This is gonna toss some of the vinyl purists into the realm of denial but I've been ever so occasionally recording my LPs to a hard drive and using a digital doo-dad and a couple of different recording packages to help the process, Where an mere CD is recorded at 16-bit with a sampling rate of about 350 bps, the doo-dad records at 24-bit and with a sampling rate of a whopping 1500+ bps. The end result is indistinguishable from the original LP. I've even left the noise of the needle dropping into the groove just for the effect.

As luck has it, the vast majority of my LPs were never played more than once or twice before, as right from the beginning I adopted the habit of recording a new LP to tape on the first play. The end result is wonderful. Its like opening a time capsule from about 30 years ago!

So far I've recorded some vintage Yes, Iron Butterfly, Chic Corea/Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Crusaders, Ray Charles, Milt Jackson, Stan Gets, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report, several classic recordings including some Gregorian Chants and also some vintage Jethro Tull.

I gotta tell youz vinyl heads, to run don’t walk and get a good high fidelity device to digitize yer gems. The sound quality right down to the finest nuances is all there, plus unlike other recording media there is no perceptible noise added.

But get a large hard drive. When I started the process I thought 80 GB would be more than enough. I ran outta space a few months ago and still have about 40 LPs to record…

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...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"