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If you are becoming an expert at creating and editing sound files, you might
want to have a go at you old Vinyl collection.
Recording vinyl
Cleaning
 | Take an LP and clean it thoroughly in warm water with one or two drops of
detergent added per litre of water. You also need a quality paint brush suitable
for watercolour painting to slowly work the grime out of the grooves. |
| It help if you put a pencil through the hole so you can support it on the
edges of a bowl (Some empty ice cream buckets are the right size for this
job). |
| It takes 2-3 minutes to loosen and remove the embedded debris from the
groves. Use the soft paint brush to rinse under cold running water then blot
dry with some lint-free cloth before letting it ‘air’ to get rid of all the
moisture. |
| Don't be tempted to use a hairdryer to speed the process. It can take
several hours for the water to escape from the groves. |
| Don't play the disk before the grooves are completely dry. |
Recording
| Run your recording software. Set it up to create a CD-quality WAV file (for
Windows) or AIFF file (called AIF) for Macs. |
| Set the recording levels by testing the loudest passage which you can spot as
the grooves look bigger on the vinyl. |
| Save each track as a file. The whole disk will make a gigantic file that
is too big to handle. |
| When you have enough music to fill a CD (no more than an hour of audio),
create an audio CD using your CD burner's software. Nero for Windows
and Toast Titanium for Macs are good CD burning software.
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Ready to make MP3 versions?
| The players fitted in cars are increasingly offering to play CDs in the MP3
format. So make MP3 files and write them onto an MP3 CD which will hold hundreds
of tracks. That way you've got a version to play in the car.
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| If you have Windows and don't have software to create MP3s, go to www.dbpoweramp.com. and get the free dBpowerAMP Music Converter.
Mac OS X users
already have the encoding software as part of iTunes. Set the encoding rate high
enough to ensure good quality. (192 kilobits is good, 256 kilobits is better and 320 kilobits
is best.)
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