Vinyl to MP3 - numpty question

[hopeless]

I know this has been covered before but please bear with me, in terms of hi-fi I'm completely non-technical!

I have tons and tons of vinyl I would like to transfer to MP3. I have a very old (20+ years) Akai turntable which really was the business when I bought it and it cost me a lot of money at the time (can't remember the model off the top of my head).

Would I be able to use this turntable to record them and just buy something that sits in between? If so, what is it that I need to buy and what connectors would I also need (or need to find in the loft!) please?

Thanks

 

[John Duncan]

Do you have an amplifier with a phono stage?

 

[russ74]

Hi Hopeless, your turntable is fine for transferring music to a pc, I use a late 70's Garrard of dubious build quality - nasty plastic case. To record vinyl you will need the following:

A Computer with a line-in socket and some recording software. I use audacity because it's good and free.

A phono pre amplifier. I use a cheap external one as I originally had to move the turntable to be near the desktop PC, plus my NAD amp doesn't have a phono socket.

A 3.5mm - 2 RCA cable for connection between the line-in and the pre amp.

Thats all you need

When recording vinyl I tend to record one LP side at a time in wav lossless and then cut and edit each individual track. You can then convert each wav track to any other format, i.e. MP3, AAC etc. I also create a cd copy of the album using the lossless files.

It can be a long and fiddly process recording & editing but worth it if you have some rare albums.

Hope this info helps.

 

[hopeless]

Thanks folks, now need to dig it all out of the loft .... I may be back!