I recently ran across an excellent utility that helped me save about 350gb of music and movies on my windows vista media center pc. While most other utilities wouldn't touch the drive, sqawking about it being a 'dynamic" drive, testdisk was able to see the drive correctly, helped me to copy the data off of the drive, and then restore the partitions correctly. I highly recommend this software (which is FREE).
The author also has a couple of other useful utilities on his site, such as a picture recovery tool, which I hope I never have to use! ;-)
You can find it here: www.cgsecurity.org
Showing posts with label tech advice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tech advice. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Digitizing your old record albums
I wrote instructions for a friend recently on how to convert his album collection to MP3's. I figured I would post it here to help anyone who may be interested in converting their albums:
Here it is - everything you wanted to know about converting your albums to MP3 or Flac. FLAC is like MP3, but it is "lossless", meaning you won't lose any of the original music signal from compression like you do with MP3. If you set your bit rate high in MP3 encoding, you won't be able to tell much of a difference anyway, but I use FLAC to preserve the recordings for the future - who knows what type of audio equipment I may be using ten years from now (probably the same stuff I have now :-( )
1. OK, first off - you need to connect your turntable and preamp (or amplifier) to your computer. The best way to do this is with ADS Tech 's Instant Music. It converts the incoming sound signal into USB, which produces a very clean signal. It has everything you need right in the box to get going - here is some links to where you can purchase it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814255005
http://www.directron.com/rdx150.html - I use this vendor often - they have good service and prices.
You can use it to connect your turntable, cassette player, 8 track, or just about anything that has phono jack outputs.
2. Next, you need the software to record the signal. The Instant Music device comes with the best software I have found - SPIN IT AGAIN. It is super easy to use, automatically breaks up the tracks and deletes the silent spots if you leave it unattended for a while. You can also use it without the Instant Music device, but the Instant Music box makes it so simple, it is worth the $50.
http://www.acoustica.com/spinitagain/
Here's an article on using Spin It Again: http://www.pcnet-online.com/content/utilities/transfer-vinyl-to-digital.htm
I use the "Vinyl Light Clean & EQ" filter on all my albums and it does an excellent job of removing pops & clicks and brightens up the music some.
3. OK, after you have the music saved on your hard drive, you can convert it out to several formats. I convert it out of Spin It Again into WAV files and then compress them into FLAC before storing them in my music library. Here's a couple of programs for converting:
Switch Audio File Conversion software: http://www.nch.com.au/switch/
Switch is very simple to use and will convert anything to any other format, but it costs about $30 after the free trial.
FLAC Encoder - http://flac.sourceforge.net/index.html
Windows Interface - http://members.home.nl/w.speek/flac.htm
Either of these utilities will do the job, but the FLAC encoder and windows interface are free (you just have to follow the instructions to set it up.)
Step 4 - managing your music library.
4. MediaMonkey - http://www.mediamonkey.com/
I use Mediamonkey instead of iTunes to manage my music library (150 gigabytes so far of ripped CD's and albums in FLAC). Mediamonkey will help you tag the files, convert the formats, and is a great music player as well. I use MediaMonkey to automatically convert my FLAC files to MP3 before downloading to the various iPods we have around the house. I can compress them as small as possible for the kids so they can fit as much music as they want on their iPods, and it doesn't affect my original FLAC archive.
You can use Mediamonkey for free, or spring for the full version, which includes all the on-the-fly conversion features.
5. Make sure you have enough disk space to do all of this. Like I said before, I am up to about 150 gigabytes and will probably add another 50 gigabytes before it is all done (I'm about 1/3 the way through my albums.) A good external backup hard drive would be a good idea - you can get 500gb versions under $175 these days.
Good luck - it is easier than it sounds!
Here it is - everything you wanted to know about converting your albums to MP3 or Flac. FLAC is like MP3, but it is "lossless", meaning you won't lose any of the original music signal from compression like you do with MP3. If you set your bit rate high in MP3 encoding, you won't be able to tell much of a difference anyway, but I use FLAC to preserve the recordings for the future - who knows what type of audio equipment I may be using ten years from now (probably the same stuff I have now :-( )
1. OK, first off - you need to connect your turntable and preamp (or amplifier) to your computer. The best way to do this is with ADS Tech 's Instant Music. It converts the incoming sound signal into USB, which produces a very clean signal. It has everything you need right in the box to get going - here is some links to where you can purchase it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product
http://www.directron.com
You can use it to connect your turntable, cassette player, 8 track, or just about anything that has phono jack outputs.
2. Next, you need the software to record the signal. The Instant Music device comes with the best software I have found - SPIN IT AGAIN. It is super easy to use, automatically breaks up the tracks and deletes the silent spots if you leave it unattended for a while. You can also use it without the Instant Music device, but the Instant Music box makes it so simple, it is worth the $50.
http://www.acoustica.com
Here's an article on using Spin It Again: http://www.pcnet-online.com
I use the "Vinyl Light Clean & EQ" filter on all my albums and it does an excellent job of removing pops & clicks and brightens up the music some.
3. OK, after you have the music saved on your hard drive, you can convert it out to several formats. I convert it out of Spin It Again into WAV files and then compress them into FLAC before storing them in my music library. Here's a couple of programs for converting:
Switch Audio File Conversion software: http://www.nch.com.au/switch/
Switch is very simple to use and will convert anything to any other format, but it costs about $30 after the free trial.
FLAC Encoder - http://flac.sourceforge.net
Windows Interface - http://members.home.nl/w.speek
Either of these utilities will do the job, but the FLAC encoder and windows interface are free (you just have to follow the instructions to set it up.)
Step 4 - managing your music library.
4. MediaMonkey - http://www.mediamonkey.com/
I use Mediamonkey instead of iTunes to manage my music library (150 gigabytes so far of ripped CD's and albums in FLAC). Mediamonkey will help you tag the files, convert the formats, and is a great music player as well. I use MediaMonkey to automatically convert my FLAC files to MP3 before downloading to the various iPods we have around the house. I can compress them as small as possible for the kids so they can fit as much music as they want on their iPods, and it doesn't affect my original FLAC archive.
You can use Mediamonkey for free, or spring for the full version, which includes all the on-the-fly conversion features.
5. Make sure you have enough disk space to do all of this. Like I said before, I am up to about 150 gigabytes and will probably add another 50 gigabytes before it is all done (I'm about 1/3 the way through my albums.) A good external backup hard drive would be a good idea - you can get 500gb versions under $175 these days.
Good luck - it is easier than it sounds!
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