How to Breathe Life Into Old LPs

Need To Rescue Your LPs from a closet, this article tells you how.

Convert LPs to CDs and Clean UP the Recordings, Its easy. I'll show you how.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• CROSLEY Record Player / CR Recorder or similar
• Roxio Creator 2009
• FreeRIP or equivalent

1. 

   Turn on the record player, place the album on the platter, and load a blank CD into the CD recorder (press the eject button toopen the recorder).

2. 

   Press the function button to set the unit to PHONO

3. 

   Lift the arm on the phonograph using the lever, and position it over the start of the album you want to record.

4. 

   Press the CD Record button

5. Lower the phonograph arm, and the transfer will begin

6. 

   When the album is completely finished, press the stop key on the CD recorder. The display will return to PHONO.

7. To record the second side of the album, simply flip the album over and start over from step 3.

8. When the 1st album is complete, you can either add a second album or finalize this CD. Leaving only 1 album on the CD.
   
   Note, you should be able to get at least 2 albums on one CD

9. If you want to add a second album, simply swap albums, and go back to step 3 all over again.

10. 

    When your albums are finished, no more than 2 (typical 33's), then press the finalize button. You now have a CD that is a copy of your original album.

11. The Next Steps are for users who want to enhance their recordings, break up the album into individual tracks and / or add track names and artist names to indidual tracks.

12. 1st, you have to extract the audio recordings to a format a computer's audio editing program can understand. FreeRip is a program that will allow you to do this. www.freerip.com

13. 

    Load your finalized CD into your computer, and start the FreeRip software

14. Create a directory on your computer where you are going to put the recordings, that FreeRip extracts. I normally create a directory under My Music with the Albums Name. C:\My Documents\My Music\Test Album

15. 

    On the FreeRiP Menu, select File, settings, options.
    Select the Output Tab.
    Select Output Base Tab
    Press the little box, at the end of the line, and then find and select the C:\My Documents\My Music\Test Album directory, and press OK

16. All output from FreeRip will be in that directory until you change it.

17. 

    Rip the CD audio track
    On the FreeRiP Menu, select RIP, select RIP selected tracks.
    Make sure all the tracks on the CD were selected.
    If you recorded 1 full album, their will be two tracks, one for each side.
    If you recorded 2 full albums, their will be four tracks, one for each side.

18. After ripping the CD, you will have at least 2 or as many as 4 tracks in your Test Album directory.
    The files will be named sequentially 01-Track 1.mp3 and 02-Track 2.mp3
    The files are saved as mp3's. This is the default encoding used by FreeRip.

19. Close FreeRip, we are now ready to edit our audio tracks.

20. 
    Selecting Editing Audio

    Start Roxio Creator 2009 (or similar version of Roxio)
    Select Music-Audio
    Select Edit Audio, This opens the Roxio Sound Editor

21. 

    Select File, Add Audio File
    Highlight all the audio tracks that you created with FreeRip
    01-Track 1.mp3
    02-Track 2.mp3
    Select OK

22. 

    Now Lets break up the Audio into individual audio tracks.
    Look for a small gap in the audio recording.
    Place the arrow over the gap, and press the left mouse button.

23. 
    Gap Identified by Grey Stripe, follow the arrow

    Place the arrow over the gap, and press the left mouse button.
    You will do these steps for each track break you want to create for the individual songs in the album.

24. 

    Confirm the silence is where you thought it was.
    Press the play arrow at the bottom of the window, and listen for the gap.
    If it's not, then repeat step 22.

25. If the bar is now in the correct place, where you here the silence, in the clip editor window, press the "Add a new track separator to define a new track button".

26. 

    After doing step 24, you will now see two tracks in the clip editor window.

27. Lets Add the tracks name
    This allows for a CD player, to show the real name of the song, without this step, you have no idea what the songs name is.

28. 

    In the project view window, left click on Track x.
    Track x, is the track you created when you split the recording into the actual songs of the album.

29. 

    Right click, and select Edit Track Info
    Add Title, Artist and Album Information
    Select Done

30. 

    Do step 27 for every track that you want to name.
    When your done, you should see the track names in the project view.

31. 

    Cleaning up the original recording
    In the clip editor select, the track you want to enhance.
    Right click on the track in the project view to select a track.

32. 
    Select Clean Option

    On the menu bar, select Tools, clean up audio, Clean

33. 
    Clean Menu

    Selecting the Clean Menu, opens up a new window with some options to get rid of the clicks and buzz from the LP you recorded.

34. The Clean Menu allows you to remove the clicks, pops and hum you hear when you make a recording from a LP.
    Set the Declicker to 100%
    Set the Decrackler to 100%
    Initially leave the Denoiser as is
    Press the Play arrow to see what you changes have made to the recording

35. You may have to play with the slides till you get the best quality sound.

36. If you want to listen to what you changes have removed, select the difference box. Then play the track.
    You will only hear what was removed by the cleaner.
    You can also remove the cleaners affect by selecting the bypass box.
    Press play, and you will hear the original track without the cleaners affect.

37. 

    Once you are happy with the cleaner, you can save your settings.
    Press the diskette symbol, then enter a name for yuor settings.
    You can then apply these settings to all the tracks of you recording.
    Just select the custom name and the cleaner settings will be applied automatically.

38. 

    The next step, allows you to enhance the sound by applying a frequency equalizer to the recording.
    Open the equalizer.
    Use the p[resets that it provides. Its the simpleset way to do this, then tweak the settings from there.

39. Again as with the cleaner you save your customized setting to apply to all the tracks. Just press the diskette symbol, and save your custom settings.

40. 

    Note, the cleaner and equalizer add on top of each other.

41. Go back to step 31, and repeat the qudio enhancement until all the tracks sound the way you want.

42. 

    Almost done. Save you project. You can always go back to it later, and make tweaks to get the best recording.
    On the Menu bar, select File, then select Save Project
    Enter the name of the album for the project.

43. 

    Time to burn your tracks on a real CD.
    Place a blank CD in your CD burner.
    On the Menu bar select File, then select Burn Audio CD

44. Your DONE!!!
    Take the CD, and listen to it in a CD player, and enjoy :)

Tips & Warnings

• You can add breaks in the tracks by pressing the track split button on the unit. I wouldnt recommend it. Some LPs simply dont allow enough of a silence break for this to work. Better to record the entire album side, and edit it in an audio editing program, like Roxio Creator 2009.
• When copying LPs please insure you are not violating any music copyright laws. This article is in no way intended to allow a user to reporduce music for distribution purposes.

Resources

• Fre Rip Software
• Roxio Creator Software