How to Make Your mp3 Sound Like Vinyl

How to Make Your mp3 Sound Like Vinyl

Category: Tutorials Posted by Amar Toor, Jan 19th 2010 9:05AM

Welcome to another Winamp plugin-in spotlight. In this post, we are featuring iZotope Vinyl, a 3rd-party Winamp plug-in that lets you make your mp3s sound like vinyl.

If the rise of CD's didn't kill vinyl, the birth of the mp3 generation definitely drove a stake through its heart. With music now available at the click of a button, so many music fans whose earliest exposure to the Beatles came in an intricately packaged record case are now yearning for those days when cover art actually mattered--and, more importantly, when music had that intangible grainy quality to it. While it's certainly great, in some respect, to be able to listen to digitally remastered, crystal clear renditions of classic songs, there's also something to be said for that nostalgic bit of imperfect sound quality that was so specific to records.

But before you go getting all misty on us, though, you should know that you can get that same vinyl sound out of all your mp3s on Winamp. It'll take a little plug-in sleight of hand, but within minutes, you can rewind the clock, and pretend like you're listening to your favorite tunes like they sounded (or would've sounded) during your teenage years.

Step 1:

The first thing you'll have to do is download the iZotope plug-in, which you can find here. All you have to do is click on the "Download" button.

Step 2:
After you click, a box will pop up, asking you to run or save the application. You can do either: if you click save, it'll pop up on your desktop or wherever you save it, and then you'll just have to click it. If you click "run," the application will open directly. Either way, you'll get to the same place, which will be an automatically-opened notepad instructions manual, which can guide you from there. But we'll tell you what it says anyway.

iZVinyl_Readme.txt

Step 3:
Open Winamp. Once launched you should open the Preferences (by clicking Options >> Preferences). Or this can be done pretty quickly by just typing Ctrl+k.

Step 4:
In the preferences box that pops up, you'll see the plug-in option on the left. If you click on the DSP subsection, you should see the iZotope option. Click on it, and then the plug-in should automatically open and allow you to adjust each song you play to your own vintage desires.

*** NOTE: Remember to select "none" under your DSP/Effect options in order to turn off iZotope Vinyl. ***

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

1. Vinyl will never die imo... too many audiophiles and DJ artists that support it

Posted at 4:29PM on Jan 19th 2010 by Daniel Wired

2. The fact that you are promoting this here, tells me, you know nothing about the sonic differences between good vinyl and CDs. There is still a demand for vinyl recordings, becuse they are higher fidelity than CDs. You con't make a silk purse out of sows ear. I really can't be too hard on you though. The High Fidelity Industry pretty much died with the birth of CDs. Go try to buy a set of good speakers now days. You can't find anything local, and anything you do find, you have to buy on faith and multi-thousands of dollars.

Posted at 5:42PM on Jan 23rd 2010 by Jack Deckard

3. While CD audio is not perfect, it is way ahead of vinyl, in terms of fidelity, for far too many reasons to count! A few: varied dynamic range compression across the length of the vinyl, including varied frequency equalisation across length, signal to noise ratio, mechanical noise, track deterioration due to the needle, to get best possible results out of the media requires expensive hardware. The list goes on. I'm fed up with people saying that Vinyl is better than CD. What people are actually saying is that they 'prefer' the audio *colourisation* of vinyl, which you won't hear said in professional realms, as the main aim of any audio medium is to reproduce the studio sound as close as you can. Again, the audio CD is far from perfect and the standard is old, however it is much better than vinyl for *attempting* to reproduce the original studio sound.

Posted at 6:12PM on Jan 23rd 2010 by Ian Curtis

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Posted at 9:19PM on Jan 25th 2010 by cynthiachen

5. I prefer MP3 file because most of the player supports it.
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Posted at 1:22PM on Jan 28th 2010 by William

6. how do I download a movie from a web sit to my MP3 player??Please help

Posted at 6:41AM on Feb 10th 2010 by bob evans

7. tring to recreate the sound of vinyl with cd aint the same as listening to the original lp i buy a lot of 2nd hand vinyl lps and take alot of time to see the conditon their in and goning home and giving them a good clean and puting them on a record player listen to how crisp and near to the original sound as if they just be made plus its a lot cheeper than some of the cds i prefer to go out and look for them on lp, cos i had then on vinyl and i wish i never got rid of them, so why would anyone would want to recreate vinyl with cd is beond me, just go out get youre self a decent record player and go out and find the original lps you use to own.

Posted at 9:29AM on Mar 2nd 2010 by slimccfc27

8. That wasnt my question

Posted at 6:43AM on Feb 10th 2010 by bob evans

9. I Personally Wonder Why People Keep Talking Down About VInyl To CD. I Have Over A Hundred Albums I've Collected Sense 1959. And Most Are In Pretty Good Shape.Now My Point Is Transfering Albums To Cd Takes A Lot Of Time In Real Time.So I Transfer My Lp's To My Hard Drive. In Wave Format. Use Software To Split My Tracks And Keep My Analog Full Length Version Of The LP. That Way I Have The Full Version Of The Album And Also The CD Version. Now To The Real Nitty Gritty. What If Something Should Happen To All Of Those Precious Albums? Maybe Some Are Collectors Items. If Something Should Happen At Least You Might Have The Chance To Recover Your Music Off Of The Computer Hard Drive's. I Put Mine On Out Board Hard Drives.As I Do My Cassettes. Then To Be Sure I Have My Music Backed Up I Transfer The Music To Flac Then MP3 Files. It May Take A Long Time But I May Save My Music Down The Road. Most Small Players Will Take A Wave File As Well As MP3 Files. Be Sure And Back Up Yor Music Files. I Know That Lp's Sound Great But So Do Cd's. I Have Had Lots Of Pleasure Listening To LP's As Well As Cd's. It All Goes Back To The Turntable , And Cartridges, And The Best Setup You Can Use.Doe It For Years. Thanks For Reading Bob.

Posted at 9:03PM on Mar 4th 2010 by Bob

10. I have old eighties gear that includes a Pioneer Servo Drive turntable. A properly cleaned album has so much more depth and spacing. The bass (I have 15 inch woofers) is clean and tight and sounds like you are in the room with the musicians. The same music on CD sounds muted and sterile. I have thousands of albums,m tapes and CD's and that is generally the order of sound quality.

Most people have never heard REALLY good sound. I have done vocal recordings for dozens of singers and know the difference.

Today's most expensive "record player" will cost about $650,000 by itself. Add a million or two extra for the rest of a top system. I'll bet it sounds a wee bit better than a $20 mp3 player.

Posted at 9:04PM on May 5th 2010 by Mr. Shadow

11. I was lucky I am the youngest of 4 brothers (oldest brother really did not have influence because he moved out early on and I do not remember his tastes anyway) but my one bro who was 7 yrs older than me ( my Brt yr 1964) by the time I was 4 (1968) I was already listing to all his records on a quality system and he tought me who to clean and care for them,, when I was 9, I was ready to buy my first album, I was already a fan of David Bowie, Lou Reed (was my first concert at the Tower Theartre in Philly) and The Who, T. Rex, Etc. So when I saw the album Raw Power by Iggy & The Stooges I took a chance and bought it (David Bowie was listed on the back as producer I think so I knew it had to be good) Well at the age of 9 I was a hard core punk and never looked back, I have literally a couple thousand records and still play them on my old Yamaha system. You cannot get quality punk sound on a CD or MP3 player. My collection is not limited to punk though I llisten to just about everything. Like the song says (her life was saved by rock and roll, yeah! rock and roll!) But do not get me wrong the digital age lets you do a lot of different things like tweaking your music and actually write and play your own instruments and music with out having to wait for friends or pay a lot of studio time.

Posted at 12:49PM on Aug 6th 2010 by Nublae Khan

12. Thank you for the tips!! But i really want the song to be saved with the same effect so i can use it for my project. Is there any way to export the song with the vinyl effect from winamp?

thx again

Posted at 10:14PM on Sep 6th 2010 by kate

13. People don't enjoy vinyl for the crackling of an unkempt surface. They like the fact the audio waves ingrained in a record are completely uncompressed and therefore produce a much more pleasant sound subconsciously (and consciously if the compared audio is low-def mp3).

If you want to "make your mp3 sound like vinyl", you can't. Digital will always be digital and analog will always be analog. You can come close with high bit rates, but that's something that can be changed before the song is recorded or released, not once it's a file on your computer.

Go out and buy a cheap vinyl player, don't try to fool yourself with this nonsense.

Posted at 7:08PM on Sep 9th 2010 by Adam