[AT] OT... sort of (audio)

[hank at millerfarm.com]

I'm not old enough to have LPs, but I'm doing this with all my CDs.   
One thing I would warn everyone is don't transfer to mp3!

MP3 is designed to throw away most of the information, just saving  
enough that it can guess "close enough" what things intended to sound  
like.   If you use a "high bit rate" no human can tell the difference,  
but there are very good odds that sometime in the future you will want  
a different format.   (most often a lower bit-rate mp3 for a portable  
device with little storage)   Your sound quality will be much lower if  
you start from a mp3 and "transcode" to something else, than if you  
start with something that doesn't throw things away.

I recommend .flac because it was designed to be about as compressed as  
you can get sound without throwing things away.  It isn't well known,  
but it is common enough that you have a reasonable chance that your  
software will open it.

In any case, the quality of your equipment matters when going from LP  
to digital.   You get what you pay for.   Don't blame software for bad  
hardware - software will generally either work perfectly or not at  
all, hardware will can run a large range of qualities.

Quoting Dick Day <ddss at telebeep.com>:

> I'm sitting here "ripping" my old albums to digital MP3 files and  
> having a blast. It got me to wondering if anyone on the list has  
> ever done this?  I have 100's of vinyl albums that I fear might one  
> day get damaged, so I am preserving the songs on the computer.
>
> It's inexpensive and easy to do.  A $70 USB turntable and some free  
> software is all you need. They didn't have "She thinks my tractor's  
> sexy" back when vinyl was popular (please note the obligatory  
> reference to tractors).
>
> Anyone else tried or thinking of trying this?