Convert LP to CD, Transfer LP to CD, LP to CD Transfer,

Many of you will have questions about our transfer service and that's only natural. Take a look below and see if your question or questions are there. Feel free to contact us about our transfer service if you have any questions or concerns that aren't covered on this page.

Other Formats

What about videos? 78s? Reels?
Cassettes and vinyl LPs and 45s are all we do. However, our sister company, Audio-Restorations does everything else.

Logistics

Can I pay by check?
You bet. After you place your order, just make a check out to "Audio-Restorations" for the final amount (including return shipping), and pack it with your cassettes or records.

How long does this take?
Most of the start-to-finish turnaround time consists of the you-to-us and us-back-to-you shipping steps. W e do our best to get your product out in a timely manner. Much depends on our current work load. Typically it's just a few days.

However, you can still use our service! You can ship things to us from anywhere, so that's no problem. The only trick is to use a friend or family member in the USA as the ship-to address, and then nicely ask them to bounce it to you. A bit of a hassle, but it works.

Can I make/sell copies of my new CDs/MP3s?
If it's copyrighted material, unless you own it, the answer is no. Fair Use lets you make a digital backup of an analog recording for yourself, but not distribute more copies.

This LP is irreplaceable! I can't risk mailing it!
It's natural to not want to hand over your tapes or records to strangers. The good news, is that we've never lhad a custmer loose their materials in transit. Once it reaches us, it's not going anywhere except back to you.

We suggest you use Fedex or UPS. Go to a nearby Fedex-Kinko's or UPS Store, pile up your tapes or records on the counter, give them our mailing address and they'll take care of it. You can even get a thousand dollars of insurance for about ten bucks extra.

If you're using US Mail, then tag each and every item with a return-address sticker. That way, if your box breaks open en route, they'll still be able to return them to you.

Privacy/Guarnatees/Copyright

Is this legal?
Yes. Fair Use lets you make a digital backup of an analog recording that you already own.

Do you listen to my tape/record?
As a rule, no. We do hear little snippets of sound while placing track points and cleaning the sound up, but no one will ever sit down and listen to the whole recording.

Do you keep a copy of my audio?
Yes, for 30 days. It lets us make copies if you need more later. More importantly, it also lets us reconstruct your order if something happens in the mail.

CDs

A strange title comes up when I put the CD into my computer. Huh?
Most computer audio programs (like iTunes and Windows Media Player, mainly) look up a CDs track titles on CDDB, an internet database of CD info.

So when one puts in a store-bought Beatles CD and the computer says "She Loves You Yeah Yeah Yeah," that track title was not read from the CD itself, but was rather looked up in that CDDB database.

This CDDB track info is indexed by the lengths of a CDs tracks. This means that if a CD we make for you has the same number of tracks, and with the exact same lengths, as that Beatles CD, then you'll see "She Loves You Yeah Yeah Yeah" when you play it too, whether it's the Rolling Stones or Books on Tape.

This only happens with about one of every thousand CDs we make, and it's not like the CD sounds wrong. It just means that when importing into iTunes, say, you'll have to "override" the defaults and type in the track titles yourself.

MP3

How do I load my MP3s into iTunes?
Each MP3 disc comes with the following instructions:
1) Start the iTunes program.
2) iTunes -> Preferences...
3) "Advanced" tab.
4) Check the box "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library."
5) Drag MP3 files (or the whole disc) directly into your iTunes playlist! Whammo!

Cassettes

I'm not sure how long my tape is...
If you don't know, then just pick the shortest time. We will make adjustments here..

I only want the second song from side A and...
Sorry, that's not how our service works. We do the whole tape, all or nothing, and only trim off the silences at the start and end of each side. Similarly, we are unable to combine multiple tapes onto a single CD.

How is it split up into tracks?
If it's a spoken word tape like a lecture or audiobook then you'll get two big tracks, one for each side. For music tapes with clear breaks between songs, though, we use a special computer program to find the track points by hand.

For tapes containing live performances, DJ sets or other content where the songs blend together, we can't always guarantee our track-seperation to be perfect, but we can try our best. Let us know if you prefer to have us attempt to track them, or to create one track for each side.

Do you offer LP transcription to Word or PDF?
We don't do LP transcription, but our friends at Casting Words do! They do a great job and their prices and turnaround are very competitive.

How is it split up into tracks?
We use a special computer program to find the track points by hand.

I only want the second song from side A and...
Nope nope, we do the whole thing, all or nothing.

Between the record cleaning and our super-fancy digital click and pop reduction algorithm, your records will be sounding better in your CD player or computer than they did on the turntable.

We accept Credit Cards (Visa, Master Card, American Express), Money Orders and Checks and even Pay Pal.
If sending a Money Order, your package will ship upon receipt of the money order. Checks must clear before we
ship product.

Your credit card is only charged after we complete work, right before we ship your order. Once the project is
complete, we will send you a final invoice with instructions on making payment.

The average LP size just short of 13 inches square.
Most LP's fit in a 13 wide x13 deep box
Average height of 20 LP's (in jackets): just short of 3 inches
Average weight of 20 LP's (in jackets): about 10 pounds (less for more "modern" LP's, more for older LP's)
If you ship by UPS, you can track your package as it proceeds to us. You can also insure it.

Please do not ship your records to us in unprotected packaging. Avoid shipping valuable records in single-layer packaging, such as record mailers.

Using conventional record cleaning products may well do damage to the disc. Alcohol-based solutions are capable of breaking down the binders in shellac discs and may also cause chemical break-down of the acetate disc surfaces found on privately recorded and one-off discs. Audio-Restoration has all the tools and experience to clean up your discs.

They will be very, very safe. Your recordings will be handled with extreme care at our studio. We clean each record carefully, and use only the best quality cartridges on our turntables.

If you are in any way uncomfortable about shipping, then we suggest you get a professional to pack your recordings.

Every day we handle many rare and hard to find recordings. Your recordings will be returned to their original shipping container once duplicated and then stored in our secure storage area until your project is finished.

Our process does not alter the original recording in any way. You will actually receive your record back cleaner than when you sent it. Normally, we only play your recording one time and it would only be played again if there was a problem with the initial transfer to digital. Even in this case, we would generally only play the "problem" section again.

No. Listed below are some of the limitations. We want our customers to be informed. Please familiarize yourself with these limitations and write or call us if you have any questions. The quality of our work is 100% guaranteed, but this guarantee does not apply to defects that are impossible to fix, such as those described below:

Distortion: There are many types of distortion and possible causes: over modulation at recording, defective microphones or recording equipment, faulty stamping or quality control when the record was pressed, playing the record with a worn needle or with improper tracking force. A distortion becomes part of the sound. The computer and filtering software can not detect what is distorted and what is not. Therefore, if your source recording is distorted, the restored copy will also be distorted only the sound will be "cleaner".

Trade-offs: Intense computer processing of very degraded signals may result in music that sounds somewhat muted. It is a much more enjoyable experience to listen to a clean sounding recording, but somewhat muted, as opposed to a recording with severe hiss, crackles and pops. 2) There are cases when a recording sounds clean for the most part, and needs a less drastic approach in restoration in order to preserve the "liveliness" of the original recording. In this case it is more desirable to apply less severe processing, which may leave some occasional imperfections more audible. We would like our customers to be aware of these trade-offs.

No pause between tracks: Please note that there must be few seconds of actual pause (silence) between the songs in order for us to be able to accurately assign tracks. If the original material does not contain a few seconds of silence between the songs, and timings are not provided we will try to guess where the tracks should begin, but may not exactly match the tracks of the original. This happens frequently with "live recording" albums, medleys, opera and sometimes with compilation tapes. If our "guessing" is not acceptable, please do not submit recordings without a few seconds of silence between songs.

Inferior quality home or commercial recording: Some customers prefer to record their vinyl or shellac records onto a LP, and send us the LP for processing. Please be aware that if the LP is recorded with inferior equipment (noisy turntable or LP recorder) the resulting CD will also be of inferior quality. It is impossible to make a perfect CD out of a technically inferior recording. This also applies to inferior commercial recordings (recordings with metallic, tiny sound, recordings with bad sibilants, recordings badly mixed). We can not create frequencies that have never been recorded and can not re-mix a recording since we do not have the multi-track master.

No. There are many thousands of pops and clicks on each recording. When we restore a record we have to decide how severe the pops and clicks are, and how much correction to apply to the music with our software. See Trade-offs above.

"Hand removal" of pops and clicks is not possible at our standard pricing. If you know that certain songs/tracks require extra restoration work, please let us know and we will do the work on a hourly basis.

Transfer-2CD.com values its customers and respects privacy. All customer information is considered confidential. We do not release information to third parties. We do not place "cookies" or hidden files on our client's computers. And we do not use email or mailing addresses for solicitation purposes. Our audio restoration services are intended for individuals who have purchased audio recordings (vinyl records or tapes) and wish to transfer them to compact disc (CD).

Copyright laws allow individuals who have purchased audio recorded music in one format to transfer it to a different format as long as it is for personal use and is not re-sold.

LP to Cd Frequently Asked Questions

Other Formats

Logistics

Privacy/Guarnatees/Copyright

CDs

MP3

Cassettes