Tom & Nan Dot Com

This is the final part of a 3 part series on digitizing vinyl.

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 1 (and Part 1-A)

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 2

So now we have a directory containing 10 MP3 files, 2 Audacity project files and 2 directories containing the Audacity raw data:

The MusicInbound directory is on my desktop.  I use it to save music I’ve imported from CD with iTunes and when I digitize vinyl.  This particular directory is Linda Ronstadt’s “Heart Like A Wheel” album, one of 12 albums I bought out of the 50 cent bin at Homer’s in Omaha last month.

In this final part of the series we’ll be tagging the MP3 files, adding an image of the album cover and adding info about the album to each track in the notes section of the mp3 tags.

Picking up where we left off in Part 2:

Step 24.

Open up MP3TAG and Windows Explorer (NOT Internet Explorer) and browse to your directory containing your MP3 files.

Step 25.

Drag all of the MP3 files over to MP3TAG.

Step 26.

Select all files by hitting CTRL+A.

Step 27.

Enter the Artist, Album, Year and Genre.

Step 28.

Select Track01 and enter the Title and “01” for the track number.  I do this in 2 digits so the tracks play in the correct order when I play them on my iPod or on WinAmp on my computer.

– Repeat step 28 for each song on the album.

Step 29.

Now you need your Album Art.  I download images of album covers at www.albumartexchange.com. Just click on the gallery and do a search for the album art you’re looking for. I usually use 600×600 images…

In this case we’re looking for Linda Ronstadt’s “Heart Like A Wheel” album

Just click on the cover you want and you’ll see it in the size you want. Just right-click on the album art and save as whatever you want to call it somewhere on your computer so you know where you can find it. I generally save it where the mp3 files it goes with are.

Step 30.

Close the browser and go back into MP3TAG and select all files by hitting CTRL+A (again).

Step 31.

Right-click where the cover goes in MP3TAG and select Add Cover…

Step 32.

Select the file you saved in Step 29 and click the Open button.

Your screen should have all of the files selected and the album cover image should show up in the box in MP3TAG.

Step 33.

This step renames the files so that they can easily be identified on your hard disk.  On the toolbar at the top of the window you’ll notice near the menu a series of short-cut buttons. There’s on that allows you to use the MP3 tags to name the file.  Make sure all of your files are still selected (CTRL+A) and select the button to rename the files based on the tags:   

 

A window will pop up allowing you to set the pattern for the filename:

If you use the pattern like I have in the “Format string” box, the first song of the record I’m working on gets renamed to:

“Linda Ronstadt – Heart Like A Wheel – 01 – You’re No Good.mp3”

When you hit the ok button the entire set of files representing the entire album will be renamed and the previous screen will come back showing the files with their new names.

Step 34.

Move the files to wherever you normally store your music.  I keep mine on an archive drive. Each album gets its own directory.  You can now load the music onto your iPod, iPad, Cell phone or wherever else you use to listen to it.

Important Note: Sharing this music once you’ve converted it is still illegal under Copyright law…  DON’T do it!

Ok, So it’s been a little longer than I intended, but here is part 2 of this series.

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 1 (and Part 1-A)

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 3

This part of the series will cover chopping the individual music cuts out of the long album sides.  Here goes:

Step 11. (picking up where we left off in part 1)

Find the beginning of the first beat of music at the beginning of the record side and then click just before the music starts.

Step 12.

Click the “Edit” menu, then “Select” and click “Track Start to Cursor”.

Step 13.

Hit the “Delete” key on your keyboard.  You’re deleting the leader up to the point where your cursor is, so make sure you really put the cursor before the music starts.

Step 14.

Find the end of the first song and put your cursor at the end of it where you want the first mp3 file to end.

Step 15.

Click the “Edit” menu, then “Select” and click “Track Start to Cursor” and then CTRL+X to cut the song out of the file onto the Windows Clipboard.

Step 16.

Select “File” and then “New” to Open a second copy of Audacity and hit CTRL+V to paste the first song into the new copy of Audacity.

Step 17.

This step is not required, I do it in case I need to tinker with the audacity file if I don’t like the way the mp3 turns out.  Save the file as “Track01” in audacity’s native format “.aup”.

Step 18.

Click the “File” menu, Select “Export”.

Step 19.

This window pops up:

Click the Options Button.

Step 20.

This screen pops up:

On the “Specify MP3 Options” screen, select the options you want to use to encode the mp3 file.  I like constant bit rate, 192 kbps and “Joint Stereo, then click the OK button.

 

Step 21.

You’re back on the previous screen. Name the file “Track01” and click the save button.

Step 22.

Select OK from the window that pops up, don’t worry about adding tags to the file just yet.  We’re going to do them later in part 3 with MP3TAG.

Step 23.

Repeat Steps 11 – 22 for each cut on the album (both sides) except make sure you name them sequentially. Side 2 track 1 would be “Track06” if there are 5 songs on side 1 of the record…

When you’re done, you’ll have the same number of MP3 files named Track01.mp3 through Track10.mp3 (or however many songs are on the album).

This is the end of cutting the file into individual songs and exporting them to mp3. In Part 3, we’ll tag them and add album art to the files.

This is an added part to part 1 of my 3 part series on digitizing vinyl:

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 1

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 2

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 3

Need to add a couple of items to part 1… this does NOT supersede part 1, it adds a “what to do if”…

I bought a copy of Herb Alpert’s Rise album, Originally released in 1979. It was in the 50 cent bin at Homers in Omaha, one of 12 albums I bought when I was on my trip last month.  The record is pristine.  Initially I wondered why it was in pristine shape and noticed a sticker on the front of the album cover… It’s encoded in dbx.

Not many of those dbx encode/decode units around anymore, right?  Well I just happen to have one laying around… I picked it up cheap at a yard sale when I was stationed at McGuire… you don’t know how many times this thing was almost dumped in the trash bin over the years.

So… I’m in the process of digitizing this album as I’m building this post.  The most notable thing to point out is the DEAD SILENCE between tracks.  I didn’t expect this but there’s absolutely no surface noise from the record:

This section is of the leader at the very beginning of the last track on side 2.  Notice how flat the wave form is before the first beat of the music starts.  There’s no additional audio processing there, just the decoding provided by the dbx box that I’ve had on the shelf in the garage for 15 years and before that was moved from place to place over the years while I was in the military… I’ve NEVER used it to decode anything before today, most tapes were recorded in Dolby-B or Dolby-C so it didn’t see much use… I did experiment with it, but found I couldn’t record tapes with it and expect them to sound good in the car unless the car stereo had dbx decode in it…

As far as digitizing, except for putting the dbx encode/decode box in-line between the turntable and the sound card on the computer, I followed the exact same steps to capture the album as part 1 of this series.