Recording LPs - Vocals too faint

ORIGINAL: samhas

Hi all

I've just resurrected my old turntable and bought a new stylus with a view to using MC3 to record my old LPs onto CD. Unfortunately, things aren't turning out as planned because the vocals are just too quiet (that's as I'm recording them and during playback).

I have my turntable's two RCA plugs plugged into a 6mm (or is it 8mm?) splitter plug which is then plugged into one of the inputs of my external pre-amp/soundcard.

I've tried different input sockets, different tracks and different LPs but the problem of the vocals being too faint continues.

Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

Greetings from Oz.

Samhas

The output of a turntable is not a normal line level. You have to have a RIAA eqed preamp, or a receiver or mixer with photo inputs. I use the Soundcraft Compact 4 mixer for that it has two channels that can be swtiched to phono inputs.

Ohhey is right.

What you can then do, if you don't want buy yet another item, is simply use the outputs of your home stereo amp. Or, like Ohhey mentionned, purchase a phono preamp. These vary in price(quality). It depends which turntable and cartridge you're using. Behringer just released an inexpensive phono preamp and may be worth considering.
Have fun!

ORIGINAL: gonzo_dog

I'm not sure but seeing as you obviously purchased the music, or someone did, and you have the orginal LP, I'm not sure if there is a way to Pirate LP to LP, I'm wouldn't feel guilty about downloadning those tracks on the LP from someplace on the internet and putting them on a CD and calling it good No piracy involved at all I believe... but I could, and have been wrong.

Most LPs sound different then the CD so if you want that old sound you liked when you first heard the LP the only way to capture it is to record it to wav and then burn CDs. There are also many LPs that are out of print and not even available on CD.. in fact there are even CDs that are now out of print ! It's a real trip to be able to hear the music exactly as you remember it while rolling down the freeway. Some albums I spent hours on taking out the pops and clicks with Sound Forge just to hear that LP tone without the noises.

Man... I feel old.. I can remember when CDs first came out and now there are out of print ones... However, e-bay is a great source of out of print CDs and hard to find stuff.

By the way the new Bob Dylan is available on LP.. I think many folks will want to hear it that way and will make CDs for the car from the LP. Most new CDs are overcompressed distorted junk (less then FM radio quality) so LP might be the only way to hear the real music at anything close to HiFi. It's not that CDs can't sound good (the old ones did)... they just don't because the labels are still trying to out "loud" each other.

Firstly, thanks guys for your feedback. Like Ohhey says, the problem seems to be that I need a RIAA pre-amp. I recently bought an expensive (for me!) pre-amp/soundcard that I thought would do most things but, unfortunately, it doesn't seem to handle the RIAA 'problem'. I really don't want to spend anymore dough on hardware (especially here in Oz where everything seems to cost twice as much as in the States!).

I tried to find a software solution last night thinking that MC3 or Audacity might have a RIAA eq-preset but they either didn't have one or they don't work. Does anyone have any ideas about any other software (preferably freeware) that can handle this?

I guess the other solution is to try to locate my old Sansui hi-fi amp (I think I lent it to the in-laws!) and connect up through the headphone output.

Being auditory-challenged (i.e. half deaf in one ear (and blind in the other!)), I'm not really too concerned about hi-fi quality as I'll probably just be burning tracks for playing on my mp3 player or burning to CD to play in the car.

Anyhow, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Greetings from Oz.

Samhas

"Better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you a fool rather than open it and leave people in no doubt". (apologies to Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens)

If your a cheap lazy bugger like myself and you want to take the time to get everything setup this might work. I run my turntable through my home theater system - the sound is killer. I don't see why you shouldn't be able to run a 1/4" jack from your setero headphone jack on the home theater system to the line-in on your sound card. Don't use the mic in, as the signal will likely be too weak. Should sound no different than if you were listening to the LP through your headphones. Just my opion, could be a hairbrained one as I've had lots of those before!

ORIGINAL: ohhey

The headphone out my be a little hot for some inputs but you could use the volume as a record level control, the better way to do that would be to use one of the tape outs on the back of the home theater system. On most receivers when the phono is selected as the input source all the tape outs have the playback. The only problem with this is that it's a set level so if it's not enough to get good levels in your sound card then you would need a small mixer in the middle to boost it or like you said use the headphone out. Most of the time I don't like doing that because the quality of the headphone amp comes into play and you might get some extra noise or tone shift.

In My case (my prev. post) I needed ~42dB boost to get decent levels. I just added a small line mixer to do most of this (~35-37dB) and add the rest w/ gain control found in EQ.

No distortion, and the quality is truely excellent @ 24-bit/96kHz (I suppose that this EQ I'm using don't support 192kHz (never tried this). Why this 'software' method ... the RIAA stage found in my Hi-Fi system is not very good (±0.8 dB accuracy) , and that audio system is located quite far from PC (cables would be over 25 meters). The EQ w/ linked settings gives a bit under ± 0.1 dB (AVG) accuracy for the std RIAA curve (by the Voxengo SPAN).

Junski

By routing the signal from turntable/amplifier through cassette deck into PC boosts the signal enough too.

Turntable connected normally into Hi-Fi phono connectors (w/ or w/o RIAA stage) --> recording from phono set to cassette deck (in Hi-Fi amplifier) --> deck output/playback cables connected to sound card inputs (and back to Hi-Fi system if needed for playback). Deck needs to be set for recording (paused or w/o cassette) --> you can then set levels w/ the deck level controllers (both input and output affects).


Junski

As said it'll need a pre-amp to work properly.

If you really wanted to get it cut onto vinyl then you could opt for getting an acetate cut. It won't have the longevety of proper vinyl as it is in effect a metal plate sprayed with a vinyl laquer.