Vinyl Ripping Again
April 7, 2010 2:00 PM   Subscribe

Is there easy to use software (free or otherwise) to rip vinyl to my Mac?

A search on Ask MeFi turned up some advice, but it was 4-6 years old. I just bought an Audio-Technics USB turntable and a large external hard drive. The turntable came with Audacity software, which I'm not finding to be terribly user friendly. It appears that I need to rip the vinyl to a proprietary format used by the software, and then convert to MP3, AIFF or WAV. Maybe I'm being obtuse, but is there easier to use software? I'm using a Mac, with OS 10.6.
posted by gteffertz to Technology (14 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Audacity is quite good and free!
posted by sswiller at 2:14 PM on April 7, 2010


Oh wait, didn't see that part about the Audacity software. I found it easy to use; just drop the needle and click record.
posted by sswiller at 2:15 PM on April 7, 2010


You might look into Fission or Sound Studio. Neither are free, but both are fairly easy to use.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:15 PM on April 7, 2010


I've used GarageBand to do this! That would be pretty simple if you already have iLife.
posted by so_gracefully at 2:30 PM on April 7, 2010


Wah? Audacity doesn't use proprietary formats. You should be able to rip directly to mp3 with Audacity.
posted by the dief at 3:25 PM on April 7, 2010


I find Audacity not so great. Unfortunately the alternatives cost money. There's a LE version of Bias Peak for a start.
posted by tremspeed at 3:30 PM on April 7, 2010


Audacity can directly generate multiple MP3 or WAV files from a single audio recording session. You can do this without ever having saved an Audacity project file, provided you don't mind needing to re-record if something goes wrong.
posted by flabdablet at 4:21 PM on April 7, 2010


If the asker said he or she doesn't like Audacity, why keep recommending it?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:22 PM on April 7, 2010


Griffin Technology's simple Final Vinyl is designed for recording analog sources. The software has an RIAA curve EQ preset if the turntable doesn't have a built-in preamp.
posted by dmo at 6:43 PM on April 7, 2010


Best answer: Mainly because the way the question is framed suggests that the problem with Audacity is not so much that it's a poor tool for the job at hand, but that the asker is at present not familiar enough with it to use it comfortably.

In fact, Audacity is a deservedly well respected audio processing tool, and quite capable of doing rips from vinyl without muss or fuss. It may well cost the asker less time to develop a convenient Audacity workflow than it would to find, download, install, configure and learn something else.

Also, time invested in learning to use a decent general purpose audio editor for this job, rather than something a little more point-and-shoot, might well pay large dividends later on. Audacity can do quite a lot to clean up dodgy input audio (possibly not quite as much as can be achieved with wood glue, but still quite useful).
posted by flabdablet at 6:46 PM on April 7, 2010


I used Final Vinyl and an iMic to rip my mom's huge record collection onto her nice new green iPod. It was relatively painless, and the best feature was the ability to do a whole side and then split it into tracks when it was finished. This allowed me to do other things while I was working on it.
posted by Sallyfur at 5:06 AM on April 8, 2010


Response by poster: I think that flabdablet pretty much hit the nail on the head. The program seems to be able to do what I need, but it's somewhat complex and the documentation is not great (I haven't yet been able to figure out for sure which version I should be using for an Intel-based Mac running OS 10.6). I'm going to look into Final Vinyl today, but it's possible I'd be better off just learning to use Audacity.
posted by gteffertz at 10:17 AM on April 8, 2010


The online documentation is fairly comprehensive, and version 1.2.5 is available for Intel OS X.
posted by flabdablet at 10:08 PM on April 8, 2010


You might try searching for tutorials specific to ripping vinyl.

Here are a few I found searching for

audacity "step by step" vinyl

Turn those vinyl records to mp3s

Best Vinyl Importing Software (Apple support forums)

A lot of the hits are kind of old, so starting with the online documentation might be the way to go.

If you do find a good workflow for yourself, you might consider writing it up and posting it for others.
posted by kristi at 11:38 AM on April 10, 2010


« Older Newlywed Financial Advice   |   Looking for a long lost friend Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.