What is the least expensive way that I can transfer my vinyl to mp3?Can I do it without a pre-amp? I have lap top.

Drew

A cable from your stereo to your sound card is the cheapest way. If you have a turntable and amp and your laptop has a Line In, you just need a cable between the two. You have to use an amp of some sort. The signal level from a turntable is not enough on its own, as far as I understand it. The cable needs RCA jacks on one end and a miniplug on the other to match your Line In. The rest is software.

The cost of equipment is all over the map. While the most expensive is beyond all reason to most people, results using the least expensive will be noticeably different than when using decent quality.

The least expensive way is likely to be rather chancy. Finding used equipment is possible but not something one can accomplish on command. I've picked up two useable turntables from thrift shops for $5.00 each. Neither is what I prefer to use, but both are serviceable. It could take quite a while, and a lot of effort, to put a complete system together that way, however.

A preamp is necessary. It may be possible to make some kind of recording by jury-rigging a TT's output to feed a laptop's microphone input, but it won't be pretty.

To add to my previous post, I point out that these two thrift store TTs are direct drive. I would not mess with any belt driven junk that one is likely to find under such circumstances.

I saw this the other day and thought it was a pretty amazing deal, assuming it's any good. I was buying a replacement stylus (no cartridge!) from them for well over twice that much...

I assumed, from the question's parameters, that you were one of these people with an LP collection but no way to play it anymore. If you do have playback equipment that you find satisfactory, you may have everything you need on the analogue side. Note the "satisfactory;" this doesn't not necessarily mean "best quality."

In any case, with useable playback equipment, you do have a phono preamp. The only possible complication is signal level. Sometimes the level you get out of the phono preamp is too high, It overloads the soundcard input. It must be attenuated in the analogue domain, before it reaches the soundcard. The other side of that is the level is lower than you would like, If you have a decent 24 bit soundcard, it is probably at least adequate, even if not optimum. Often this is true for 16 bit cards too.

So, you may need to run the phono preamp output through a line level preamp before the sound card. Some home HiFi set-up use a separate preamplifier, so you already have it. Sometime you need to add a line level preamp or a mixer.

First off, I got tired of the crackling of the 1/8" Line-In & Line-Out jacks on the Soundblaster (Live I think) so I removed the phono jacks off the card and soldered coax / female RCA tail's to it. These are tied into my amp via regular RCA jumpers. Seemed to improve sound a bit too.

For recording albums (using a decent Dual belt drive with a midrange Audio Technica cartridge) , I run the Tape Out (or Record) side of the Tape deck jacks on the amp into Line-In of the soundcard. For soundcard drivers, I'm using the latest kX Project which has the ability to amp up the signal like you can with a tape deck. I use Audition (tho Audacity would work just fine) to record and break the large wav into separate tracks as well as doing Fade-In's & Out's. Through trail and error and WavGain tests, I set the pre-amp on the kX drivers so that the tracks (when analyzed by WavGain) peak at about 92 to 93 dB. Usually no WavGain adjustment is necessary afterwards. From there I flac them (cuz it is truly a PITA to record an album).

BTW: You need a phono pre-amp either on the amp or in the card. The signal response directly from the turntable is anything but flat. For instance, low freq's are muted so that the needle can stay in the record groove. The phono pre-amp (aka RIAA Equalization circuitry) amps up these low frequencies so that the frequency response is flat (to within a couple dB) across the entire range (20 Hz to 20 KHz).

In addition to the other advice you've been given, there is something else relevant:

It is very rare to find a laptop with a line level input. The vast majority only have mic inputs, which are usually of poor quality, and often mono only.

If your laptop is like this, you'll need to add a line input of some sort, and the easiest & cheapest way is to get an external USB soundcard. Creative make some that are widely available and fairly inexpensive. For better quality, look at the likes of M-Audio and Terratec (which you won't find stocked in chain stores).

All recent laptops I have seen have one commutable mic/stereo line input (you activate the line input if you just enabling it with the windows mixer)

However in all my experiences the recording quality is very poor even for a non-audiophile like me. You should give a try to check if the quality of the input of your laptop is good for you, but I suggest to buy a (cheap) external soundcard if you have many LP.

Thanks for all of the feed back! I guess I should have been more specifc in my first posting.

I have a turntable and a reciever with a line-out and a phono in.

Can run this into a usb soundcard with a line in?

IF so what software would you recomend for bruning? IS there any good freware?

I use EAC and LAME for ripping my CDs.

Drew

You shouldn't have troubles using the line-in. If you want to try to record using your integrated sound card, you should enable the line-in (if you can) in the windows mixer using the recording window before to connect the external device. Computer audio cards send a small current on the "stereo" channel when you use the mic input. (my girlfriend fried a professional mic connecting it to a SoundBlaster Live! )

Also if you can, keep the line-in recording volume on windows at about half and use the volume control of your receiver, if it has one. Maybe choosing the right volume it is the hard part of the work ^^.
If you get a clipped sound, lowering the volume under the half with the windows mixer is useless, since it is only software.
[edit: this is true only on a sblive. The behavior of the windows mixer seems quite unpredictable ^^]



You can use the windows sound recorder itself. If you want more control Audacity is a free and powerful audio editor.

I'm a little skeptical. Have you looked at low-end laptops from Dell or Gateway? I purchased a gateway just two months ago and found the sound capabilities very disappointing. An external sound card was really my only option.

As I wrote above, you may need some way to control signal level between the receiver output and the soundcard input. Variable signal level is very rare on line level outputs of receivers.