settings on your computer and adjust the slider for the line input. When setting these levels, you want to get the meters to light up as much as possible without going into the red. The easiest way to do this is to find a loud portion of the recording, turn up the line input until the meters start to go into the red and then back it down a bit from there. Once your levels are set, you can stop your source, press the Record button on the computer application, and restart your source. Once both sides of your record or tape have played, you can stop recording and press the close button on the recording window.

Before we go on I should mention that the quality of the CD you make will be directly related to the quality of the sound card in your computer. It has the enormous task of taking the analog sounds that your stereo is producing and converting them into digital. This is not easy to do right, so invest in a decent sound card. If you are going to be making a lot of CD’s, you may want to consider an external sound card like the Sound Blaster Extigy (www.soundblaster.com) that connects to your computer via the USB port. This will do a better job of converting these signals as well as keeping the analog to digital conversion process outside of the noisy computer environment.

You are now finished with the recording process! That wasn’t so bad, was it? In tomorrow’s newsletter, I will detail the four processes (noise reduction, sweetening, normalization, and editing) you will need to complete before burning your CD.

--Bruce Neher

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