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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[Peter B.]

mortalengines:

Thanks for the additional tips.

It may be another week before the Audiophile USB gets here. It's not clear to me yet whether I'll be able to use it on OS 9 (preferred for now) or whether I'll need to run OS X. In any event, there's likely to be some additional set up and experimentation time before I can even identify configuration options or run comparison trials.

I've been kind of assuming that the principal differences between available recording apps are the number of features and ease of use... that a basic recorder won't 'add or subtract' noise or quality from the music. Is that assumption (essentially) correct?

I have a serviceable recording app already, that provides a waveform and allows you to split tracks... but doesn't do a lot more. I'm hoping to use it again (at the start) in order to make direct comparisons to previous recordings, but I will grab a copy of Audacity and give that a try as well, since it offers more options.

I took pretty good care of my LPs through the years and I'm hoping I won't have to do _too_ much in the way of cleanup, but again I'll just have to wait and see.

Anyways... just thinking out loud.

Peter B.

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