Audio query

Hello all, I was hoping someone could help me. I have about 3,000 pieces of music (by 3,000 I mean various lp's, tapes, md etc), that I wish to transfer accross to cd format as mp3 etc.

I have all the relevant hi-fi equipment, amps, pre-amps tape decks, md players etc...

It was recently mentioned to me that macs are the way to go with audio transfers and I am currently (beginner level) looking at the mac opportunites. My question is does the macbook have the appropriate audio line in to accept my hi-fi or if not is there a seperate piece of kit I have to buy? If a macbook is not able in any way to do this, can I find a different laptop in the mac range that can.....

......... and finally, any advice on good software? i am only interested in converting audio to cd, not messing around with the sound in any way.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as this is going to be a HUGE project for me. I have done this before with a pc, but I am looking for an entry route into macs so as music is my passion it would be a great way to start.

Thank you.

melonmaniac

The Macbook has audio in jack that I believe is also optical, but I'm not sure. I do know that my brother in law uses his Macbook in concurrence with all the pre-amps, amps, mics, mixer, pedals, instruments, etc. to produce his own music. He bought it specifically for that purpose and he reports he is quite pleased with it and it's music processing abilities.

I'm sure you will find it more than up to the task to transfer your analogue media given the proper audio in.

Macs come with GarageBand, which is reasonably good for something that comes with it for free. I prefer Audacity, but my needs are pretty simple (I record internet streams then break them out into individual songs which is a fairly simple thing, though I have used it to make multi-track recordings a-la producing a radio commercial or comedy bit, and recently I've become sound engineer for my wife who is recording memoirs for a book she wants to write.) There are also Pro-tools but that would probably be overkill for just transferring analogue to digital.

Greetings.
I'd recommend Audacity. I have done precisely what you plan to do. It's a time-consuming process, but worth it in the end, I reckon.

One thing to note: Say you input a complete LP into Audacity; then select the first track and do the following: Copy and paste into a new file, THEN export the track, giving it appropriate tags. Having exported it, close down that particular file. Answer 'No' to the question 'Do you want to save the file?', otherwise you'll be cluttering up the place with Audacity files, which you don't want...
Go back to the original recording (ie all tracks) and delete the track you've just dealt with so that you can work on the next one. And so on, as above.
If you don't do it in this sort of fashion, you'll end up with tracks with the same name and you'll get the message 'Do you want to overwrite ...etc'
With 3000 recordings. you will have a mammoth task, but providing your stamina lasts, you'll get there.
Good Luck! Mitcherooney

Thank you both for your help. I am for certain going down the macbook path. 3,000 lp's etc is a lot, the most difficult will be the audio tapes as I have over 1,700 most at 90mins so they will take forever to complete. I think a year is optimistic, however I would like to sit back and enjoy the music. For reference, only the audio tapes will be converted to mp3, the rest of the transfers shall be done to standard cd format.

Thank you both again.

walkerj said:

The Macbook has audio in jack that I believe is also optical, but I'm not sure. I do know that my brother in law uses his Macbook in concurrence with all the pre-amps, amps, mics, mixer, pedals, instruments, etc. to produce his own music. He bought it specifically for that purpose and he reports he is quite pleased with it and it's music processing abilities.

I'm sure you will find it more than up to the task to transfer your analogue media given the proper audio in.

Macs come with GarageBand, which is reasonably good for something that comes with it for free. I prefer Audacity, but my needs are pretty simple (I record internet streams then break them out into individual songs which is a fairly simple thing, though I have used it to make multi-track recordings a-la producing a radio commercial or comedy bit, and recently I've become sound engineer for my wife who is recording memoirs for a book she wants to write.) There are also Pro-tools but that would probably be overkill for just transferring analogue to digital.

Click to expand...

Hi walkerj,
how have you set up Audacity to record internet streams? On a windows machine with an Audigy sound card, I can select "what u hear" but I don't have that option on my Imac. I would appreciate your help.
Neil

neilf said:

Hi walkerj,
how have you set up Audacity to record internet streams? On a windows machine with an Audigy sound card, I can select "what u hear" but I don't have that option on my Imac. I would appreciate your help.
Neil

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the Mac port of Audacity for some reason won't record anything other than the Mic input, thus while I was able to use it on Windows, I had to find another method to record off the sound card on my Mac (initially a PPC Mini, later my Macbook.) Instead I use Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack pro. Yes, it costs $32, but it is well worth it if you're going to be recording a lot of streams. It has paid for itself several times over with all the songs I've been able to harvest with it.

It also has the advantage that it will record only the app that is playing the stream, not other system sounds unlike Audacity on Windows. So you get just the stream, not other system sounds so I don't have to close out other apps that make noise like iChat, Mail, etc. It has some other cool features, and Rogue Amoeba has some other recording apps that turn your Mac into a kind of Tivo for radio. It will record audio from pretty much any app on your Mac. The station I record streams 128kbps WMV, so I use Quicktime with Flip4Mac plugin, and AHP captures it nicely. Nice thing about that is it gets buffered, so if I'm 'hijacking' but not recording and a song I might want comes on I can 'rewind' the stream and start the recording from the beginning of the song (or more accurately, a bit back before the beginning.) My recording needs are simple, but you might find some of their other offerings useful to you.

Then I use Audacity to bust out the individual songs to burn to CD/import into iTunes adding cross-fades, my own fade-outs, repairs and such for those annoying things streaming radio DJs do to try to foil your recording.