Vinyl transfers

[uosdwis]

Greetings!

I'm considering making some extra money by offering to digitizing people's records.

What I intend to offer is straight up transfer, no restoration. The idea is to clean the record, play it back using reasonably high-end gear, possibly put some gain on the output and then capturing using stellar conversion. Delivery can be either on a CD (continous, but with track marks) a picture-less DVD-V at 24/96 or even DVD-A (using Wavelab 5's built-in authoring). One might possibly throw in conversion to MP3, AAC or whatever for those with portable devices.

With the DAW + peripherals in place (I have a small home studio for my own composing purposes) what I basically need is a good record player and possibly a preamp. I need it to handle everything from old 78's to newer LP's. Budget is perhaps $2500-3000. Ideas? Experiences?

Also, tips for cleaning records would be appreciated. And possibly any advice on a suitable cassette deck, too - I have a bunch of tapes in a box somewhere and time is not doing whatever's on there any good. Maybe I'm not alone.

To me this seems like a perfect side income. Doesn't take much time, advertising or resources. Normally, I could easily do at least a couple every day. Just asking around friends and relatives rendered me with about 50 LP->CD @ $20 a piece (a quote off the top of my head). Might even be fun - who knows what crazy old records people have in their attics.

Cheers

[Douglas Whates]

http://www.mil-media.com/docs/products/lpe2.shtml ??? - kidding

Might be worth looking for an old Garrard turntable for 78s. For 33/45, it's hard to go wrong with a Michell deck - www.michell-engineering.co.uk/. They also do a very nice pre-amp.

Should be do-able for under 3K

[streetbeats]

Hi there

first off, apologies if im not understanding this right - but are you expecting people to pay $20 per LP ?

I just cant see that happening...but I may be wrong !

Good luck whatever tho

.....

and regarding spending 2.5 to 3k - I dont think that will be necessary at all - any relatively decent deck and basic audio interface with average quality converters should suffice.
A decent stylus is a must of course, and perhaps the most crucial stage (that you have already identified) will be in cleaning of the vinyl..

[ttauri]

Originally posted by uosdwis
Also, tips for cleaning records would be appreciated.

The general advice I've gotten on cleaning is to use a vacuum record cleaner (VPI or Nitty Gritty). Haven't gotten around to laying out the money for one yet myself, tho.

kabusa.com has several Nitty Gritty models.

Here's a thread from when I was looking for some advice on the subject: Gafflin' beats

Peece,
T. Tauri

[sardi]

Yeah i had someone ring me up once to transfer 2 of his Dana Gilespie records onto CD. I charged him AU $50 for each record.

I basically recorded the vinyl straight from my SL-1200, thru my desk, into my 001. I set up an aux channel with an eq to boost some tops and heaps of low end, then wacked noise reduction plug and limiter after the eq, then sent the output of the aux to an audio track and recorded straight to that. i then wacked track markers in it, and burnt straight to CD.

Pretty painless, and it sounded fine.

Best.

[thethrillfactor]

Originally posted by uosdwis
Greetings!

I'm considering making some extra money by offering to digitizing people's records.

What I intend to offer is straight up transfer, no restoration. The idea is to clean the record, play it back using reasonably high-end gear, possibly put some gain on the output and then capturing using stellar conversion. Delivery can be either on a CD (continous, but with track marks) a picture-less DVD-V at 24/96 or even DVD-A (using Wavelab 5's built-in authoring). One might possibly throw in conversion to MP3, AAC or whatever for those with portable devices.

With the DAW + peripherals in place (I have a small home studio for my own composing purposes) what I basically need is a good record player and possibly a preamp. I need it to handle everything from old 78's to newer LP's. Budget is perhaps $2500-3000. Ideas? Experiences?

Also, tips for cleaning records would be appreciated. And possibly any advice on a suitable cassette deck, too - I have a bunch of tapes in a box somewhere and time is not doing whatever's on there any good. Maybe I'm not alone.

To me this seems like a perfect side income. Doesn't take much time, advertising or resources. Normally, I could easily do at least a couple every day. Just asking around friends and relatives rendered me with about 50 LP->CD @ $20 a piece (a quote off the top of my head). Might even be fun - who knows what crazy old records people have in their attics.

Cheers

The most important element is the cartridge(moving coil prefered).

Everything else is secondary.

A good cartridge alone(especially if you will do classical work) will set you back thousands of dollars alone.

And the life span is pretty short.

If you are not ready to make that commitment than i would really think twice about it.

[zhangm]

Hi,
How do you define" reasonably hign-end gear"? I think Linn Sondek LP12 is a turntable good enough for recording vinyl dics,but don't support 78s.LP12 has many options, the price of basic turntable with default tonearm(Ittok) is arround $2K+,but the price with EKOS tonearm and optional enhanced power box(Lingo) maybe out of range. A second-handed (basic) would call for $1K+ . The cartridge is very important,some good cartridge-linn's arkiv or Benz-Micro's Ruby costs $1k+ ,but some cheaper cartridges are also pretty good ,like AudioTechnica's 33.At last,good phono amp(with MC input) also costs $1k. You will set up a "reasonably hign-end" vinyl system under $3k if consider some second-handed equipment.
I did some vinyl recording with a low-end system: Pioneer pl-30 turntable+Audiotechnica tonearm+Shure v15 cartridge,DIY tube phono amp and a M-AUDIO Audiophile USB for A/D and interface.I use Wavelab5 for recording(24/96) and De-Clicking.The 24/96 format's sound is really good,definitely better than CD. but when I dither(UV22HR) and resample it to 16/44.1 ,many details lost. So I belive burning to DVD-Audio should be better.

[uosdwis]

Thanks for all answers so far.

Why people would want to pay for it? My dad is a prime example - he's lately been rediscovering the music from his youth (mainly late 50's and 60's), enjoying them on a whole new level of sound quality and convenience thanks to the digital revolution (cough!).

I was sort of under the impression that every record ever made was "remastered" and put on a CD to be sold to the customers a second time, but no. There are a zillion "Best of"-CD's made which features one or two songs that my dad wants, but a surprising number of his LP's are not readily available on CD in their original form.

Most people I've talked to about this would be interested in 1) hearing their records well cleaned and played back using a quality turntable, 2) have them transfered to CD etc for the convenience of skipping tracks, repeating them and so on, and 3) be able to use this music on portable devices. Fact is that most of these people no longer have a record player, since it probably broke down a long time ago and they never bothered to replace it when CD's took over. 20 bucks, then, buys them all the above, not to mention they save the effort of either doing it themselves and/or tracking down and purchasing the CD again, if it's at all available. Pretty fair, I think.

"Reasonably high-end", I say. Meaning, I do not intend to go mastering grade - I don't have the budget or the skills. (That's why I won't go into restoration or processing, btw). But, I do not want to be Joe Soundblaster either, as I would feel I'm ripping people off. Compare it to my recent purchase of a $1k two-channel AD-converter. Not mastering grade, perhaps, but genuinely decent. Oh, and yeah, buying used is not a problem as I see it (cartridges aside). The more quality for my money the better.

Thrill, don't you think one could perform this service (advertising it for what it is, no more) and sleep well at night? I do.

I'll look into your suggestions and will perhaps get back to you with more questions.

Thanks!

uosdwis