Digitizing Your Music Collection

Tips? Techniques?

[digitalghost]

I'm finally getting around to digitizing my entire music collection and I have a lot more questions than answers.

Format- MP3? WMA? 128? 192? How do I turn vinyl albums into digital recordings? Hardware recommendations? I also have an old Akai reel-to-reel and lots of reels with lots of music on them. Any thoughts on how to get them into a digital format? Should I buy equipment or just find a company that digitizes music from older media?

[lawman]

I have an old M Audio OmniStudio USB that I've used for for everything from creating radio spots to digitizing cassette tapes. The cables from your turntable plug them into your audio interface. Audio editing software can get rid of pops, clicks and scratches on your vinyl. I use Adobe Audition - used to be Cool Edit Pro before Adobe bought it.

[ectect]

I've been doing this recently after buying a Numark USB turntable (highly recommended), software is called Audacity and saving as MP3.

I've been very pleasantly surprised with the results, there's going to be some hiss but it just helps to bring back the memories of when you first played the vinyl!