Album Conversion

[Leo J Mauler]

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 15:13:59 -0600 Jonathan Hutchins
<hutchins at tarcanfel.org> writes:
> Somebody was doing album conversions here - was it you, Leo?
> 
> What are you using for track splitting?

Someone also said I was a masochist...

I've been pausing the record between "tracks" on the LPs.  Yes, there are
better solutions, but all the ones I've seen up to now are $$$ and I
don't have spare $$$ for something as non-critical as converting LPs into
digital.

I'm using a very old turntable that came with a stereo I purchased back
in...ouch, 1993.  I haven't used it much so the turntable part is mostly
unused.  Check out thrift stores for used turntables.  You'll probably
find a replacement needle a lot cheaper for a used turntable than trying
to purchase a new turntable.

Audacity works fine for trimming the sound file I get into a useable
track.  Then LAME turns it into an MP3 (still not sure about OGG and so
little technology (MP3 Player, DVD Player) supports it).

Now, if you take that giant WAV (or other raw audio file) and convert it
into an MP3 file, there is a free utility for splitting MP3s into tracks
(such as a giant album MP3) at http://mp3splt.sourceforge.net/.  Linux
and Windows versions.  It can grab data from a CDDB to figure out where
the tracks are in an album MP3, and it has a "split at the silences"
feature which assumes that the only silent bits in your MP3 will be
pauses between tracks.

I wanted to burn them straight onto CDs so I discarded that option for LP
conversion (there's also the matter of degrading the audio quality by
compressing to MP3, splitting, then decompressing for audio CDs).  Also,
LPs frequently have a lot of random noise in their pauses between tracks
on the LP, this can confuse the "silence" detection feature of mp3splt. 
And songs which feature silent pauses can be split down the middle.  This
is especially true of comedy routines (such as my George Carlin LPs)
where the comedian pauses for dramatic effect and the audience goes along
with the silence.

Still trying to figure out sox for doing pitch shifts and resampling on
those old radio show 32Kbps MP3s.

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