Vinyl To Cd - Better Interface Than Line-in?, (What Again?) Options

[Peter B.]

Hello:

No doubt this question has already been answered a thousand times, but...

All I want to do is transcribe vinyl LPs to CD. I've been using the line level inputs on two different PowerBooks (G3 and G4), but can definitely hear the 'loss' in the final product.

I'm wondering if an external USB analog to digital device will give better results?

The iMic is not (apparently) thought highly of here, but might it be a noticeable improvement over the straight line-in arrangement?

And/or is there a relatively inexpensive alternative that would give a superior result?

Thanks very much for your time and patience.

Peter B.

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[mortalengines]

While I'm thinking about it, when you start recording with your new interface, you may want to try recording at 24 bit resolution (44,100khz sampling is ok since it will save space on your hard drive) & then "dithering" to 16 bit (cd playable) resolution. I could go on as to why but in a nutshell, while you are recording you may lose a bit here or there along the way so if you record at 16 bit the loss along the way may put you as low as 12 bit res as opposed to using 24 bit which may lose a little in the transfer but will still be pretty high res prior to dithering. I imagine that there are some freeware dithering utilities out there in the world & maybe some others out there can point you in the right direction.