Transcript
help & how-to
weekend project
1
Transfer your old analog audio to discs or digital files—practically for free.
Wire up for sound
First, connect your analog audio source to your PC. If it’s a Walkman-style cassette player, get a cable with stereo—not mono—miniplugs. (Look for two rings on the plugs. For reference, see RadioShack part 42-2387, www.radioshack.com.) Connect the headphone jack to your sound card’s or (if your PC uses integrated audio) motherboard’s line-in jack. It’s marked with concentric waves and an inward arrow, and usually color-coded blue. For a stereo-component cassette deck or a boom box, use its headphone jack (with the above cable, plus a quarter-inch headphone adapter: RadioShack 274-367), its rear stereo lineout ports, or the headphone jack or line-out (“record”) jacks of a connected receiver/amplifier. To use line-outs, the cable you need has left/right RCA connectors at one end and a stereo miniplug at the other (RadioShack 42-2550). Connecting a stand-alone LP turntable requires a receiver/ amplifier with “Phono” jacks (newer home theater receivers often lack these), or a dedicated phono pre-amp. This component then connects to the PC. Connecting a turntable straight to your PC’s line-in is a recipe for inferior sound. Crutchfield (www.crutchfield.com) and others sell under-$50 powered pre-amps.
Tapes and LPs, Meet CDs and MP3s By J o h n A . B u r e k
2 Those college-band concerts you recorded on the sly (1987). That tape of your 4-year-old channeling Celine Dion (“My Heart Will Go On”—shudder— 1997). You’ll never part with them, but those tapes and LPs are a titanic hassle to play and store. But with three helpers—an LP turntable or a cassette player, a CD-burning application, and the free, open-source program Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net)—you can bring these 20th-century treasures into 2007. Here’s how to archive them all to audio CDs and MP3 files—and even spruce up the sound. 80
August 2007 computershopper.com
Illustration by David Flaherty
That stack of disco singles (1977).
Set up Audacity, configure audio inputs
Install Audacity (we used version 1.2.6), then launch the program and preemptively set two functions. Go to Edit > Snap-To and choose “Snap On,” then go to View > Set Selection Format and choose “cdda min:sec:frames 75 fps.” These options ease splitting your recording into CD-friendly tracks later. To digitize your tunes, you’ll record the audio into files on your hard drive. WAV, kin to the audio format CDs use, is the best file format for this; your CD-burning software can translate WAV to CD audio without quality loss when making an audio CD. You could also record straight to a compressed format such as MP3, but to create top-quality CDs and files for a portable music player, recording to WAV first and converting later is the way to go. Clear at least a few gigs of drive space—WAV files eat up about 10MB per minute, plus more during editing. In Audacity, go to Edit > Preferences > Audio I/O, and choose your sound card or chipset under Playback Device and Recording Device. Also, select “2 (Stereo)” under Recording Channels. Then, on the File Formats tab, check that Uncompressed Export Format reads “WAV (Microsoft 16-bit PCM).” Hit OK. Next, open Windows XP’s Volume Control—double-click the speaker in the taskbar. (The following process varies a bit in Windows Vista, or if you use a proprietary mixer control from your sound-card maker.) Go to Options > Properties, click the Recording button and OK, and, in the Recording Control window, select the Line In checkbox (or make sure Line In isn’t muted—the options might vary). If you don’t see Line In, return to Options > Properties > Recording, and make sure the Line In input is checked, and that
computershopper.com/howto
C the “Mixer device” dropdown reA flects your sound card or chipset. If you still can’t find Line In (posB sible with certain sound cards), try “What U Hear” or “Analog Mix.” Now, play your tape or LP—it should be audible through the PC’s speakers. In Recording Control, set the recording-level slider for the Line In (or other) input near the middle, to prevent distortion. If using a headphone-jack connection, moderate the level from the playback device’s volume control, too. (Incidentally, you can turn down or mute all Mic inputs to minimize interference.) While the music plays, return to Audacity and select the same input you chose in Recording Control (most likely, Line In) from the dropdown next to the toolbar inputlevel slider. Then, in the upper-right of the screen, from the tiny microphone-icon dropdown, choose “Monitor input” to activate Audacity’s input-level meter. (If the signal level doesn’t begin to throb now, return to Volume Control to select or unmute the correct recording input, and match it in Audacity’s toolbar.) When recording, the level meter mustn’t max out (hit “0”), or harsh digital distortion (called “clipping”) will result. So, forward to your recording’s loudest segment, and adjust Audacity’s input-level slider to leave some headroom.
3 4
Record your tape or LP
You’re ready to record. Rewind your tape to the start point, or clean your needle, and hit Audacity’s Record (red dot) button. Then start your tape or LP. You should see a two-channel waveform scroll across the screen as the audio records. For simplicity’s sake, record the entire LP or cassette side at once. Once your recording is done, click Stop (yellow square) and choose File > Save Project As. Give the recording an evocative filename, and save to a new folder. Note that this “project” file isn’t usable outside Audacity—it must be exported before burning.
Trim and polish your audio
Depending on your audio’s condition, you may want to denoise it (remove tape hiss or LP crackle), apply effects (to spruce up a murky recording), or create fade-ins or -outs. These effects live on Audacity’s Effect menu. Apply them sparingly, and preview on short segments at a time. Select a portion of the waveform using the Selection tool (the toolbar’s vertical I-bar; use the magnifier tool to zoom in and out using left- and right-clicks), and try out options in the Effect menu via their Preview functions. If you find an effect to use, exit its dialog, select the portion of the track to apply it to (or the whole file), then apply it. To trim blank space from the start or end of your recording, select it, and click Cut (the scissors) in the toolbar.
D
E
F
G
J
H
I
K
L
A Quick Guide to Audacity’s Interface
5
Time to split (and burn)
A B C D E F G H I J K L
Selection tool Zoom tool Play button Record button Pause button Stop button Output level meter Input level meter Input level meter options Input level slider Input selector Stereo waveform
If you’ve recorded an LP or cassette side you want split into several tracks on your final CD, Audacity can do this. Using the Selection tool, click on the waveform where the first track should end and the next begin. Relegate any blank space to the preceding track’s end. Click Edit > Select > Start to Cursor to select the track, then, Edit > Split. The selection appears below as a separate waveform. Continue working the original until all tracks are split off. Next, select the first track you created, by clicking its left-hand control area. Choose File > Export Selection as WAV, give the track a name (prefacing with a number to ease ordering tracks later), and save to a new folder. Repeat for each track. When done, in your preferred CD-burning program, create a new Audio CD project, and import and order the tracks. Burn the CD using Disc At Once format, and specify no 2-second gaps between tracks unless you require more silence between songs. Use CD-Rs (not CD-RWs) for maximum playback compatibility.
6
MP3 and done
Audacity doesn’t have an MP3 encoder built in, but its download page links to the free LAME encoder. Unzip, and save the file lame_enc.dll. Then, in Audacity, go to Edit > Preferences > File Formats, click Find Library, and browse to lame_enc.dll. (While there, set your MP3 bit rate of choice—192Kbps or 256Kbps is a good balance of quality and space-saving.) Next, open one of your individually saved WAVs (File > Open). Choose File > Export as MP3, browse where to save the MP3, and click Save. On the following screen, fill in the ID3-tag info, which is the artist, song, and album data you’ll see in media-player software or on your portable playback device. Click OK, and Audacity creates your MP3 file. Repeat as needed—then enjoy!
computershopper.com August 2007
81
