OK this seems like a simple if anachronistic question - s/w to convert analog to MP3?

[mhardy6647]

Mrs. H and I love "Holiday Music" (to wit, mostly "Christmas Music", but of both the sacred and profane kinds). We have lots and lots of "Holiday Music" dubbed to VHS HiFi Audio (a VHS videotape format that recorded pretty high quality analog stereo audio using FM to VHS tapes using rotating heads to get wide bandwidth & good s/n).

I've, umm... ripped some of the collection (which is pretty huge, truth be told) to 320k MP3 using Audacity over the years, and that works absolutely fine -- but that approach seems like horrific overkill for my purpose and requires two steps to get to MP3. The native Audacity "audio" files are fairly large -- and packrat that I am, I am loath to delete them after the project is 'finished'*, so they just take up space on backup HDDs.

I was thinking about this earlier today and it popped into my mind that there is probably some freeware solution that will take, e.g., the output of a DAC [edit] ADC to USB and convert it directly to "high" bitrate MP3. Rather than google and take my chances with the scammers, scalawags and charlatans on the internet, I figured I'd ask here! Anyone know of (and, perhaps more to the point, can anyone recommend) such a product? Doesn't even have to be free -- just reasonably priced and easy to use!

Thanks for your consideration!
________________

Postscript: Here is an actual photograph of an analog-domain holiday dubbing session from some years back -- recording holiday music records to VHS HiFi Audio on a very vintage (and rather nice, actually) "Zenith" branded "VHS HiFi Audio Video Recorder" (purchased new by yrs. trly. ca. 1986 at the annual Stereo Discounters HiFi Show and Sale in Timonium MD).

holidaydubbing121209 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

 

[NTomokawa]

Get a pocket recorder that accepts line-in. Before I got into photography, I had this thing, and I digitized some vinyl directly on it.

 

[scribley0]

Some good info here ... https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explor...s/how-to-record-vinyl-records-into-a-computer

Or check one or more of the streaming providers - Spotify/Tidal/Qobuz/Amazon/Apple etc to see if the job has already been done for you

 

[mhardy6647]

Some good info here ... https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explor...s/how-to-record-vinyl-records-into-a-computer

Or check one or more of the streaming providers - Spotify/Tidal/Qobuz/Amazon/Apple etc to see if the job has already been done for you

Thanks. That describes the way I do it now (via Audacity).
Those streaming services... aren't my cup of tea.

 

[Helicopter]

HDDs are so cheap today. Why compress?

BTW, awesome gear, process, and post. I absolutely love what you have going on here. This is some really cool tech, and I love that you used it to build a giant Christmas archive.

 

[TomB19]

The task at hand seems best suited to LAME with a VBR MP3 target. You should achieve surprisingly good quality and VBR will produce much smaller files than 320Kbps fixed rate encodings.

Personally, I'd leave the quality level high and let VBR do it's thing. I'll bet you will be pleasantly surprised at both the quality and size of the result.

Keep in mind, with VBR, encoding something like grunge metal will compress a lot less than a Christmas carol with so much less sonic detail.

I don't use Audacity but I understand it is built on LAME. Somehow, if you can configure it to encode with "-v -V <quality of 0 to 9 with 0 being highest>" you should see big file size improvements.

From the CLI, it would look like this:

lame --preset extreme christmas-lobotomy.wav christmas-lobotomy.mp3

or (equivalent)

lame -V 0 --vbr-new christmas-lobotomy.wav christmas-lobotomy.mp3


To trade a bit of quality for size:

lame --preset standard christmas-lobotomy.wav christmas-lobotomy.mp3

 

[LTig]

On Linux you could probably run something like

arecord | lame​

in a console to do this job.

 

[Doodski]

I hope you have the GRP Christmas Collection @mhardy6647 Top shelf musicians and recorded in DDD.

 

[mhardy6647]

I hope you have the GRP Christmas Collection @mhardy6647 Top shelf musicians and recorded in DDD.

Yes, indeed, we do have a copy (on polycarbonate disc 'n' everything)!
Some other "audiophile" Christmas recordings, too, although some of my all-around favorites aren't canonically "audiophile" -- but some of 'em still sound grrrrrrrrrrrrreat!

e.g.,

a really, truly wonderful album

 

[Blujackaal]

The task at hand seems best suited to LAME with a VBR MP3 target. You should achieve surprisingly good quality and VBR will produce much smaller files than 320Kbps fixed rate encodings.

Personally, I'd leave the quality level high and let VBR do it's thing. I'll bet you will be pleasantly surprised at both the quality and size of the result.

Keep in mind, with VBR, encoding something like grunge metal will compress a lot less than a Christmas carol with so much less sonic detail.

I don't use Audacity but I understand it is built on LAME. Somehow, if you can configure it to encode with "-v -V <quality of 0 to 9 with 0 being highest>" you should see big file size improvements.

From the CLI, it would look like this:

lame --preset extreme christmas-lobotomy.wav christmas-lobotomy.mp3

or (equivalent)

lame -V 0 --vbr-new christmas-lobotomy.wav christmas-lobotomy.mp3


To trade a bit of quality for size:

lame --preset standard christmas-lobotomy.wav christmas-lobotomy.mp3

AAC/Vorbis in VBR can go much lower than LAME and still be transparent. Vorbis Q5(160kbps) is 99% to me while 2.5% of my archive artifacts even at V0 and 320kbps. Both AAC/Vorbis outperform LAME at 256kbps too.