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Transferring Record Album to MP3
There are all sorts of reasons that you would want to convert record albums into computer files. Records melt. They break. They warp and they scratch. The sooner you get the sound onto your computer, the safer the sound will be. You can back it up multiple times, and play it whenever you want without risking further damage to the original album. Also as music purists know, the sound you get on a recod album is BETTER than the sound from a MP3 or AAC or CD - because all of those things only record "little pieces" of a song. They sample the song every X parts of a second, instead of getting the full wavelengths of the sounds.
You don't need any fancy equipment to convert your record to a MP3. Most computers today come with a microphone jack in them, and with basic software to handle sound. Your microphone software is probably under start - programs - accessories - entertainment on a Windows system. That lets you record sound into WAV files.
To get the sound onto your computer, there is a SPECIAL STEP that is involved with a record player. With most players (DVD, cassette tape etc) you can just plug the output from the player into the input of your computer. This will NOT WORK with a record player. Record players have special signals. If you try to plug it in directly (and believe me I've tried this) you get snapping noises and a very poor quality signal. What you have to do is get your RECEIVER with its "record in" line. Plug the record player into the receiver, just as you normally would for a stereo setup. Plug the receiver out into your computer's line in. Note if the receiver doesn't have a line out, just plug the tape out to your computer's line in. Then tell your receiver that you are going to "record to tape". It'll send the signal out to the "tape player" which is of course the line that is going to your computer.
So now start the record playing, and hit RECORD on your microphone software. Voila! You can record as one gigantic file or record in smaller files.
There are many WAV to MP3 conversion programs out there if you'd rather have MP3 files, and you can experiment with various levels of quality to see what combination works well for your sound source. I have Cakewalk software, but that's a rather high end solution that I had anyway to do work for my boyfriend's band. You can get very good results with software in the $50 to $100 range without going up to $500 or more for professional quality systems. You can even find free software out there if you want to go that route.
So make sure you convert those old record albums to MP3s soon! Records don't last forever, and you'd hate to lose those precious songs.
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