05 Mar 03 LP to MP3

Sometimes, I want to get back to the seventies - to the days when the sun was brighter (and you could cross into Afghanistan via Iran). All I need to do is to play some 70s records. The only bug with this time machine is that it is not very portable. That is where the iPod comes in. I can carry most of my seventies on it. The other day my source of rare records passed me a "Beatles Live at the BBC" LP. There is one song on this LP called Memphis Tennessee . I love this song, I wanted it on my iPod. This blog describes how I digitized the song and copied it to the iPod.

As the iBook lacks a microphone (or a line-in) socket, I had to get an USB microphone. I purchased a device made by Macally - the iVoice (available at most Apple shops). It is a neat device. In addition to the microphone, it also has a “sound in” and a “sound out” socket. The “sound in” can be used to feed in an audio source.

The iBook needs to know that I am going to use the USB mike as a sound input. I connected the iVoice. I went to the system preferences and I selected sound. I clicked on the input tab. This section shows the two sound input devices - the build in microphone and the USB mike. I selected the USB mike.
setup

This is my setup. The iBook, the Macally iVoiceUSB microphone , the Turntable and a set of speakers (optional). The cable in the centre plugs to the USB port of the computer. The green jack connects to a set of speakers, enabling me to listen to the music while I am recording it. The white plug is the line in from the turntable (via a pre-amp as the turntable signal is to soft to feed to the computer, You do not need a pre-amp if you are using a tape player).
usbmic

On the mac you need a software to record the music. There are some good shareware audio tools. I am using a software called Felt Tip Sound Studio . Another good
software is Amadeus. Amadeus will let you save your files directly as a MP3.
about

The first thing you do is to open a new window. This is what you see.

I leave the setting at default -The sampling rate at 44.100, the bit depth at 16 bits and channels at Stereo. Clicking on “ok” gives you a window that will eventually show your recorded output. Start the turntable and click on the record button on the software. The software will start recording the sound. You will not see any waveform on the window yet, it only shows up when you stop recording. Hit stop at the end of the song.
You need not be very precise here, you can edit out the extra space later on.

After you have stopped the recording, the software draws the waveform. There are two sections. The top section shows the entire duration of your song. The bottom part is a zoom in, showing ten seconds at a time. The “ten seconds” that is being shown on the lower window is marked in the red rectangular box in the upper window. You can drag this box to see another section.

To edit select a part of the sound file. Click at the point where your selection starts. On the lower window, keep the mouse pressed and drag it till the point you want. You can select the extra part and cut it out or you can apply some effects. In this example I am selecting a part of the file to fade in.

Happy with the sound file, I saved it. Some tools let you save the file as a mp3 directly. Sound Studio will save it as a wav or aiff. I chose AIFF.

Next, I opened iTunes. I dragged the memphis_tennessee file to iTunes. This will add the song to the iTunes library. AIFF files are large, we need to convert it to MP3. I selected the file from the library (by clicking on it ) and from the top menu I selected Advanced -> Convert Selection to MP3. This will convert the file to MP3. iTunes does not delete the original AIFF file from its library. I chose the AIFF file in the iTunes library and delete it. This process will not delete the MP3 file.
itunes_convert_mp3