You love those old vinyl records, but you can't listen to them in your car. If you have a USB turntable hooked up to your computer, however, you can turn those old LPs into CDs. A USB turntable is essentially an old-fashioned analog record player grafted onto a digital audio recorder. The turntable converts the vibrations of the record needle into digital audio and sends it to your computer through a cable connected to a USB port.
Buying a USB Turntable
Look for computer system requirements when shopping for USB turntables, and make sure that the model you buy is compatible with your setup. Turntables are available from a variety of manufacturers, for both Windows PCs and Macs, usually for no more than a few hundred dollars. See the link in the Resources for a few examples.
Recording Audio
Set up your USB turntable according to the manufacturer's directions, and install the software on your computer. Put a record on the turntable, select the appropriate speed--the record label should say whether it plays at 33 1/3, 45 or 78 revolutions per minute--put the needle in the groove and play the record. The software records and stores the audio in a common format, usually MP3 or WAV. You can capture the whole record as one audio file if you want, but it's best to record each individual song as a separate file so you can cue the finished CD just like a regular disc.
Creating Audio CDs
Gather the individual song files together to put them on a compact disc. Be aware that you can't just burn music files to a CD the way you would burn, say, a bunch of photos. Putting songs on a disc as MP3 or WAV files creates what's known as a "data CD," which is readable only by computers. For the disc to be playable in regular CD players, you have to create an audio CD, which stores the music in standard CD format. Windows Media Player and Apple's iTunes both create audio CDs, and you can download both for free (see Resources).
Doing It Right
When creating audio CDs, use only CD-R blank discs. Many disc players--particularly older models--cannot read the rewritable CD-RW discs. Also, audio CDs can hold, at most, 74 minutes of music. Keep that limit in mind when converting your records to CDs; a double album might need to be a double CD, too.
Tags: your computer, create audio, digital audio, individual song