How to Convert Analog Audio Sources to Digital

Save Legacy Formats like Vinyl LPs and Tapes to CD or Itunes

Mar 31, 2009

Many people own analog(ue) audio media from many years ago. Here is how to copy these cheaply to CD, preserving them for the future or getting them into iTunes.

Analogue media like vinyl LPs and cassettes degrade over time as they are played. Many people want to convert treasured LPs and cassettes to CDs for convenience and preservation. An added incentive is that the equipment to play them gets rarer as time goes on because they are not mainstream media any more, so

Digitise Audio Using the Original Turntable or Cassette Player

If the original player is still serviceable and in good condition, a cheap and easy way to convert the analogue signal to digital is to use the sound card of a PC, and the versatile free audio editor Audacity. Take the signal from the tape out jacks of the hi-fi amplifier to the line input (usually coloured blue) using a twin phono to 3.5mm jack lead. These are widely available in computer stores, electronics and audio stores like Radio Shack, Maplin or online.

In Audacity, select the Line input and adjust the record level control so that the signal does not go into overload on loud parts of the music- it is best to err a little bit on the low side. Set Audacity to record in 16-bit stereo sampled at 44.1kHz. That way the resulting WAV file will be the right format to burn to a CD, and once saved as a WAV file it can then be converted to a mp3 for playing of a digital music player like an Ipod.

Most sound cards give an acceptable result, however, better results are possible if an outboard USB based sound card is used, since there is less risk of electrical interference from the PC innards. The hiss of most analogue sources covers up the interference on most sound cards. The very cheapest motherboard sound cards and laptops do tend to be marginal for this, and a USB sound card can be had for about USD20 as an alternative.

USB Turntables and USB Cassette Decks/Players

Not everybody has a serviceable turntable anymore. Fortunately, this is no problem as a USB turntable can be used. This is a record deck that plugs into the USB port of a computer. All the digitisation and signal processing like RIAA equalisation is done in the USB turntable, so a digital signal is delivered directly to the computer. Similar devices are available for cassettes, which again deliver the signal to a computer via USB. These products usually have some sort of audio editor software included.

Once the analogue media are captured, the recording can be edited to trim out startup sounds like the stylus dropping onto the vinyl and crackle from the runout groove. Audacity is well suited to this, and will also enable extracting the individual tracks to separate WAV files if this is preferred. The WAV files can be imported into Itunes or a preferred music library manager.

This way analogue media can be given a new lease of life, using a typical desktop computer and free/low-cost audio editing software.

The copyright of the article How to Convert Analog Audio Sources to Digital in Digital Audio is owned by Richard Mudhar. Permission to republish How to Convert Analog Audio Sources to Digital in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.