Vinyl to AAC?

[jethroted]

I want to start converting my record collection to AAC now. Does anyone know of a smart way to do this?

[bennetsaysargh]

there are a lot of apps you could us for this. you can try version tracker or even apple's downloads

[Eniregnat]

Enjoy the work.
I do most of my sound work on PCs.
It is a lot of fun cleaning up and improving old audio.
I use SonicFoundries NoiseReduction,BC and SoundForge to do this and it is a blast. If you can find a good(something with a good algorithm) click and pop (for scratches and dust) remover the difference can be amazing. I don’t know what Apple apps are out there, but there must be some good ones.
Don't cheat yourself on bit depth is you do plan to clean it up.

Have fun.

[jethroted]

Well I'm mostly just concerned with getting the audio into the computer and splitting the tracks up. I don't even want to clean anything up all that much. I have an analog to firewire converter, but I need to import the audio into some sort of app that can split and label the tracks fairly easily.

[bennetsaysargh]

there probably is no app to do that with because every time there is a silence in a song, it imght think that it is a new song. technology wil be like that

[suneun]

Ooo, ooo. I have this same question. Sorta.

I intend to input audio from tape cassettes (using a walkman and a wire). What programs can i use to save this audio as raw or aiff? Will the computer automatically do this for me? I'd prefer to do this in X but I can reboot (wah, i've been up 22 days). Also, are there any free programs that will do mild clean-up work on the audio?

[bennetsaysargh]

sound studio is good for basic, or intermediate audio stuff. what i suggest you get for getting the cassets onto the computer is iMic. it plugs into the usb port, and, well, see for yourself
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/70307/wo/0h3Nq321gFPd2NtjSXy1I1YAghN/2.4.0.5.10.11.0.13.0

hope i was able to help.

[benjaminpg]

I did this with an iMic and Sound Studio. Overall it worked quite well, although there were a few problems. This is with an iBook 700.

In some of the songs, I found strange clicks, etc. that were definately not in the original vinyl. Also, for some reason on some of them the left channel was extremely quiet, and I ended up recording those albums again. It's possible there's something wrong with the stereo but I doubt it, as I've never noticed it before.

As for breaking up tracks, I found no automatic solution, although it seems like it is perfectly possible. However it wasn't that bad in Sound Studio. You just look at the preview, on the top of the window, click on the silent areas, and add markers. Then you must choose the menu item to separate the tracks.

I saved the files to AIFF, burned them to CDs in iTunes, and have now started ripping them to AAC.

I did try Griffin's free sound editing app, 'Final Vinyl', and found it to have a very unintuitive interface, slow, and unreliable. After my demo of Sound Studio ran out, I downloaded SPARK ME, at the suggestion of some one on the forums, and it looks pretty good.

Overall, I found the quality to be more than satisfactory, ( although I'm not an audiophile), and would definately do it again.

[jethroted]

OK, thanks for all the input guys. I think I found what I am looking for. It's called spin doctor from roxio, and lets me record the audio I want, then look at the wave file and highlight the areas that are tracks. I just type in a name for the songs, and I'm done. Thanks again!

[Vlade]

Originally posted by jethroted
OK, thanks for all the input guys. I think I found what I am looking for. It's called spin doctor from roxio, and lets me record the audio I want, then look at the wave file and highlight the areas that are tracks. I just type in a name for the songs, and I'm done. Thanks again!

How exacaly do you break up the tracks? My dad bought spin doctor, and it shows the lines where the songs should be, but there was no way to actually save them as individual songs.

I know im going to feal stupid after someone answers this :rolleyes:

[jethroted]

Originally posted by Vlade
How exacaly do you break up the tracks? My dad bought spin doctor, and it shows the lines where the songs should be, but there was no way to actually save them as individual songs.

I know im going to feal stupid after someone answers this :rolleyes:

Well it shows the wave form right? You just highlight the area you want, and in the last option on the menu bar there should be something like "make track" or something. When you click on it, it places that track in your window (upper left) and lets you designate some more tracks. Then you just drag them from the window to your desktop, and it saves them as their own files. Sorry for the vague description, but I'm at work right now.

[jethroted]

Here is a diagram.

[Vlade]

Thanks Jethroted. I will test it tuesday when I go to my dads house :D