Don't throw out your vinyl, tapes, etc...

Don't you wish you could listen to that old record on any device that plays mp3s? Well, you can! Not only is it dead easy to convert records, tapes, 8 tracks, ANYTHING! but it doesn't take a lot of equipement to do it. In fact, most desktops and even quite a few laptops won't need any additional hardware. Check to see if you have a line-in 1/8" jack - the size of jack that headphones are normally pluged in... if you do, skip the next paragraph since you won't need an external A/D.

If you don't have a line-in jack you'll need to buy an external A/D to digitalize the music on the old analogue storage mediums (such as vinyl). These are sold at good music equipment stores, or on Amazon.com and normally cost $80-$100. I bought a Transit USB for about $90 at Moog Audio in Montreal, Canada. Make sure you buy an A/D that interfaces with your computer by USB to be sure it can sample at a relatively high rate so as to avoid sound distortion. The A/D should also have a line-in jack to input the music that you are digitalizing.

Now, set up your record player, tape player or however you play the old analogue music that you wish to convert and make sure that everything is working fine. At this point you will need a dubbing cable, available at any dollar store, to plug into both the headphone output of the analogue player and into the line-in on your computer or A/D. You will also need to download the free music recording program Audacity. Open Audacity and click record, then start the record or tape and you should see the waveform on Audacity picking up an input. If you set Audacity to playback the inputed signal then you would also hear the music on your computers speakers. Once the music has ended press stop and save the waveform as an mp3.

Audacity also allows you to split the music into tracks and name them appropriately also this must all be done by hand.