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Suggestions for importing vinyl LPs?

I've been trying to import some old Led Zeppelin LPs for a few days now, and so far I haven't managed to get a decent reproduction of any of them. Problems are such:

  • The built-in amplifier on my receiver causes tracks to clip too much while being imported, so I have the Monitor switch thrown to bypass it. As a result this causes the sound quality to become too tinny, and turning down the treble setting doesn't help.
  • Stereo sound is heard over the speakers hooked up to the receiver, but the result waveform in Audacity shows that only one channel is being recorded, with some minor bleed from the left track creating a sort of pseudo-right track. I'm using a stereo-capable cable from the receiver to my computer.
  • The audio quality being imported is terrible; it sounds like a badly-tuned FM radio station. The feed over the speakers is fine.

Would any vinyl holdouts have any ideas what I could do to fix any of this?

Print | posted on Friday, October 10, 2008 8:52 PM | Filed Under [ Movies and Music ]

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# re: Suggestions for importing vinyl LPs?

Although I could probably be more specific if I knew what the specifications of your equipment and cabling setup were, here are some general tips to keep in mind:<br /><br />1. Turntables need their (weak) signal to go through an amplifier. (Since many newer/cheaper receivers lack a "Phono" input for this purpose, many newer turntables contain a built-in, switchable amplifier of their own).<br />2. You should have as clean a signal line as possible. Run the line from the turntable through the amplifier (presumably, through the receiver) and from there from the "line out" to the computer's "line in."<br />3. Test to make sure you don't have a faulty receiver jack not picking up one channel of sound, or anything along those lines.<br />4. Keep your recording level on the computer at a reasonable level that doesn't clip.<br />5. It may or may not be more convenient to record an entire side of an album at once and divvy it into tracks after the fact.
10/10/2008 9:10 PM | Andrew T.

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