I’ve bought one of those USB turntables with the intention of converting all my vinyl albums to mp3 & CD. My problem is that the software that came with the turntable is not very user friendly, and actually quite high maintenance; you have to sit and listen to the albums in their entirety in order to tell it when each track has ended.

I was hoping the software would be able to work this out – such as by downloading the album info’ etc.

Does anyone know of any software that is quite user friendly, not particularly labour intensive, works out the tracks???

I’d be very interested in an answer to this as well.
I bought a converter from Aldi, but with over 100 albums to record I was hoping that I’d be able to just pop it on the deck and that the software would recognise the gaps between tracks etc.

If you record with/to audacity (has to be in real time I think), you can then go back to the file and get a visual prompt where there’s an end of a track just by dragging along and looking for flatspots

I doubt anything (free/cheap) can put in all the tags for you though

Yes mine’s the Aldi one – to be fair, I’d happily pay for the software if it was clever enough.

I really don’t think you’ll find any software that can do what you want. Recording in real time is inevitable, just like doing mix/compilation tapes from vinyl, and the software will show the spaces between the tracks, but what you have to remember is that it’s also ‘hearing’ the stylus noise, plus any pops, crackles, etc in those quiet bits, exactly as it will ‘hear’ quiet/silent pauses during the actual tracks, false endings and the like. No software will be able to discriminate between track endings and false endings/quiet passages/pauses.
You’re basically asking for software that can discriminate as well as a human; ain’t gonna happen.
Sorry, but you’re going to have to do it the hard way.

Mleh….

Can you not rip the record as one WAV, then open it up in Audacity?

Let’s you slice up MP3s/WAVs/etc.

I use ripvinyl, really easy to use, separates the tracks for you by setting the silence level, dead easy. I use it to record DJ mixes and it works flawlessly.

http://www.ripvinyl.com/

Costs £7.00

You’re basically asking for software that can discriminate as well as a human; ain’t gonna happen.
Sorry, but you’re going to have to do it the hard way.

And this is why I’ve never gotten around to ripping my record collection.

Save yourself loads of bother and just download the MP3s!

I tried transferring over some of my house collection to mp3’s… I think it took me a couple of hours to do a vinyl (3 remixes), remove hum, pops/scratches and use a few other plugins to make it sound a bit better. I gave up and kept all my vinyl. 😉

I’ve used VinylStudio in the past. It records each side to wav, downloads track info, makes a stab at putting in track breaks (mostly successful), has some automated and manual tools for removing/attenuating spikes, hum, etc and enables you to output to compressed formats. It’s not free but I was happy to pay for something user friendly rather than muck around with a handle of free programs.

VinylStudio

Thanks for the replies.
A lot of the more popular stuff I have managed to find as mp3s, but some of the more obscure stuff I’ll have to do myself.
I’ll check out those two links.

Ta very much for the suggestions – as I said, I really don’t mind paying for something that’s clever/intuitive/hassle free…etc.

Sorry, but you’re going to have to do it the hard way.

Not enough hours in the day – we’re talking a lot of vinyl here.

Save yourself loads of bother and just download the MP3s!

If I had the money I probably would.

It seems like Vinyl Studio does everything that one needs. Before I recorded into Audacity as mentioned above, cut up the tracks, exported as MP3s (you need to install the LAME library) and then used MAGIX’s mp3 software to tag them. Whole lot of effort. Mildred, how did you find Vinyl Studio?

You’ve got this all the wrong way round.

One of these http://www.vinylrecorder.com/cutter.html is what you want…

I started putting my entire CD and vinyl collection onto the computer. Didn’t take long to get fed up with the vinyl process so just downloaded them , not legal I suppose but having already paid for them I don’t really care.
A lot of stuff is in flac format via pirate bay etc, anything rare usually turns up on soulseek.

Generally I’ll try and find MP3s of the album’s I want, but theres a couple first pressing that are different to the later ones and I cnat find MPs.
I’ve got a video / audio capture PCI card that I should be able to plug my existing turntable straight into, but without an amp, im not sure how good it will be. I suppose I could route the turntable into the amp and then from the AMP to the card somehow.

When I rip full albums I do it one side at a time – two files. Saves all the topping and tailing, and you don’t interrupt the vinyl ‘surface noise’, which is one of the benefits of ripping vinyl in my opinion.

Why bother with MP3? You’re basically compromising your sound. Storage is cheap these days, I can’t see the point in it personally. If you don’t want to use WAV/AIF because you want to embed tags and artwork etc then use a loss-less compression such as FLAC.