How to: Digitalizing records

There are many ways one can digitalize records. The easiest one would be getting an USB turntable that connects straight to your computer via USB interface and it also comes with a software that helps you with the whole process of ripping and editing music from LP records. That approach works great, it’s fast, easy and reliable. In my opinion however, it’s better to get a mixing console and hook up your turntable to it. The price of the analogue mixing console is around $US 200 which is about the same as the USB turntable. In my opinion, it’s better to get a mixing console because it is more versatile and can be used for recording live music, podcasting and live broadcasting of audio over the Internet. A simple 4 channel audio mixer is more then enough for digital re-mastering. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to hook up your turntable to your mixing console, rip and digitalize your music.

Requirements:

- Turntable
- Speakers / Monitors
- Analogue or digital mixing console
- ADC - Analogue to digital converter (optional if using analogue mixing console)
- Hi-Fi stereo receiver / AMP (optional)
- Chinch cables
- Software for digitalizing music (In this tutorial I’ll use CD spin doctor. It’s a part of Roxio Toast suite)

Tip: Computer itself performs analogue to digital conversion. If you want to achieve better quality, use external ADC converter.

Before we begin, please, make sure that you’ve connected everything as shown in the Figure1:

Click to enlarge

And here is how everything looks when it’s connected to a mixing console:

When you have connected everything, you are ready to start setting up your system. In this tutorial I will use CD Spin Doctor software for digitalizing music. If you are not familiar with it, please refer to help files.

When you run CD Spin doctor, click on “Start a new recording” button and set preferences like this:

Input Device -> Built-In Audio
Recording Quality -> CD Audio
Input Source -> Line In

Now, you are ready to start recording. Prepare the record and make sure it plays well on the turntable and that you can hear it plays trough the speakers / monitors. Hit record when you are ready. Digitalizing music is a real-time process so you have to wait until all songs are played. When recording process is done, you will get a new dialog where you will be able to split songs, name each track and fine tune audio quality. You can use “Auto Define” option to split songs, or if it does not work, you can split songs manually.

If you want to additionally tweak your audio, click on “Filters” and play with “Noise Reducer” sliders until you manage to clean your file as much as possible. I don’t usually mess with “Sound Enhancer” and “ EQ10 filters, but If you are not happy with the sound of your files, you can tweak those as well and see what happens. In the end, export your files as AIFF if you want loseless files or mp3 if you need to compress them. For additional questions, drop a comment or contact me.

Download loseless sample (AIFF) 10,9MB

iPod touch in brief

I got my 16GB iPod touch last Thursday as I already reported in my previous post. When I first opened it, I was quite surprised to see that the iPod was already jailbroken straight from the box! The box was sealed and it was a brand new although it was not bought directly from Apple. It came with 1.1.4 firmware but I did not have apple apps on it (mail,weather and google maps). I only had YouTube and a few third-party apps on it. People recommend that I restore my iPod and jailbreak it again and I did so. 

After that, I had all apple apps and a third-party one as well. I had to manually install chat client from sources. Here is a good tip, if you miss a chat client on your ipod touch, just install Mobile Chat client from sources by navigating to: “http://twenty08.com/installer”. This will add a new category “Twenty08” in installer app. from where you can install mobile chat on your iPod touch. I want to thank my friend Peter and people from Mac Format magazine forum who provided very helpful suggestions and tips. I am sure I will be writing more about iPod touch tips and tricks, and I am also preparing a video presentation of some cool hacks I discovered.  

How To: Creating a music DVD with Roxio Toast 8

Modern CD / DVD burners and software allow you to create flashy DVD music discs. Music DVD can contain many hours of music, it has navigation menus and it displays album artworks. Once you create a music DVD, hook it up to your home theatre system to experience Dolby digital. You can use regular DVD + /- R or RW discs to create music DVD, but it’s even better if you use HD-DVD (15GB) recordable disc. Recordable HD-DVD’s can be bought from Amazon for around US$ 17.00 depending on manufacturer. In this tutorial I am going to explain how to easily create music DVD using HD-DVD format that provides superb image and sound quality. Optionally, you can use regular DVD-R, DVD R DL or even DVD RW. I highly recommend HD-DVD! Before you begin, take a look at the checklist to make sure you have everything you need.

Checklist:

- Mac Book or a MacBook Pro of newer generation.

- Roxio Toast 8 *

- Blank (recordable) HD-DVD disc

- Lots of patience

Now when you are sure that you have everything you need, we can begin the tutorial.

1. First you need to carefully choose music from your CD collection that you want to use. If you don’t have that many CD’s, you can make an audio DVD of your entire collection if you like. The more, the merrier! On your Mac or your external hard drive, create a new folder where you will copy music from your CD’s to. You name it say “My audio”. Please only use CD’s that you have bought, otherwise it could violate copyright laws in your country. CD audio music is easy to copy to your hard drive using simple drag and drop. The music is in AIFF (uncompressed format). Make sure you have enough storage space. It is also important to say that some music CD’s are copy protected which means that music can not be digitally copied or extracted. The good news is that most of the copy protection systems have been developed for Windows OS, and do not work (or they can be disabled easily) on the Mac. If you need more help about digital music extraction, remember, Google is your friend!

2. After you have ripped and sorted all your music in folders, run Roxio Toast 8, click on “Audio” and select “Music DVD” from sub-menu. Click on “More” button then click on “Encoding” tab, check “Custom radio button ” and set it as pictured below:

You can also choose the menu style that you want. Roxio has a few menu styles but they are rather boring. I’d recommend downloading additional menu styles to make your design more unique. Keep in mind that when you are dragging music, do not drag the whole folder then open it, select all files and then drag over the burning window.

3. When you are sure that you’ve done everything right and your files are being imported, hit “Record disc” button to start recording process. While recording is in progress, you can make a coffee, do some groceries, because encoding and burning will take time (this is where lots of patience kicks in). Burning and encoding speed will vary depends on how fast your Mac is.

Tips:

- Always use uncompressed music.

- Never download album artworks off the Internet. Instead scan your own album artwork at higher resolution.

- You will get best performance if using HD TV set.

If you have additional questions, leave a comment or contact me.

Copying and distribution of copyrighted material is illegal!

This article is also available in PDF and can be found here.

Sir Elton John wants to “Close down the Internet”

In a story from the British newspaper “The Sun,” Sir Elton John is calling for the internet to be closed down. How can someone who never used the Internet say that the Internet should be closed down because it’s “destroying good music”? Sir Elton John admits in the interview that he doesn’t own a mobile phone, an iPod or anything tech. related. Let’s say I don’t watch television at all and then I say ” Hey, let’s close all TV stations down because they are not good for our children”, but I never watched anything on TV. Sir Elton John is trying to stop music piracy in a very ugly way but he has a website of his own and posting on his forum requires a $40 fan membership. I am also against illegal copying and distribution of music but I can’t say that i would close down the Internet because of that. Sir Elton, please concentrate on writing music and leave technology to people who know about it.

iTunes: Quick Tip

If the music in your iTunes and iPod sounds unbalanced, you need to adjust the volume level of each track.

1. In iTunes go to Edit ->Select All to select all tracks in your library.

2. Right-click on highlighted tracks, choose “Get Info” and confirm with Yes.

3. Set the volume slider on +100%.

Now all you have to do is to re-sync your iPod.

How To: Editing albums info in iTunes

If you want to enter information for multiple songs or albums in iTunes you can do it very easily.

1. Browse for an album that you want to edit in iTunes. You can browse by title or an artist.

2. Go to edit menu and choose Select All to select all the tracks.

3. Right-click on highlighted tracks and choose Get info. You will be asked if you are sure that you want to edit information for multiple items. Click Yes to confirm.

4. In the multiple information dialog enter all informations that you want for selected album and click OK. Entries will be applied to all songs at once.

See the video:

This is a pilot tutorial video. More to come soon!

Restoring deleted songs from your iTunes app.

If you had deleted one or more songs from your iTunes app. by accident, they wont be able to get transfered into your iPod next time you plug it in (unless you manually managing your songs - but many people don’t). I recommend you not to enable option “Open iTunes when this iPod is attached” under the iPod tab within iTunes. This will stop iTunes to automatically updating songs from your iTunes to your iPod unless you run iTunes app. manually. Ok, now let’s get back to how to restore deleted songs from your iTunes. Songs that are being deleted from your iTunes app. are stored to your iPod. Due to copyright issues, iTunes only can transfer your songs into your iPod but not the other way around as well. Don’t you worry, there are good people who have made quiet amount of shareware or freeware apps that enable you to transferring songs from your iPod back to the iTunes. I use “Ollie’s iPod Extractor“(Broken Helix) for that matter. It’s a small utility that will restore music from your iPod back to iTunes. All you have to do is to run Ollie’s iPod Extractor app when your iPod is connected to your computer and hit “Copy to iTunes” button. All songs will be copied from your iPod so all those who are already in your iTunes will be overwritten.Please note that copying music from other people iPods to your computer is illegal.