Do you have a stack of old Vinyl records stored away in a closet? Records you once treasured but just don’t have the time to sit down and listen to any more? Why not turn them into CD’s so you can have music wherever you go.
Like most older people, my husband and I have accumulated quite a pile of old records during our married life. Records we each brought to the marriage, records we purchased during the marriage, and records inherited from our parents who also had huge collections of their own.
We have an old—and I do mean old---console record player, but neither of us really enjoys sitting in one spot for hours just to listen to music so we decided to purchase a device to transfer our old records to CD’s that could be played wherever we went. That meant listening to our favorite oldies in the car, on vacation, and even in bed if we chose.
The system we picked for the job was an Anders Nicholson turntable. Actually, my husband did the picking without any help from me. I am totally ignorant where technical things are concerned. Unfortunately, my husband’s idea of the two of us doing a project together is that he sets up the equipment, I figure out how to make it work, I then do the work, and, in this case, he listens to the finished product. Anyway, after few extremely frustrating moments when the system was first set up, I finally got the hang of how to run it, and now I am experiencing great satisfaction as I see my little pile of CD’s growing higher each day.
My CD’s hold 80 minutes of playing time and, with each song averaging about 2 ¼ minutes each, I can easily put 30-35 songs on each disc. So far I am on my 8th disc and still have piles of records I haven’t even touched yet.
The Anders Nicholson turntable cost us a little over $60 and cames in a choice of cherry wood or oak finished case so it looks nice as well as being able to get the job of transferring your records done. It can handle the old 78’s, 45’s, and, 33 long-plays. An adapter is included for the 45’s.
The system comes with a program called, Audacity that you install on your computer. Once you install the program, you are ready to begin.
The only real disadvantage I can see to the program is that the process is time-consumng. But not much more than playing the records through once would have taken. I know from the songs I have already transferred, that the whole effort is going to be well-worth the time.
The advantages of the program far outweigh that one disadvantage I have found so far.
For example, it would cost hundreds of dollars to hire someone to transfer our records to discs commercially. Our investment, besides the original $60 has been only my time and the cost of a few discs, which we already had on hand anyway.
Secondly, the program is providing a lot of enjoyment for both my husband and me. Music that was seldom listened to in our home is now being played over and over again. We can laugh at Spike Jones, or enjoy the romantic renditions of the Glen Miller Orchestra. We have a lot of Christian sermon records that are stirring us just as they did when we first purchased them. My husband has played the Tijuana Brass disc—his favorite---so many times, I have now decided to make backups when I finish all the transfers, just in case he does wear one out..
Finally, the records are being preserved for another generation. In their current form, they would no doubt have been relegated to the Goodwill immediately after we were gone, but in their new form, we have hopes that our children and grandchildren will at least give them a hearing. Who knows—a whole new wave of popularity for the oldies may break out.
Just in case you decide you decide to try the Anders Nicholson transfer program for yourself, these steps should make it easier for you.
1. Place the turntable as close as possible to your computer as you will be using both at the same time, put a record on the turntable, and make sure that the switch is set to the proper speed for the record you are working on—78, 45, or 33.
2. Open the Audacity program.
3. Click on “file” and then on “save project as”
4. Enter the name of your song where it says file name and save it to a spot you want your titles to be stored. I just send my to a folder that I named, “Songs To Burn to CD.”
5. Click on the red record button on the Audacity program at the same time you start playing the record on the turntable. (It may take a little practice to do this, buy you can edit the result if you start recording too early. Too late, and you miss out on part of the song.) Let the record play until the end and then click the square yellow stop button on the Audacity program.
6. There will be blue designs showing your new program as it records. They kind of remind one of a lie detector test. When the recording is finished, highlight and delete any material at the front and end of the song caused by hitting the record button too soon or the stop button too late.
7. Click on “file” on the Audacity program and choose “export as wave” or “export as mp3,” and your newly transferred song will appear as a music file in your desktop folder, ready to be burned to a CD. I usually save a number of songs in my folder until I have enough for a complete disc. If you are using rewritable discs, you can add new titles whenever you like.
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