General Chat

Asking bazaar question. Where can I buy a record player to play old records and LPs while reducing the crackle and hiss and can be used via PC to put on mobile devices.
I have seen them but didn't pay much attention to them, now I would like buy one for my Husband for Christmas present.

Maplin is easiest for a turntable which will plug into a PC and avoid the need for a preamp. They are about £ 35.

It will do 45s and 33 but not 78s. For some 45s you may need a spacer, however such disks will be ex-jukebox and probably not worth bothering with.

For grabbing the tracks and cleaning up the sound use Audacity for windows ( free).

The average laptop is no good at all for this, you need a reasonable desktop machine - bottom end XP 2GB RAM P4 3.0 or AMD64. Faster is better.

Basic motherboards do not have a suitable DSP ( digital signal processor). However you can pick up, say, a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 for a tenner on eBay. Turn off the MoB built in sound and default to the sound blaster.

Warning. Most people give up this at an early stage as it is a little bit geeky and takes a lot of time. Popular alternatives are eBay, YouTube and torrentz.

Despite rumours old mass market LPs are worthless unless in extremely good condition with sleeves and hardly ever played. Not the fate of the average Electric Ladyland pressing. Early mono LPs eg "With the Beatles" are worth more than stereo but must be in vgc.

oo - I have a mono version of Sgt Pepper!! what's that worth?

Rollo is right!
We have both a digital turntable and one for casette tapes.
Bought quite a few years ago, to convert all our music from the old format to digital.
The original idea was to clear the space taken up by records and tapes

We did manage to clean up crackly nioses ect, but takes so long to do that we only managed to convert a few LPs and a couple of tapes before the tedium set in !

I have been told that there are organisations/companies that will do it for you

My Husband has wanted one of these for a long time and I know it is a fad and won't last long so it is quite cheap to buy and not to much of a waste of money. ;-)

My partner got something from Clas Ohlson, which plays records and puts them onto disc, without needing the computer. It was about £50 over a year ago but they might still have them.

Lizx

If Ann Cardiff has an original Sgt Pepper 1967 Parlophone version in v.g.c. then I would stick out for £ 50. If all the inserts are with it and NO DAMAGE then I'd stick out for £ 100. The US pressings are not so attractive and the 1982 re-issue way less.

The 1967 mono pressing has a different mix to the stereo and is quite amazing. Thus there are audiophile reasons for getting hold of it as well as collectable ones. Same with "With the Beatles".

There are myriad problems with digitizing vinyls as I found out when trying to digitize a collection that John Peel would have been happy with.

First of all it takes ages.

Secondly if the LP is not in top notch condition then after applying a band pass filter to remove the pops and hisses then fidelity is lost. This can be signficant with classical albums and Pink Floyd, less so with BoneyM or Joe Loss.

Thirdly LPs are fairly close to the studio mix. The only way really to play, say, "The Dark Side of the Moon" properly is on a modern valve amp with a good deck and speakers - this is going to set you back over a grand. Even then room acoustics matter - heavy curtains and fitted carpets are an audio disaster.

OTOH very often the studio CD release is remixed for typical modern playing conditions i.e. not very good. CD remix can be surprisingly good.

If you are ripping LPs / CDs then the FLAC format is a whole lot better than MP3. A lot of players can use it. If you must use MP3 then go for at least 192Kbps - the file size will fit into yr mobile device though I prefer FLAC.

If you root around in eBay you can find 1970s/1980s/early 90s cans ( headphones ) for anything from £ 15-100 av. £ 25. Prices are rising so get yours soon ... they will have the large phono plug but converters are only £ 3.

They look like they may have been cast for "Good Morning VietNam". The big advantage of them is that they were made for listening to rock/classical music not the bass heavy stuff which is the modern paradigm. Pink Floyd or Mike Oldfield on 80s cans in FLAC or LP format is something wildly different to MP3 on buds of any quality. Same for Sgt Pepper come to that.

good listening
:-)