High-quality transfer to CD
from vinyl, 78 or tape

Ultimate-quality conversion of LPs to CDs or MP3s

NOTICE TO CUSTOMERS

Record Restorations is no longer accepting new orders.
Apologies to customers old, new and prospective.
If you have an order outstanding you may be assured that it will be completed
and you will hear from me soon.
The service information on this site is no longer valid
and the site will be updated, when time permits, to reflect this.

Iain Carr

If you're looking for the highest-quality sound in your vinyl-to-digital transfers, you have come to the right place. My aim is to provide the ultimate service to those who wish to have their old records and tapes converted to CDs or MP3s, and at a reasonable price. In the sections that follow, I describe how I can take your old vinyl LP and (if it has not been abused) from it produce a CD that is practically indistinguishable from an equivalent commercial CD in terms of sound quality and usability, for your own private use.

Maximum extraction of sound detail using high-end high-fidelity playing equipment
My claim is to have the ability to make LPs in reasonable condition into digital conversions that are almost indistinguishable in quality from - sometimes better than - equivalent commercial CD releases. How can I dare to make this claim? Well, to start with, I use high-end hi-fi equipment (the legendary Linn Sondek LP12 transcription turntable / Linn Ittok LV II tonearm / Goldring G1042 cartridge) for the analogue-to-digital process ("ripping") on all vinyl records submitted for transfer. I have not found any competing transfer service in the UK using equipment of this capability - one service proudly declaring, for example, that their turntable rotates at the correct speed! The truth is that not all turntables are created equal - they have widely-varying levels of success in retrieving all the fine musical detail stored in the record's groove, and purchase price is not a reliable indicator of that level of success. It's well-known amongst hi-fi buffs that a record in good condition played on a properly-designed turntable like the Linn already sounds better than the average commercial CD, with the background noise subdued in comparison to playback on a run-of-the-mill deck, because so much more of the music signal is being retrieved from the disc as it is played.

Professional record cleaning
Also standard as part of my vinyl transfer service is thorough cleaning of the disc using a professional VPI record-cleaning machine imported from the US. This process alone can vastly improve the sound from a well-used record.

Superior noise reduction
Even after professional cleaning and digitisation ("ripping") using top-quality equipment, the nature of vinyl as an audio storage medium dictates that there will still be noise present to some degree in any recording, depending on the quality of the initial pressing and the use (or abuse) to which the record has subsequently been subjected. One of the advantages of a digital transfer is the opportunity to clean up the sound, ridding it of the annoying clicks and pops and other noise associated with vinyl records. For your vinyl-to-CD transfer I offer three levels of noise reduction: 1) a straightforward automated procedure which can remove most of the noise, and provided with all vinyl transfers except the Budget level; 2) a highly-developed chain of automated operations which can remove almost all of the noise from a record in good condition, and 3) detailed restoration, which is a labour-intensive (and considerably more expensive) manual procedure with the aim of fixing any noise that remains after 2) has been carried out.

After extensive listening trials and concentrated testing and experimentation, as well as investment in several professional sound-manipulation packages, the methods of noise removal I have developed use a series of varied digital processes which do not remove detail from the music along with the noise. This is a much more sophisticated and professional approach than that used by many competing services which use the noise-reduction programmes which come with popular CD-burning software - the kind you may well have on your own system. These services can therefore offer only aggressive automated noise reduction, which destroys much of the detail in the sound. If they used a poorly-designed turntable (most of them are, even some expensive ones) to digitise the sound in the first place, the resulting transfer may well be pleasant enough to listen to, but it has no hope of being a high-quality and faithful copy.

Maximum detail, minimum noise
Record Restorations' approach, coupling the maximum sonic extraction offered by high-end hi-fi equipment with intelligent and sophisticated noise reduction systems designed to complement the extracted sound exactly, results in a digital transfer (from a record in good condition) which contains crystal-clear, full sound of a standard that would satisfy the most discerning audio critic.

More information about vinyl transfer services and prices can be found on the vinyl services page.

I can provide MP3s as an alternative. Please see the MP3 page for details.

This vinyl-to-CD, tape-to-CD service is aimed at those who have hoped to obtain CDs of their favourite music and found that it is not available on CD. It is not intended as a substitute for buying a new CD where one is available.

78rpm records and tapes too
I can make quality conversions from 78rpm records, and am able to deal with the range of speeds at which these discs were cut. I use a correct 2.5mil wide-groove Shure stylus and another quality turntable-tonearm combination (Thorens / Linn) along with low-speed mastering and appropriate digital equalisation for this process. I can also transfer recordings from tape (both cassette and open reel), either commercial tapes (original tapes only) or home recordings. For this I use quality tape decks from NAD and Sony.

More information about tape transfer services and prices can be found on the tapes page.

More information about 78 rpm transfer services can be found on the 78 rpm page.

More information about compilations can be found on the compilations page.

(If you're looking for videocassette-to-DVD transfers - well, I don't handle any sort of video, but I can recommend video99.co.uk who do.)

Credit or debit card payment accepted through PayPal

About me (Iain Carr)
I have been a musician for most of my life, learning the piano from the age of six and singing with my brothers to home visitors and church gatherings for some years before that. Until I left the teaching profession in 2005 I was Head of Music in a comprehensive secondary school for over twenty years, and have a musical ear which reflects my lifelong experience (nearly fifty years since my first piano lesson). I have also been a hi-fi enthusiast for most of that time, starting with an old tape recorder my dad gave me at around the age of ten. Since then I have striven to attain the best sound possible from the equipment I had managed to acquire, sometimes in the past reaching beyond my financial means to obtain the best (for example, the Linn Sondek LP12 - see above). In the late 1990s I began to experiment with transferring my vast record collection to CD (several years later, I've still got most of them to do), constantly refining my procedures and culminating in the Record Restorations service which was first offered in 2002. I have been the pianist and bass guitarist in several bands and am often asked to play the organ for local churches, having previously held two organist posts over a period of years in different locations. I have also been involved with a number of choirs (church and secular) both as participant and director. In presenting this digital transfer service, my passion for music is coupled with my enjoyment of high-fidelity sound. Other activities: car servicing and restoration; pipe organ repair.

Copyright: the legal issues

I will not accept copyright material which has been copied onto any recordable medium, unless of course you own the copyright (including, for example, home-recorded material such as 'baby's first words' or some other memorable domestic scenario). This means that you should only send me original records or tapes for which you have paid; I will make one CD or MP3-set restoration transfer per record or tape for your own private use. You, the customer, take responsibility for all copyright issues, including where you stand before the law of your country when copying copyrighted material to another medium. The "fair use" provisions of the copyright law of most developed countries do not normally prevent you from moving recordings for which you have already paid to another medium, but passing the copied material to a third party is usually considered piracy and may render you liable to prosecution.

I will return all processed records and tapes to you along with your digital transfers. After this, you should not sell or pass digital transfers to anyone else as this would violate copyright. If you subsequently decide to part with the original record or tape you should destroy the digital transfer.

I do not knowingly allow this service to be used for the pirating of copyright recordings, and in the past I have on a number of occasions declined to transfer recordings which were clearly pirated.