Sunday, November 04, 2007

Unexpected find at Dollar General

Had to stop by the DG today for a few groceries and found a basket full of cheap CDs. Among them the All Music Guide: Classic Jazz Solos. A pretty good collection of exactly what it says.

BTW, I've also found pepper spray at Dollar General.

Here's an update on CD ripping since yesterday, if you are still curious what my music collection looks like.

The Pretenders -- Get Close
Styx -- The Grand Illusion
Shriekback -- Oil and Gold (I'm still looking for a CD of Big Night Music)
Toad the Wet Sprocket -- Coil and Dulcinea
Emerson, Lake & Powell -- eponymous (I'll have to rip Brain Salad Surgery from vinyl)
Fish -- Internal Exile
Peter Gabriel -- Security
808 State -- Ex:El (Not sure why I have this one, except I think I bought it mostly to impress the girl at the record store--looking back, if this is what she liked, she probably wasn't worth impressing. I'll give it another listen and maybe delete it).
Fleetwood Mac -- Greatest Hits
The Residents -- The King and I (I never noticed how sado-masochistic Elvis' songs were until I heard this collection)
Jimmy Smith -- Dot Com Blues
Scorpions -- Love at First Sting
The Screaming Blue Messiahs -- Totally Religious (still looking for a CD of Bikini Red)
Poi Dog Pondering -- Wishing Like a Mountain and Thinking Like the Sea
Uriah Heep -- Demons & Wizards and The Magician's Birthday (I have some obscure vinyl of theirs to rip as well)

Still have a few Styx records to digitize, and then I think I'll start on the Psychedelic Furs.

4 comments:

  1. I recieved a turntable for vinyl ripping a couple months ago. I've got about 400 oddball albums to burn..any suggestions?

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  2. Get a USB audio device interface to cut down on hum and other noise--don't just plug the patch cord into the audio line-in on the computer. I use an iMic, which goes for $40.

    I use Goldwave software to make the recordings. It has a lot of pre-fabbed filters, one of which is an excellent pop/click filter for cleaning up old records. There's some freeware called MP3 Tag Tools that makes mass tagging easy. If you use Goldwave you'll also have to download a separate mp3 encoder. I use LAME, which is freeware. Goldwave will automatically access the mp3 encoder when you tell it to save to mp3 format, once it's installed correctly.

    Don't use an old computer. Some of them just aren't fast enough and you'll end up with digital quality skips in your recording--like a jump on a record but without any pop or click. My old 500MHz desktop does this, but my newer 1.2 GHz laptop handles it with speed to spare.

    If it's just a plain old fashioned turntable, you'll still need a pre-amp, but you probably already knew that. Some of the newer ones have a built-in pre-amp.

    If you really want to spend some money, there are dedicated vinyl-to-digital hardware decks that will do it without a computer, and they cost as much as a good high-end computer. There are also turntables made with a USB output already built in. I've seen them for $200.

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  3. I really appreciate the advice. My turntable has the USB output and a shareware disk. My PC is pretty fast so I think I'll be ok after I download those apps you suggested.

    I'll let you know how it turns out or just post a weird song on my blog.

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  4. When you get around to having an "I'm puting my media player on random" party, I need an invite.

    ReplyDelete