Where can I get old, rare vinyl records converted to digital?

[Andrew Denny]

I have 3 vinyl records that are very rare, but perhaps not very valuable, You don't find them on Spotify, for example. 

Where can I get them converted to WAV/FLAC format in high quality?  Realistically I'm not going to buy a record deck just to do it. 

But they were well recorded for their time (1960s-1970s), and would benefit from a high-quality record deck (not one of those £70 usb thingies) 

I'm in the Birmingham area. I don't want to sell the albums. 

One of the discs is also possibly a candidate for the worst record of the late 1960s, But I'm very fond of it, and besides, one of the people playing on it was a highly respected blues guitarist of the time!  

Thanks for any tips. 

Andrew 

[Daniel Taylor]

Hmmm... you have me curious as to what those albums might be.

I've seen in the past that there are places where you can buy an LP with a CD copy of it.  And I suspect there are places that will do the copy for you.  Best to do an internet search. 

I've had good luck copying LPs from my old turntable to my computer.  But it is a lot of work.

[Tony Johnston]

Agreed it's a lot of work. Has to be recorded in real time, then pops and scratches reduced. The biggest issue for me is that each side is recorded as a single track with no track details. Recording each track at a time isn't practical. It really is a 'labour of love' if you have a lot of vinyl as I do. I can only manage it in small batches!

[RaymondO]

I'm in the same position as you - but resolved it. Your fiscal in doing it externally is that something can befall your discs in transit going to the person that does the transfer.

I purchased a used iON 'digital' turntable that had a USB output. Initially I let the b2 take care of the recording but it was much easier to use my laptop for entering track information. The free software Audacity helped clean it up and convert to FLAC. When it was complete I sold the turntable on for £8 more than I paid for it.

Problem solved!

[Andrew Denny]

Well I suppose I'm not looking for absolute perfection (clicks & scratches reduced) but certainly better than a cheap turntable can do. 

Since I only have 3 albums that are unavailable elsewhere it wouldn't be a lot of work if one knows what one is doing. The irony is, in these days of easy media copying it's now a lot hard to do it than it was in the days of home taping. 

[Andrew Denny]

How was the iON turntable in sound quality terms?

[lesliebr...@gmail.com]

Hi Andrew, came across this site on the internet. http://www.vinyltodigital.co.uk/  They'll give you a quote. No idea what it would cost. You could check it out and if it's crazy money, then at least you'd what to expect elsewhere.

[RaymondO]

I never used the iON to play directly through an amp and speakers so cannot say. Once presented with a digital file, it then was as good as the rest of my collection. The hardest part was ensuring the files were named and tagged correctly this took the most time having to transfer the sleeve information across. I would create a single file per side, and then break it up into individual tracks as this was less bothersome than finding cropped openings and chopped off endings- it effectively kept me in control.

[Will Roberts]

I'm not sure what a "£70 usb thingy" is, but I bought a turntable with a USB output at low cost and found the quality to be satisfactory -- and even better when the output was cleaned up using the freeware Audacity program to remove surface noise.

If you already own a quality analog turntable, you might try adding an Analog-to-Digital converter. There are relatively inexpensive (not studio) devices such as this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/ADC-Analog-to-Digital-Audio-Converter-RCA-3-5mm-to-Optical-Toslink-Adapter/292273826520

You'd then still need appropriate hardware to take the S/PDIF digital output and use it to create a FLAC file.

The easiest solution (but possibly not up to your desired standards) is to take the output from a good analog turntable (and phono pre-amp) and feed it into the audio input of your desktop or laptop computer using any one of a number of available digital recording software programs to generate your FLAC file.

[Edwyn Corteen]

Hi Will

The B2 is an even cheaper analog to digital converter since you already own it!

I used mine to digitise my entire vinyl collection. Not a quick process but worth it.

[Alan Keen]

I have some rare vinyl which I archived by converting to digital by using an ION deck.  The advantage of the ION is that it records to a flash drive before burning to CD, by doing that it mitigates any "rumble" from the deck although I must admit I have never detected any.  My "real" deck is a B&O tangental drive deck but I am just as happy playing vinyl on the ION.

The vinyl is two albums from Area Code 615,  remember "The Old Grey Whistle Test"?

[Andrew Denny]

By 'usb thingy' I mean a cheap turntable with a USB output. 

[RobShanti]

Edwin, would you be so kind as to provide instructions, or link to some, for how to use the Brennan B2 to convert a vinyl records to digital? What equipment would one need and what would the process be?

[drawde.g...@gmail.com]

You could take a look at this gizmo:

https://griffintechnology.com/products/audio/imic-usb-audio-adapter

Last time I looked it came with free software to digitise and chop up tracks.

I have an old one and it works very well and the chopping up into tracks while slightly tedious is not too bad.

kind regards, Ed Griffiths

[David Tellett]

RobShanti, the B2 has a built-in digital converter. It also has the ability to record to digital onto the SD card (as temporary files) from an external source, such as a record deck, or cassette machine or whatever.

This is done with a physical lead connection into the Aux input from your record deck or amp. You then select Aux on the B2.

You then press record when the record begins playing (or just before preferably!) and stop when you want to stop...

It will record continuously, so if you’re doing an album with several tracks, it will record as one long piece of music unless you stop between tracks and start again for each new track.

These recordings (tracks) can then be imported into the B2 internally (from SD card to HDD) as an album and renamed as required by the usual methods.

The detailed instructions for doing this are on the Brennan website. Look under Questions > line in and recording.

It’s a little laborious if you have to do a lot of tracks or albums, but at least you’ll have a digital copy in the B2!

David