Converting Vinyl to Digital

zygat

... I am looking for the very best sound quality and a relatively simple process ...

Those may be mutually exclusive goals.

This is how I converted my vinyl collection to digital may years ago. It was a tedious and time-consuming process.

I purchased a Korg analog to digital converter.  I connected my turntable to a phono preamp which connected to the Korg (via rca cables) and the Korg to my computer via a USB cable. 

The Korg can convert analog to PCM or DSD digital. At the time of the conversion I could not find software to process DSD files so I was limited to PCM conversion.

I made test recordings at 44, 48, 96, 176 and 192 Khz. I could hear no differences in sound quality between the 96, 176 and 192 Khz recordings. 96Khz was more enjoyable than 48 and 44 Khz recordings. It was hard to tell the difference between the 96 Khz recordings the original vinyl. 

Using the front buttons on the Korg I would record the album to a file. Then using the Korg Audiogate software I could convert the file to 24/96 Khz and transfer it to my PC.

On the PC I used VinylStudio to process the file. First, I would look up a track listing (usually Discdogs). This would split the tracks and download album art. You then have to listen to the recording to make sure the track splits are correct and adjust as necessary. Then you apply any cleanup (remove pops) and generate a file for each track. This results in a file structure: Artist directory / Album directory / track files 1 to n.

Now you can copy the album to your music library.

You might get more responses asking this on the 'Digital' category, as this is all about digital conversion...

depends on what your budget is. I use an Antelope audio  Pure2 A to D. works very well. 

Look on the Tascam web site for a pro audio ADC. Friend uses an older model to transcript all his vinyl to digital, he stores the digital version to a CD or external hard drive. 

There is software also that can be used with a PC but its not as good IMO for the recording part anyway. That said this software in many cases separate the tracks and adds meta data (meta data being the track numbers and names). Thats the largest issue taking the single large file (1 per side) and breaking it into the separate tracks and then adding meta data. This is time consuming unless software is used and that will not be perfect.

Unless you have records that are not available in the digital domain already it’s a vert time-consuming venture. Worth it is subjective and you’ll have to decide if its worth it for you. I think if there is already a digital version, that will end up sounding better then a recording from a vinyl record.

There are some propriety devices and software out there for this but from my experience costly.