Transferring Old Records to CD's

[DrGregC]

This project goes back to the old board. I came into possession of a cache of home family recordings made by my uncle, 1946-48. They are priceless. They have brought tears to the eyes of the remaining of my parents' generation who have heard them. They are small (6.5-8") records on a variety of substrates: steel (RecorDisc, National), aluminum (Wilcox-Gay RecordioDisc, Melodisc, CRC/Century Radio), and even paper (Wilcox-Gay/RecordioDisc, CRC/Century Radio, Philco). They are both 33 & 78 - some are 33 on one side and 78 on the other! I bought a Newcomb record player on eBay to listen to them. Interesting to note that I have to use the larger 78 needle on both 78 and 33 recordings.

I am going to post this as two threads. My second question has to do with transferring these mono recordings to a digital medium (CD/DVD). My Newcomb record player has both tape and external speaker outputs. I need to know THE SIMPLIST way of converting these records to CD's. Thanks.

[Viva-Tonal]

You seem satisfied with the quality of sound you're getting from the Newcomb player, and simply want to get its output onto CDs expeditiously, and not invest in a specialised turntable with variable speed, different-sized styli, etc....OK.

Do this: Get an Alesis Masterlink recorder, which is a hard drive recorder with a dedicated audio editing program and a CD mechanism in it. (About $800 last I knew, from American Musical Supply and such like.) This will allow you to edit starts and ends of what you record, EQ out hiss, scratch and rumble, and more, before committing the results to CDRs. Use a feed from the Newcomb that is controlled by the volume control, feed it through a Y adapter so you have the signal feeding both the left and right channels of the Masterlink, and there you are!

Good luck!

[DrGregC]

I'm surprised to see this topic go with only one response after a week. Is there another newsgroup or message board that might be more helpful? Thanks.

[Schmaltz]

As far as other groups are concerned: there is a forum on "Yahoo Groups" called Electrola, which specializes in the old record cutters as well as electrically-amplified phonographs in general. The URL is below:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Electrola/

You'll need a Yahoo ID to sign in, and then request to join, but it's a simple procedure to sign up for one if you haven't got a Yahoo ID. Hope this helps.

[gramophoneshane]

There is another board called "The Secret Society Of Lathe Trolls" who are basically a group of recording lathe collectors. I'm sure they could throw a few ideas around, but in all honesty I think the answer "Jim C" gave you on Moo's board will be the easiest & cheapest solution, by plugging your turntable directly into your computer & recording a file to burn.
I guess it really all depends on what sound quality you're aiming for & how much you want to spend.
I've seen cheap turntables with a USB plug for computers for $100, or you could easily spend a couple thousand on different sized stylus, cartridges & software.

http://lathetrolls.phpbbweb.com/lathetrolls.html

[DrGregC]

Transferring the content of these old recordings has gotten bumped-up as a priority with the CD's being an excellent Christmas gift. Once I got around to it, it was as simple as Jim C. (ATM board) said it would be. I took the output from the Newcomb record player and ran it directly into the line-in input on my Creative SoundBlaster card. I was able to create WAV files using the Creative software and readily burned those files to a CD.

Step Two. How do I easily clean up these recordings? Nothing fancy. I just want to get rid of the record noise and adjust the volume levels to create a more listenable CD compilation.

Those of you who have done this before will laugh and find my questions predictable. All I originally wanted was to create a simple transfer, now I want to create a more finished product. Suggestions for a simple software solution is appreciated. Thanks.

[Victor78]

One of the better and well known pieces of software is Audacity, and it's free. Ive used it to record 78's as well as 33's for others that want special records put on CD's. You can find the software here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Good luck with your recordings!

- Jim

[Shane]

In my (somewhat limited) experience, I've found that noise reducing software works best on recordings that have low levels of noise, and just need a bit of "cleaning up". When you start getting into really bad noisy recordings, the heightened degree of sonic processing required can leave the recording sounding very artificial, and generally worse than what you started with.
These lathe-cut home recordings vary widely in quality, from almost professional, all the way down to just plain terrible. If you have a recording with a high level of noise, you may be better just doing some manual equalizing and leaving it be.

[OrthoSean]

You can do amazing stuff with almost any recording, but it requires generally having several different styli on hand, a good equalizer that won't automatically record using the RIAA curve and investing in some software other than Audacity (it works, but I don't find it to be as user friendly as Click Repair along with their new de-noise and de-crackle features).

As Shane says, the more you start fiddling with a file, the more likely you'll wind up with lots of artifacts, especially with Audacity, which just doesn't give you the flexibility other (more costly) programs do.

Sean

[Victor78]

I have an older copy of Cool Edit Pro that Ive used on and off and works well too. Audacity is basic, but it gets the job done depending on what your doing and what kind of results you want.