Hello,
New to this forum and a novice to converting Vinyl recordings to CD’s that I can play in my automobile. I have owned a ION Gemini turntable for several years and finally hooked it up to my old XP computer. This old computer is not online and is kept for editing pictures, video, and now recording and converting vinyl records. I understand that I need another piece of software to convert the Audacity format to MP3, something called LAME. Can anyone suggest which software I need for my windows XP machine? Can this be downloaded on a Windows 10 machine and burned to a disc, which can then be transferred to the XP machine?
Thanks,
Bandaid
Yes use one of your computers that is online, or go to an internet café or public library and download LAME according to http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/installing_and_updating_audacity_on_windows.html#winlame. It doesn’t matter which version of Windows you download on. It’s easiest to get the LAME installer (EXE). This can be burned to CD or transferred to USB stick.
Gale
to CD’s that I can play in my automobile.
Do you want a regular audio CD or MP3 files burned onto a CD? …Most regular CD players" can’t play MP3s, so make sure your car stereo can play MP3s (maybe try one MP3 file) before you go too far. (You can put 5-10 times as much music on an MP3 disc, depending on the bitrate/quality setting).
How far did you get? Do you have a saved Audacity project or WAV files that you can play?
Most CD burning software can decompress MP3 files to make an audio CD, but MP3 is lossy compression, plus and you’d be going through extra-unnecessary steps. If you are making an audio CD, export your files to 44.1kHz, 16-bit, stereo WAV files. (Audio CDs don’t have WAV files or any “computer file” format, but the underlying PCM format is the same as uncompressed WAV.)
Audacity doesn’t burn CDs. There is some helpful information [u]here[/u].
If you’re all done recording and editing, and you just want to convert WAVs (or other audio files) to MP3, [u]TAudioConverter[/u] can convert a batch of files at once… Once it’s set-up it’s just drag, drop, and click.
But if you’re still working in Audacity, it’s easier to export to MP3 after installing LAME. And, you should probably have LAME installed anyway just to make Audacity “complete”.
I have not gone any further than recording the Two vinyl records onto my computer via Audacity. I saved the file to my personal folder. As I said in my opening, I am a real novice at this and all I really want to do is burn a couple music cd’s to paly in my truck on a trip.
bandaid
But that is an ambiguous statement, because if you really want a “music CD” also known as an “audio CD” then you want to be exporting from Audacity as WAV, not MP3. This will limit the CD’s playing time to 72 to 80 minutes because the data on the CD is uncompressed.
This is different from an “MP3 CD” which is a “data CD” and actually does have MP3 files stored on the CD. It can contain a lot more than 80 minutes of music, depending how much the MP3s are compressed. The more the MP3s are compressed (the lower the bit rate you choose when you export the MP3), the worse they sound.
You tell the the CD burner whether to burn a music CD or a data CD. This link explains more:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/burning_music_files_to_a_cd.html
If you don’t know whether your truck plays MP3 CDs or not, but you prefer longer than 80 minutes on the CD, try exporting as MP3 and burn as a data CD. If the CD doesn’t play, you will have to export as WAV and reburn as an audio CD.
Gale