This is a guide for all those who own vinyl cassettes and LP records and who can no longer listen to them because in the car and at home they no longer have a stereo or a turntable capable of reproducing their music. A little sad to have to dust these cassettes and these LP disks, perhaps bought original many years ago, and not to be able to listen to them on the PC or on the iPod or, more simply on a normal CD.
You need to know that to convert LPs and old cassettes to MP3 you can do it without bothering technicians or shops, using the free Audacity software at home!
Audacity is a very powerful opensource software, seen in another article, able to manipulate audio tracks, to record, to edit, cut or join different audio files and very useful for creating ringtones for use in a mobile phone.
Now let's see how Audacity can be used to convert audio cassettes and LPs into MP3 files that can be read by PC or an iPod or can be copied to a CD.
This article assumes that you are using Audacity on Windows, but you can also do this on Mac and Linux.
To make this transfer you need:
1) A computer with a sound card, equipped with a microphone socket, the LINE IN (generally pink if it is a microphone socket or blue if it is Line IN on the sound card), and install the latest drivers. Before you start, you need to make sure the microphone line is working properly.
2) Obviously the stereo that reads the audio cassettes or a turntable that make up the audio source.
Whatever you use, the audio source should have RCA LINE OUT (preferred) or, at least, a stereo mini-jack for headphones.
Before using the unit, the head of the turntable or cassette player must be cleaned with a clean cloth and a little alcohol.
For stereo with cassettes, you should also have an unused and new cassette to be sent back and forth for a while, to eliminate traces of dust and residual humidity in order to ensure correct and clear reproduction.
If you still had one of those old cassettes that were used to clean the heads at home, it could work even better
3) An audio cable found in electronics stores at very low prices. Depending on the available sockets, consider that if the PC output and the source output is only one, the cable will be one by one and not one by two, therefore it takes a converter.
If you use a cable with gold-plated jacks, you will get better results.
4) Download and install Audacity 1.3 (Beta) which has been optimized to eliminate and remove background noise when recording and is also in Italian.
Also download and install Lame MP3 Encoder, which is a necessary plugin for exporting and converting music to MP3 format.
The steps to convert audio from cassettes or vinyl LP to bring them to your computer are :
1) Connect the PC to the turntable or cassette player with the audio cable, considering that the audio comes out (LINE OUT) from the source and enters the computer (LINE IN).
2) Start Audacity, select " Edit -> Preferences ", go to the Audio I / O section and set as " Device " for both playback and playback with the default sound card.
Important is not to use Microsoft Sound Mapper on Windows PCs which works badly.
3) Start playback from the audio source ie from the cassette player or turntable and adjust the volume level in Audacity.
Near the microphone there is an arrow that goes down, by clicking it you must set the start of " Monitoring ".
In this phase, to avoid distortions, it is necessary to note if the audio track reaches the peak of the volume limit on the lines next to the microphone symbol, in the phases in which the tone is raised and the music becomes louder. Then you have to adjust the microphone volume so that the limit marked during playback is not exceeded.
4) To start recording on the computer you must create a new project on Audacity and click on File -> New project .
Recording starts by pressing the red button and at the same time you can start playing the disc or cassette.
The blue button pauses and you can use it in the moments of silence that exist between one song and another.
Once finished, press the yellow stop button and save the project with File -> Save Project .
5) Since the first recording is likely to be crap, with background noises, hums, hisses of tape or vinyl, you have to use the noise reduction tools.
As you will see, the song is visible as if it were a wave chart.
Then select the start of the recording, when playback has started but the music has not yet started.
Now select from the menu at the top, Effects -> Noise Removal and click on " Give Noise Profile ".
Now, select the entire track by choosing Edit -> Select -> All and choose the noise removal effect again.
Now set the noise reduction (dB) with the cursor by setting a numerical value from 10 to 20 according to the noise level perceived in the recording and also set the other two values with higher numbers.
You can undo these changes and go back whenever you want to try to use different numbers on the noise level.
If the source is made up of vinyl records, it is recommended to try using the Click Effect as well.
When you are satisfied, considering that the audio will never be completely clear, save the project.
To export the project to an audio file, use the menu File -> Export but in most cases you have multiple tracks and various songs on the cassette or on the LP disk and you definitely want to separate them.
Then you need to export the individual music separately :
Making sure you have all the tracks selected with the mouse, on the bar press the " Fit Project " button which is next to the magnifying glass + and -.
With the " Detach at Silence " command, on the Edit menu, you can remove the pieces in which there is silence and separate the tracks in the graphic view.
From the File menu you can now choose " Multiple Export " so you can select the tracks one by one and export them individually by separating them into different files.
Before exporting, you can already put the titles of the individual tracks by clicking on " Tracks -> Add Label At Selection ".
Having the MP3 Lamer as an Audacity plugin already installed, this export can take place by saving the audio tracks in music from the mp3 format, the one used by the players and Ipods of today and tomorrow.
The procedure as a whole is not difficult indeed, with Audacity, some commands that are not immediately understandable appear, everything is facilitated; the problem is that if the cassette or disc is ruined and if the turntable or stereo is old and dirty, eliminating background noise and rustling can be difficult.
I would be curious to know, if you have already done it or if you will after reading this article, if you are satisfied, if you have successfully managed to bring the cassettes and LP disks to your computer or if you know other methods and other even simpler programs.
