I really enjoy the sound quality of a lot of vinyl records I have. I don't have that many surf albums on vinyl, but I really don't think the genre matters. I happen to like listening to records on vinyl even to this day.

I have never ripped a vinyl album to digital, although I had one of my friends did a Dick Dale album for me. When you rip vinyl to digital does it hold the similar feel? It is hard for me to tell because the album my friend did seems like it is at a low bitrate. I was thinking about buying a record player that goes USB as well to rip. But if it does not preserve the original feel, I am not going to bother, I'll just keep what I got.

I sell vinyl and do put soundclips up on Ebay auctions without altering the sound quality at all so that the record can be heard in the condition that it actually is in. I can attest that ripping (without alterations) does not effect the sound quality at all. I use a Numark TT USB - very easy to use and you can download Audacity to use it. And it's an affordable turntable. I have also found that putting a mono needle on the turntable gets much better sound than the stereo one it came with. But I'm mainly recording 45's that were orginally recorded in mono so that's what works for me.

maybe it's just my computer speakers or psychological influence on the fact that I know I'm not listening to my turntable, but I've found that it's never as enjoyable listen. I've ripped a few vinyl albums for my blog and found that imperfections that I could easily ignore on vinyl stand out to me more when listening on MP3. Even if you have a pristine album, I think most sound cards just don't translate that analog signal right.

Oh and I use Audacity to do it. Thankfully the whole process is pretty easy. I think you should go ahead and try it for yourself

edit: and sort of agreeing with the above post, I don't think USB turntable is the way to go. Find a nice analog setup you enjoy, and just plug that sucker into your soundcard. It's more customized to your tuning that way and from what I've read elsewhere the integrated sound card on those turntables are mostly crap (which is why they're often running for only $50 or so). USB turntables are mostly for people that didn't think it would be possible to record otherwise I think, or at best people that want to minimize equipment (but really, that could still be done with just a phono preamp going to your soundcard)

Storm Surge of Reverb: Surf & Instro Radio

The iMic mentioned avobe is a great - and cheap - piece of equipment. You can plug a good turntable to it and then to your USB port, and the quality of the turntable really counts!

If the recording is mono it's better to record to a single mono track and then duplicate it to make a "twin mono" file you can burn to a CD. For recording I use a program called Sound Studio (for Mac) but probably any recording software will do it. Just check the volume input to avoid overloading the signal (= distorted sound).

Don't forget to normalize the file to get the best sound and please, don't play with effects even if you feel adding more reverb would be a cool idea. Although a little compression does wonders sometimes!

http://www.myspace.com/losderrumbes

I use an old Hitachi turntable into a turntable pre amp (Cambridge Audio), into my M-Audio soundcard, and record it with Cool Edit Pro. I find the albums sound pretty much the same.

But since I hooked up my turntable to my stereo system, I'd much rather hear the records played through that...the way thet were meant to.

I'm glad to hear that vinyl is still kicking. I'd much rather buy a vinyl release than a CD one. Plus USK will be releasing a 4 song 7 inch in time for all your Holiday Shopping!

Rev

Canadian Surf

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I tend to agree about USB turntables, rather dubious quality (cartridge/preamp/converters... how good can any of this stuff be for the low asking price?). Convenient, yes... but if we want to digitize and maintain the sound quality of vinyl, then I think better gear is required.

I start from an enviable position having great gear from when vinyl was the only game in town, and because I do a lot of live recording and computer based CD production.

From the past, a Thorens turntable/SME arm/Shure cartridge. For a preamp, I have a Van Alstine modded Dynaco PAS3 preamp. I also have a Hagerman preamp kit (amazing quality for the cost...$150 or so...if you are handy with a soldering iron).

To get to digital, I run the preamp output into an Apogee Duet Firewire interface to my Mac. At 24 bit, I can underrecord to avoid clipping spikes in the audio. Then I use Peak to edit the audio (remove the worst clicks and pops, insert track markers, dither to 16 bit, and normalize). I can also combine albums into a single CD (collections that spanned multiple LPs). The results are great, and certainly the equivalent of LP sound. I don't add any compression or anything to affect the purity of the LP sound.

A new option for those of you getting into this process is a new Phono preamp/USB interface from NAD. About $150, and worth looking into.

Rev.

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