Old Vinyl LP's

[1cdorli]

I have a pile of original 33 rpm records that I would like to digitise. I cannot afford one of the LP-DVD/CD devices on offer.
Does anyone have a cheap solution?

 

[AnimateX]

Thing is even if you have a stand-alone record player, the output from that is extremely low voltage. In an old Hi-Fi the record player's signal was pre-amplified first through it's PHONO input before going to the main amplifier circuit.

If you can get hold of a Hi-Fi with a built-in record player or PHONO input to connect one, and if there is a line-out on the Hi-Fi, it makes it simple to just connect that line-out to a PC's line-in. The Hi-Fi would do the pre-amplification for you.

The way I did this years ago was through an old music-center that didn't have line-out but had headphone output. I made up a jack to mini-jack cable going from the headphone output to the line-in on PC. Volume on the headphone output has to be set very low or you risk overloading the line-in port on the PC though so you need to be careful.

If you go with a separate pre-amplification route, do NOT attempt to use a pre-amp meant for guitars or microphones, those have phantom voltage fed to the gear to power them, you would risk damaging the record-player's port.

Don't know if that helps but maybe gives you some ideas.

 

[1cdorli]

It certainly does, thanks

 

[Datura]

It certainly does, thanks

I bought a small preamp that connected to my pc and my record player and recorded all of my vinyls like that. I bought the amp at a music shop in Cape Town for R700 about 4 years ago.

EDIT: It must be a phono preamp.

 

[Datura]

As for the software that I used, it is probably not the best software for it but I used it because I am familiar with it. Mixxx https://www.mixxx.org/ It is great because it gives you a lot of control over the digital output. I just played it in as if I was mixing and recorded each track as a mix and relabelled the "mix" recordings as I went (Mixxx has more than enough output config to play with so that you can get stable output across all your tracks).

There are so many options online that you can use, but that is the only software I used and it worked perfectly and it is free.



" Mix music vinyls into your set by toggling vinyl passthrough mode. " being the important bit

 

[Pineapple Smurf]

i bought one of those cheapies from takealot coupla years ago, it has rca output to go straight to a computer and comes with software to digitize your records straight to WAV or MP3.
Works like a bomb, here is mine

 

[longboy]

i bought one of those cheapies from takealot coupla years ago, it has rca output to go straight to a computer and comes with software to digitize your records straight to WAV or MP3.
Works like a bomb, here is mine

View attachment 939930

Gotta get me one of those. When will your house be empty of people?

 

[Datura]

i bought one of those cheapies from takealot coupla years ago, it has rca output to go straight to a computer and comes with software to digitize your records straight to WAV or MP3.
Works like a bomb, here is mine

View attachment 939930

How much did you get that for? Basically a record player with preamp installed. Reason I went with preamp was that I was adamant on using my record player and stylus.

 

[Pineapple Smurf]

How much did you get that for? Basically a record player with preamp installed. Reason I went with preamp was that I was adamant on using my record player and stylus.

i dont remember, was a coupla years ago, somewhere around 600 bux or less. Yes it is designed to run at a standard RCA voltage like a DVD player. Its cheap and nasty but it gets the job done. I don't see it on Takealot anymore, here is the only link in RSA i can find

Deals on Portable Diginow USB Vinyl Turntable Record To MP3 Cd Converter | Compare Prices & Shop Online | PriceCheck

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