How can I record my vinyl record collection onto CD's?

Question

I have a turntable and a computer that can burn CD's. I would like to put my ancient technology (vinyl albums) onto a new format (CD's) so I could listen to them in my car. Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

J&R music world ( online ) has several USB turntables. One of them is only$100. This would be the easiest way. This same question came up recently so here is my answere on how I did it.
I made a cable with RCA jack to plug into AUX out on my reciever and mini jack to plug into the computer. Just played the record, saved to hard drive and then burned the CD. This way if there is a skip or something else you have not burned it to the CD. This worked well for me but my reciever has an adjustable output level most do not so you need to know what the computer input requirement is.
I wouldn't try hooking the turntable directly to the computer. The cartridge output is probably way too low. Also the impedence and capacitance loading that the cartridge sees will have a major impact on sound quality. It might work with a ceramic cartridge, they have high output and are not so sensitive to loading.

Answer 2

There are many ways to do this... The crummy and bad way is to just put a microphone right next to the speaker and hit play.... but, that's the worse way to do things...

Better way is to figure out the output of your turntable so that it can connect to the stero jack of your computer (mike imput). This would probably require you to buy a couple of adapters to end up to the 3.5mm cord to connect to the computer. I'd bet that you should just need the conversion from 5.2 to 3.5, but it depends on the output of the record player. If your really out of luck, you'd had to wire your own cord from zip tie or speaker wire... Which would give you two Mono 3.5, and then you need a duplexer (it compbines the signal of 3.5 into one stero signal, it may actually be called something different, but it looks like a Y). and then plug it into the machine...

All in all, you should be able to get it all converted in under $50.... and then the long time of having to record things in real time. I'd suggesst using Exps Studio Editor as it is free, and good for recording. Technically you can use the wave editor that comes with windows, but you'd have to be real carfull for overload of the signa, and Exps is better at detecting that, and it's still free!