Recording Vinyl LP's with my T41.

[Roxy77]

Hi, I have a Thinkpad T41 and I want to make some CD's of my Vinyl LP's, I know the T41's software isn't good enough for making hi-fi music CD's (or is it) but what about hardware, what do I need, the T41 has no phono inputs, so I'm thinking I need some sort of USB adaptor and better quality external soundcard. Thanks.

[daeojkim]

I would get a better software for recording such as soundforge, n-track studio, etc. rather than Windows sound recording. This way you can do some editing and remove noise etc.

Also an external sound card or PMCIA sound card. Creative makes a bunch of external sound cards. Check out their website.

[robscomputer]

I would also recommend that you find software that offers auto-leveling for the input of the sounds. With records the sound can greatly vary from a LP (long play) record to a 45rpm (7 inch) recorrd. The suggestion for recording software to elimate the pop and hiss will be very helpful for making cleaner recordings as well.

Good luck, someday I'll convert my records but it would take the better part of a week. Last count I had about 1,000.

Rob

[bevross]

... I want to make some CD's of my Vinyl LP's

I'd take a serious look at these:
RMI PCMCIA type II firewire interface
http://www.rme-audio.de/english/hdsp/cardpci.htm

RME mobile Phono / CD / MIC / MIDI Interface
http://www.rme-audio.de/english/hdsp/hdsprpm.htm

And then, for software -- http://www.samplitude.com/ (the lower priced versions, not necessarily Samplitude V8 Pro).

Well, a setup with the above would be high quality for budget audiophile. You could get cheaper.

[Matt]

You should know at the onset that virtually all vinyl LPs have anti-piracy features preventing you from making a perfect digital copy. Thus far, defeating those measures has proven impossible.

[Milhouse]

You would probably also need a phono preamp...

[Cavorite]

Matt, funny you should say..

http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/

Easy circumvention of such anti-piracy, those darn pirates defeat RIAA every time

-C-

[Cavorite]

From a typical setup though, and going from analog to digital, i would suggest:

Record Player -> via phonocables to preamp and output from the preamp with stereo cables into an external audio card, something simple and cheap like a USB audio card, or going up nicer to a 1394/firewire card with more input and better line level recording. Though if you really want to get higher quality you may want a preamp that outputs on a better interface than stereo RCA cables, or even to just look at the turntables available with optical/digital output directly.

-C-

[bevross]

You should know at the onset that virtually all vinyl LPs have anti-piracy features ...

Whew, when I first clicked reply, I hadn't seen the "wink." For the naive out there, this is not true!