Copying LPs to CDs

of course wd40 is out. tap water and a watts parastat brush if you can find one or a vpi record washing brush + a small drop of dawn detergent. the biggest danger is water damaging the label, which hasnt happened to me. you can really scrub back and forth and do repeated washings when necessary. dry with paper towels, believe it or not, they leave nearly nothing on the disc. cloth always does. i have to use a carbon fiber brush (AQ will do fine) to take the cloth fibers off when using a cloth to dry with. avoid the nitty gritty and go with the vpi machine if you opt to spend real money. even the cheapest nitty which is the same mechanically as the AA record dr.II is a waste of your bux. and why not get a stand alone cdr? the little phillips is only about $300. and you dont have to have a computer near your phono section or run long cabling.

I copied an LP onto DAT with my Super Bit Mapping ADC, and transferred that 48 kHz recording into Soundforge XP 4.0 on my computer. With it, it's easy (but time consuming) to EDIT OUT THE "POPS" of the old LP. I'll then downconvert the edited version to 44.1, and burn a CD with it. COOL, HUH?

CD-R is meant to be a temporary media. We've seen many discs easily damaged. Even DAT tape is better. The best of course is to just play the vinyl on a turntable. As far as cleaning records goes, using a special cleaner can help prevent damage to your records. The dirt can be abbrasive, and the process of moving a cloth over the record can cause the dirt to scratch the surface. See my post on surface noise. Using commercial vinyl cleaners and protectants is not wise either. They usually have substances to give vinyl a shiny finish that reduces resolution on the grooves and can gum up ypur stylus.

That's what I've found with Last preservative, but not with Gruv Glide. The goal is to reduce friction and heat on the stylus, and the vinyl it scrapes.

If you have a good phono pre-amp, and a good computer sound card and software, the sound qualit cad surpass any cd you could buy. The first LP,s I copied to CD, I used a computer with a Yamaha pro sound card ($1200.00) using a program called Sound fordge to convert into wave files, and for editing out crackles and pops. Then I used adaptic easy creator to copy to CD. Now i have set my own computer to copy lp,s Hot wanting to spend $1200.00 on a sound card, I did some reaserch for about 3 months, and this is what I came up with. The sound card I used is by Echo. called DARLA. $300.00. see echo.com for info. I use Cooledit to record to wave files. (I tried sound fordge, but didn,t sound so great with this card.) Then I use Adaptis EASY CD Creator to burnCD. Good luck