Vinyl and Cassette music to a hard drive - best way how to?

[Jaguar steve]

Not much more to add to the title really. Source is a Linn LP12 and cassette deck into a Naim 32.5 and I know I can take a line level signal out from that via the tape out DIN socket.

I have about 200 albums and live recordings to store digitally and I don't want to risk storing and loosing them on my laptop if it dies and if possible would much rather have them on a dedicated hard drive feeding back into my Hi Fi preserving as much of the sound quality as possible.

What to consider? What do I need? How do you store music digitally, and is doing so a bomb and idiot proof robust method to preserve it? How is it all catalogued and stored and accessed once on the hard drive?

Bear in mind I don't even know how my iTunes account worked and had to get one of my kids to set that up for me and subsequently lost all my music when my last PC snuffed it because nothing was backed up I've obviously got a bit of catching up with technology to do...

Over to you Chaps

[Jaguar steve]

megaphone said:

Audacity is good and free.

That's the download for a pc yes? So download that then connect the PC to the tape out on my pre amp and record away - get that too but where to keep music secure and maintain quality when done and how to playback through the Hi Fi?

[Jaguar steve]

otherman said:

Jaguar steve said:

That's the download for a pc yes? So download that then connect the PC to the tape out on my pre amp and record away - get that too but where to keep music secure and maintain quality when done and how to playback through the Hi Fi?

Yes, free download. You open it up, hit record, put the record on and wait til its done. I always save each track as a separate file. It's easy enough to see from the wave form where the track splits are, because of the quite section between. As far as security is concerned, once you've done all the work you won't want to lose it, so get an external hard drive and back it all up. PM if you want to know more...I used to do this professionally, so I know the ins and outs.

That's a big help, thanks.

So I need a lead to connect my Hi Fi to my laptop, download Audacity, load albums onto that then transfer the whole lot to a hard drive.

Any particular hard drive and how much storage do I need for about 160 hours of music at the highest possible quality level?