Another project started

[jducoeur]

Among the things we have taking up Far Too Much Space are a considerable number of LPs that aren't doing anything useful. We haven't actually played an LP in at least five years, so I haven't bothered to hook a record player up to either stereo system.

That said, we still own a fair number of records that I do *like*, many of which we don't yet have on CD. Worse, a decent number of them probably don't exist on CD, and in many cases never will. I mean, my very favorite children's album, "Fly, Hippopotamus, Fly", is so obscure that Google will not admit that either the album or singer even exist. So I've hooked up both a record player and cassette deck to the computer, specifically so we can take all of this stuff in less-useful formats and digitize it. (And perhaps then get rid of the LPs.)

One of today's projects was to prove that was working. It's a good thing I did that before we put the spare record players into the attic, because I found that, while the linear tracking turntable I got (years ago) from antoniseb works very nicely in most respects, it won't quite finish the album. It plays about 90% of the way through the record, and then stops -- the linear tracking won't track any further, no way, no how. So that makes two turntables we have going begging to anyone handy who would like to take them and fix them. (The other appears to have a broken grounding cable, based on the hum.) Just for once, though, being a packrat pays off -- we still have two intact turntables, so finding that two are damaged is no great tragedy.

Anyway, to start off I decided to rip something that was (a) pretty damned obscure, and (b) still in very good condition. So I now have a CD of Songs of Electronic Despair by The Android Sisters, certainly one of the weirdest discs I own. I am strangely fond of that album, especially such deathless tracks as "Macho Robot" (aka "The Banana Trilogy"), and "Invasion"...

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Just for once, though, being a packrat pays off -- we still have two intact turntables, so finding that two are damaged is no great tragedy.

Am I reading this correctly? You have four functioning turntables, in various states of disrepair? ...

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

We have two that are definitely in some disrepair, one that apparently works just fine, and one that we believe works fine. Yes, this is a long-term side effect of merging households: I had one back in grad school (the one with the hum), we got one from Anton either at a yard sale or as a settlement of some minor debt (the one with the tracking problem), J had one in college (works fine), and then there's the other stray one, which came from who-knows-where.

We are certainly packrats. Who else do you know who has both an 8mm and a Dual 8 projector? Not even eclecticmagpie, I believe.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Hmm...possibly my dad, as he's got two film projectors. But one is an editing console, not really a projector per se -- the film is shown on a tiny screen built into the unit. (I used to love this as a kid; it's like a video iPod from the 60s. Of course we only had about 4 films I wanted to see, but still....)

[tpau]

omg, you suceeded at this? i have a box of records that i desperatly want on mp3, any chance i couldat some point borrow yoru setup?

[jducoeur]

Probably, although I'll warn that it's not by any means perfect. The system I currently have rips to high-bitrate WMA, then back out to full redbook audio to write the CDs, so it's lossy. There's probably a way to do this with better fidelity, but I haven't found one yet that's (a) cheap, (b) easy to use, and (c) works well...

[tpau]

don't care, i wonuldn't be able to figure out the difference, andi want these things on some mroe usable media...

[laurion]

You should be able to import the raw audio into Audacity, do any manipulation there, then lay it back out as raw AIFF/WAV data to be put on CD. That's what we did before. Free, Simple, and Effective. It will take up a sizeable quantity of disk space if you aren't careful though. *grin*

[jducoeur]

The question is, is it optimized for this task? This is one of those cases where Microsoft pretty much did it right: their Analog Recorder does very good automatic track-breaking, easy track joins, good pop/hiss reduction, and so on -- you just walk through the wizard, and it does the right things. It's designed for exactly this purpose, and works well for it, provided you accept the "WMA Is The Only Answer" religion. (Which I don't, which is why I wind up jumping through a few hoops.)

Really, I ought to take a deeper dig, and see if there's a way to make the thing output the raw WAV files that I'd bet it's using under the hood. That's briefly space-heavy, but that's okay: I'd then just write it to CD, and rerip it as the more-useful MP3 immediately...

[laurion]

I wouldn't say that it is optimized for it. no. It's more of a general purpose audio editor. That said, it _is_ very easy to use for this purpose, and learning to do the required steps takes only a few minutes. http://www.audiorevival.com/lp2cd.htm seems to be a pretty good start to finish overview.

[bess.livejournal.com]

Me too please? I've only got a couple of records that have survived, but one I haven't been able to find anywhere on cd.

[jducoeur]

In principle I'm happy to have people use the setup -- we just have to find some time to do it...

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

The Android Sisters do have a "Best of" CD in print, that contains at least most of the contents of SoED.

(Contemplating my own stack of vinyl...)

[jducoeur]

Interesting -- this would seem to imply that they had more albums, which I've never seen...

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Not actually. The "best of" contained most of their first album, a few tracks from various appearances in Ruby radio dramas, and one or two brand new tracks. (I don't know why all "best of" albums lately seem to have new, by-defenition-untested material on them...)

[laurion]

As a christmas gift to asdr83's parents I helped her set up her old laptop to record audio from her parent's records and clean it up with Audacity, then dump to CD. I remember doing something similar with some cassette tapes about 7 years ago. It's important to convert some of that older material, both because there's no sense buying it twice, and because, as you point out, there's some of it that just *can't be found* anymore. It made an excellent gift to see her mother's face when we started playing her old 'Artichokes' album on CD...

[jducoeur]

The buying-it-twice I'm willing to live with in many cases: an original CD is typically cleaner than anything I can get from a ripped LP or tape. But the can't-be-found is a compelling argument in many cases. (Need to go work my way through the Clams collection: lots of tapes and one LP, none of have been released on CD except as excepts, AFAIK...)