Vinyl Recording help

toomuchtes

Honorable
Nov 25, 2012
7
0
10,510
Well, this isnt an ordinary turntable one would find nowadays in stores. A few months ago i found my Father's turntable from 1980 in my basement. I hooked it up to a receiver and it worked perfectly. I got this idea, where i connected the turntable's left and right cables to a stereo left and right 3.5mm jack adapter and i plugged it into my computer. It records perfectly well, except it makes a static hissing noise that sounds like it is not grounded, but it is grounded to my receiver. Anyone know why?

Thanks very much.
 
Solution
IF the TT has a ground wire which is a spade shape connector, attach to the lower left of that receiver where it says "GND"

This will sound confusing but it depends on the TT and what cartridge you are using. Some TT's don't have a ground wire. Generally if a TT isn't grounded you will get a "hum" sound. TTs without a ground wire require a special cartridge or might have a 3 prong plug to an outlet. I have some old Thorens TTs that don't have a ground and a DUAL TT that does.

TTs require a phono amp because the signal output is very low. IF your receiver crashed I would be surprised if the turntable was the problem.

The static/hissing might be that the "gain" signal is too high. Try lowering the PC signal input. I have tons of...

toomuchtes

Honorable
Nov 25, 2012
7
0
10,510


I tried that, the sound came out quiet, and when i tried to record my receiver crashed and shut off. I dont understand why really but i dont want to damage my receiver by trying it again.
 

toomuchtes

Honorable
Nov 25, 2012
7
0
10,510


My turntable is a Technics SL-D303 and my receiver is a Kenwood Audio-video receiver VR-507. They are plugged into the phono jacks. The turntable works perfectly fine, its just it sounds ungrounded when i try to record to my computer.
 
IF the TT has a ground wire which is a spade shape connector, attach to the lower left of that receiver where it says "GND"

This will sound confusing but it depends on the TT and what cartridge you are using. Some TT's don't have a ground wire. Generally if a TT isn't grounded you will get a "hum" sound. TTs without a ground wire require a special cartridge or might have a 3 prong plug to an outlet. I have some old Thorens TTs that don't have a ground and a DUAL TT that does.

TTs require a phono amp because the signal output is very low. IF your receiver crashed I would be surprised if the turntable was the problem.

The static/hissing might be that the "gain" signal is too high. Try lowering the PC signal input. I have tons of vinyl and I use Audacity to record them.

Audacity and it's free: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Be seeing you, the Prisoner
 
Solution
Your turntable is using the phono preamp in the Kenwood so you cannot connect it directly to the PC (unless you have software which allows this). This phono preamp is not just additional gain it provides RIAA equalization which is the opposite of the EQ used in all records (bass is reduced, highs are increased in all records to make them easy to cut).
You can connect the tape record outputs of the receiver to your PC and this should solve your problems.