Having collected cd's for well over 25 years - there are still about 200 lp titles in my collection that have never been issued on cd. I had drawn a line in the sand and said if these are not on cd by time I turn 60 - I will have to copy them myself. The titles include about 30 Homer & Jethro lps, the great Lost Kinks lp, some Elephant's Memory (Stan Bronstein), Splinter, some rare Daddy Cool, some Spike Jones, some Charlie Feathers - the list goes on and not any that would cause any company to invest in doing them the right way.

So for someone who's musical technology ended with tape - reel to reel and cassette when FZ stopped touring and there was no cause to transfer music - (sorry for the long way here) what is the best way to transfer music from lp to cd?

I have seen some sort of phonograph that burns music onto cd. I also know I can somehow conect my stereo to my computer - it is that "missing" link I know nothing of.

Thanks for reading - thanks for any comments.

I"m sure there are others that are much more expert at this than I am. I did a few conversions years ago, but those involved running RCA cables from a stereo receiving and into my PC via some kind of adapter. I believe it's much easier these days with the advent of USB turntables. You simply connect the turntable to the PC via your USB port and then play the music via an application/program on your PC. The question would be which are the best software packages available for doing this kind of thing. That's where I don't have an answer for you. I'll be curious though to hear what others have to say on the subject as I may get a USB turntable at some point and start ripping vinyl again.

i have one of the ion turntables that will do that and it works but i never use it because i don't like
"weighted" tonearm portion of it. my friend has an audio technica usb turntable that's really nice.
he burns his straight to minidisc then edits them to tracks before dumping to cd. with a program
such as roxio music creator you could burn direct to hard drive. depending on your program i'm
thinking some editing will still be needed if you want individual tracks; even if that means dropping
the needle for each. you can also edit tracks down in itunes and its not that difficult once you get
the hang of it. then you just create a playlist to burn. the software; and ease of use, is probably
what you'll want in your case.

i'm interested as to what others may suggest. i have an old jvc ql7 turntable that would work for
for my purposes but a little piece of foam rubber that supports the counterweight has deteriorated
and i can't find a replacement for it other than locating/purchasing a whole new tonearm. at $200
for a 50 cent piese of foam i'm thinking that audio technica usb turntable may be the way to go. my
jvc was a high school graduation present from my grandma so i'd like to get it back in commission.
it wasn't cheap either, $600 back in 1980.

A few years back I bought the Crosley 2405 cd recorder. It works ok,and has decent sound,but the problem is you must manually pause the recorder between tracks to get the same division of tracks on the cdr. There were several instances where the recorder did not reset quickly enough,and I was missing the beginning of the next track. This caused me to have to lift the needle after each track,which obviously takes more time.
I have had no luck finding a software program that I am able to use.
I'm also anxious to hear from some who are adept at this.

A lot depends on how picky you want to get with the transfers - meaning track breaks and such.

Staying fairly simplistic, to go from your stereo to your PC, you'll need to patch a line out to the input on the PC. I'd suggest the record out for the tape deck (one of my receivers actually has two tape outs). If you've got a line in on the PC, that's the best, although you can work with a mic in, but you really have to control the levels.

Once it's on the PC, there are several tasks you can do - splitting into tracks, removing clicks, removing silence, etc. The actual hows and wherefores obviously depend on the software, of course. And the platform.

There's a package called Audacity that's free (Mac and Win, I believe). It does a pretty nice job - I use it on my MacBook. Off the top of my head, I don't remember if it has click reduction. On the PC, my go-to editor was and is Cool Edit 2000, which has long since been replaced by Adobe Audition. Since I used that a lot, I got pretty decent with it. It has a click eliminator that does a pretty nice job. For clicks, no matter what you use, I'd recommend zooming in and isolating the click as much as possible before running the cleaner - I've had times where it cleaned too much. At one point, there was a link for an older version of Adobe's Creative Suite for free download, but I'm not having any luck finding it right now. I can look more if you'd like.

I'm not as concerned with removing clicks, etc., as I am with splitting into tracks.
I'll try the Adobe.

Adobe was big $$ the last time I looked. Audacity is free and has lots of filters for cleaning up recordings. I've used it for years. I use a Numark USB turntable.

I bought a Pioneer Elite CD recorder over a decade ago & I really like the results I got from it. It's been a long time since I've burned any LPs to it, but my recollection is that it would auto-set the track # changes based on very quiet moments, but as we all know that doesn't always work great for a lot of quieter music, or tracks with sound gaps, or live or music that fades from one track to the next. I didn't have to pause the recorder to get around that though, I just had to manually (and carefully) hit a button while recording to mark the track change instead of using the auto-track way. It worked well to my liking, and I never had gaps in the actual recordings.

IMO, without question the highest quality way to do it is to get the highest quality turntable & phono stage you can afford (NOT a garbage USB table made for a computer) & the highest quality stand alone cd recorder you can afford. They basically work like a cassette recorder. Then to edit, you can rip to your pc with EAC & use your favorite audio software (hopefully sparingly).

There are also a few recorders that will do 96/24 (I believe the out of print Alesis is one of them, though it obviously isn't compatible with most cd players!) I have heard 96/24 digital needle drops that kick the crap out of cd sound quality wise; but the key is to use a very high quality turntable & cartridge.