The vinyl resurgence has seen the format adapt somewhat to the market it’s re-entered. We now have vinyl subscription services, special edition album launches, the annual Record Store Day and USB turntables with record-ripping abilities allowing you to digitise your vinyl collection to your laptop or computer.
Now Convert Technologies has come up with a method of making vinyl even more easily pocketable. The Vinyl Recorder is a free-to-download app that records your albums to 16bit/48kHz FLAC files.
Much like the desktop software provided with USB turntables, the process simply involves connecting a USB turntable to your smartphone via the appropriate USB adaptor cable and tapping the red dot on the app’s interface.
As Vinyl Recorder is supported by Gracenote, metadata is automatically detected and attached to the recorded files, separating them into individual songs and adding song title, album title, artist and artwork. The ripped songs are then stored in both the in-app music player and your phone or tablet’s library.
While the app may not cost you, any ripped songs will. The idea is that you purchase in-app credits – 10 tracks cost £1.99, 50 costs £7.99, 100 are £13.99 and 250 are £29.99. Do some quick maths and you’ll see Convert Technologies’ claim that each song costs less than 12p is correct. As an example, Arcade Fire's new 13-track Everything Now album would cost not quite £2.50 to rip.
You can, however, get a free 30-second clip of each song to check you’re happy with the sound quality.
The Vinyl Recorder by Convert Technologies is currently only available on the Google Play store for Android devices, although an email alert at the bottom of its product page on www.convert-av.com suggests iOS support is in the pipeline.
MORE:
A week of vinyl features for Record Store Day 2017
How to digitise your vinyl collection
The tech behind the vinyl revival
