Jason Dookeran
My mom has been collecting vinyl records since 1978. She collected a massive music collection over that time, so back in 2013, she asked me to digitize her music. Here’s how I took vinyl and turned it into MP3s and how much easier it will be to do so in 2024.
The Problem: Analog to Digital Audio for Preservation
When my mom asked me to convert her music collection, I told her I’d do it, thinking, “How hard could it be?” My mom’s vinyl collection spans decades of music, and knowing that those vinyl albums could be damaged so easily, preserving that music made sense to me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t 100% sure what putting analog music in digital form would entail.
Vinyl records produce sound by passing a hollow needle along grooves in the hardware. Those grooves are waves the needle picks up and eventually outputs to a speaker. MP3s, on the other hand, use a codec (coder-decoder) to recreate music stored in the data file.
When you move from an analog format like vinyl to a digital format like MP3s, there will always be some data loss. Much like converting cassette tapes to digital formats, vinyl to MP3 doesn’t store all the data. This comes from how data moves from waves to digital heights and troughs. MP3s with higher bitrates retain more analog data than those with lower bitrates. So, how do we even get the vinyl data onto a PC? Let’s look at what I did.
The Old-School Method of Analog-To-Digital Conversion
The hardware I had was limited. My mom’s vinyl turntable gave me a clue about the tools I would need to do this. The output could go to speakers running stripped wires, but it also offered an RCA output jack. Getting RCA-to-RCA cables was easy enough back then, but I had another problem. My sound card had no RCA input, but it did have a 3.5mm input.
After a quick visit to Ye Olde Electronics Shop, I found the final piece of the puzzle and jury-rigged my contraption to take in the vinyl input. I thought that all I had to do then was run the record player and send the input directly to the sound card, which would record the music in MP3 format. Anyone who knows Murphy’s Law would quickly realize that it’s never as easy as you think.
On the plus side, the MP3s were being recorded, and the quality wasn’t bad since I was using 192-bit encoding. The issue was that ever-present background artifacting—the pops and crackles of a vinyl player. That meant I had to do some digging on the Internet.
Pops and clicks are unavoidable for vinyl playback. However, there were ways around it. Several forums mentioned a few paid methods of removing background noise from vinyl digitization. Since I already had Sony’s Soundforge installed, and it came with a built-in restoration plugin, I decided to use that. It worked, for the most part, although the less obvious clicks and pops still stuck around.
The hardware setup went like this:
- The vinyl turntable was attached to the sound card via an RCA-to-3.5mm cable.
- On the PC, an open instance of Soundforge recorded the incoming music from the jack.
- After finishing the entire side of the record, I would run the restoration filter on the whole audio file.
- I would convert the WAV input into MP3.
- I would then split up each audio file into individual tracks and label them accordingly.
After going through all that, you can see that the speed of doing this was minimal. It took me nearly two years of working in my free time to finish converting this stuff into a digital format. Luckily, you don’t have to go through the headache if you’re trying to do this today.
The Modern Method of Analog-To-Digital Conversion
Instead of going through the arduous process of recording stuff, converting it, and cleaning it up, modern users can use several options instead:
- USB-connected Turntables: This hardware runs directly on your PC and allows you to digitize your vinyl records without filters. Automatic turntables don’t even require you to put the needle down.
- Turntables with Connected Analog-to-Digital (ADC) Converters: ADC turntables exist, but you can also get an ADC to connect externally to a turntable if you prefer having more control.
- Smartphone: If you’re not really concerned about the final quality of your music, recording output from a speaker to a smartphone is the quickest and dirtiest way of digitizing your music. However, it’s free; you get what you pay for with this method.
- Professional Digitization Services: Several companies offer conversion services to take Vinyl into the digital age, but they can be pricey and if you have a large collection, it’ll cost you a lot to digitize it.
The best current method of digitizing your vinyl collection is using turntables that allow you to record and split automatically. If you need to do any post-processing, free tools like Audacity can help.
It Was a Lot Worse Back Then…
Looking back on the time and effort I put into recording and cleaning up these audio files makes me realize how far we’ve come in data preservation. Today, there are several ways to get the same high-quality output (and a few to get low-quality output, too). Yet it’s so much easier for someone who wants to immortalize their music collection. Digitization not only preserves the original music but also ensures the physical media isn’t damaged through wear and tear or constant use.
Would I Do It Again?
If you had asked me this two years after I started the digitization project, I’d have said definitely not. However, time gives you time to reflect. I learned a lot about file formats and audio filters. It ignited my love of music and drove my thirst for getting the best audio quality out of my music devices.
These days, when I put on some of those old MP3s (yes, I still have them), they bring back a deep nostalgia. The music is still great, but there’s more there. Knowing that I managed to save something from destruction makes me realize that preservation is a worthwhile goal. And learning stuff while doing so is just the cherry on the cake.