Monday, June 27, 2005
So You Want To Digitize Your Record Collection, Advice From Some Guy With A Blog
by Tom Bozzo
2. Seriously, determine whether the material you will be digitizing is available via the iTunes Music Store or another service of your liking. (*) Ninety-nine cents per track is a relative bargain if you value your time and/or sanity at more than $20/hour or so. (**)
3. OK, so your college-era musical tastes are so out-of-print that Apple will have taken over Microsoft by the time the songs you're looking for show up in the iTMS inventory. What do you do?
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(*) Don't steal music, blah blah blah. I've never used any of the software sometimes used for extra-legal file sharing as a matter of computer security paranoia, so I couldn't begin to tell you what the likelihood of finding high-quality encodings of pre-digital-era esoterica on the net would be.
(**) Hence, I'll buy Section 25's From The Hip, which inexplicably is available at the U.S. iTMS, rather than make what might be considered in some districts "fair use" of the copy that's hanging on my office wall.
(***) Example for illustration only. Really. No broader offense to Duran Duran fans intended.
1. Don't.
2. Seriously, determine whether the material you will be digitizing is available via the iTunes Music Store or another service of your liking. (*) Ninety-nine cents per track is a relative bargain if you value your time and/or sanity at more than $20/hour or so. (**)
3. OK, so your college-era musical tastes are so out-of-print that Apple will have taken over Microsoft by the time the songs you're looking for show up in the iTMS inventory. What do you do?
- Select your source material carefully. Few of the labor-saving conveniences that high-speed optical disk drives, fast microprocessors, and the GraceNote CDDB bring to the digital side are available to you. Spending the time to digitize the filler tracks from Duran Duran's Seven and the Ragged Tiger — everything but "The Reflex," no? — will, in the end, just make you mad. (***) It also violates Rule #2, above.
- Conversely, since you need to direct some attention to the recording process, like in the old days of making mix tapes from records (which the process resembles, with the computer filling the role of a possibly very expensive tape deck), taking it as an opportunity to commune with old favorite records, or at least to wonder what you were thinking in your dissolute youth, will increase the marginal utility of the project.
- Watch those levels! Vinyl tends to run a little low relative to CD, and without compensating EQ, portions of the Monday Random Ten might blow you out the sunroof of your car.
- Be aware that uncompressed digital silence at CD sampling rates takes up enormous amounts of disk space.
- Get a Mac.
- While getting a Mac will tend to improve upon any non-Mac computing experience, there's nothing like a moderately tedious process to test the interface limitations of otherwise very useful tools. If there's anyone in the audience with the ear of an iTunes developer, it's very annoying to have to add the AIFF files of the record tracks, convert them to AAC, then delete the AIFFs. Why can't that be a one-step process? Or do I need to RTFM?
- Don't forget the track numbering metadata fields (iTunes users), unless you want iTunes to forget the ordering of tracks on albums.
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(*) Don't steal music, blah blah blah. I've never used any of the software sometimes used for extra-legal file sharing as a matter of computer security paranoia, so I couldn't begin to tell you what the likelihood of finding high-quality encodings of pre-digital-era esoterica on the net would be.
(**) Hence, I'll buy Section 25's From The Hip, which inexplicably is available at the U.S. iTMS, rather than make what might be considered in some districts "fair use" of the copy that's hanging on my office wall.
(***) Example for illustration only. Really. No broader offense to Duran Duran fans intended.
Comments:
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I bet you could find some young person who was willing to make nice mp3s of all your vinyls for less than $20/hour.
Work from home, paid in cash. Actually sounds like the perfect job for a retiree who wants to keep full benefits of SS, while making a few extra bucks on the side. But you could never be confirmed as Treasury Sec.
Work from home, paid in cash. Actually sounds like the perfect job for a retiree who wants to keep full benefits of SS, while making a few extra bucks on the side. But you could never be confirmed as Treasury Sec.
# posted by 
: Mon Jun 27, 01:46:00 PM
: Mon Jun 27, 01:46:00 PM
I'm not sure a young person would know what to do with the records, and not just in the sense of not knowing what B-sides are gems and which are junk. So it would probably have to be the technologically-savvy retiree's job.
If you had a list of these "gems" I bet someone could get a good chunk of them to you at less than 99 cents a song....
# posted by : Mon Jun 27, 06:36:00 PM
: Mon Jun 27, 06:36:00 PM
Anon: See footnote 1, and I wouldn't want to make Grokster's situation any worse than the Supremes' remand makes it. An interesting question is to what extent others have digitized analog-only recordings from the eighties CD transition era and made them available through various media.
Also, as it happens, I never formally inventoried my record collection and so couldn't provide a list either of what I have or what I'm likely to digitize. However, I have already managed to digitize one obscure 12" single ("Pool Valley" by Blow Up) whose A-side happened to be on a CD compilation I own.
Also, as it happens, I never formally inventoried my record collection and so couldn't provide a list either of what I have or what I'm likely to digitize. However, I have already managed to digitize one obscure 12" single ("Pool Valley" by Blow Up) whose A-side happened to be on a CD compilation I own.
I had my dad digitize some of my old vinyl while he was doing his own. A nice deal if you can get it. But the sound quality was still not so hot -- I didn't do a great job of storing that vinyl.
Wishing that iTunes had more obscure 80s gems...
Wishing that iTunes had more obscure 80s gems...
Shatter my dreams, why don't ya... So you're telling me the only way to preserve the vinyls is to ... keep them and the ugly phono to play 'em with? No way!
Nina brings up a good point. Isn't the only true way to listen to a vinyl is on a record player? I think the nostalgia alone makes up for any lack of its portability to digital media.
# posted by : Tue Jun 28, 06:17:00 PM
: Tue Jun 28, 06:17:00 PM
Phantom: I'm getting what seems like decent quality, though as I noted, it takes a fair amount of attention to get the recording levels right. The input and output settings might affect that, too. I find some MP3s to have a rather harsh and two-dimensional sound.
What would be nice with iTMS would be an easy way of tracking additions to the store. Browsing is just information overload.
Nina: It's not that bad, you just have to want to listen to the records, plus spend a bit of time handling the files. If time is the scarce resource, then keeping and playing the records is the thing to do. There are cool-looking turntables out there, though they tend to be shockingly expensive.
Bryan: There is something to be said for that, and indeed I did suggest that there was no good substitute for the 12" vinyl packaging here -- you can also see from the earlier post that I've changed my tune a bit on the sound quality of 128kbps MP3s.
What would be nice with iTMS would be an easy way of tracking additions to the store. Browsing is just information overload.
Nina: It's not that bad, you just have to want to listen to the records, plus spend a bit of time handling the files. If time is the scarce resource, then keeping and playing the records is the thing to do. There are cool-looking turntables out there, though they tend to be shockingly expensive.
Bryan: There is something to be said for that, and indeed I did suggest that there was no good substitute for the 12" vinyl packaging here -- you can also see from the earlier post that I've changed my tune a bit on the sound quality of 128kbps MP3s.
I can state the following as fact without further comment:
1. Warren Zevon's _Stand in the Fire_ (which I own on vinyl) has never been released on CD.
2. All tracks from it have been known to float around the share services.
3. I don't have the technology to convert from vinyl to mp3.
1. Warren Zevon's _Stand in the Fire_ (which I own on vinyl) has never been released on CD.
2. All tracks from it have been known to float around the share services.
3. I don't have the technology to convert from vinyl to mp3.
Ken: Since Zevon has a nontrivial following, even if he's not a completely mainstream musician, one of the interesting questions is where (if anywhere) in the 'long tail' of the popularity distribution of analog-only recordings digital availability starts to wane.
How's the sound quality of those files, BTW? I was getting some amusement out of the faithful digital reproduction of various vinyl sonic flaws in the tracks I've worked on so far. (Have to resist the urge to crank the music during playback --> feedback through the phono cartridge.)
I've also been noticing via discographies that there's a bit better CD coverage than I'd thought of some of my targeted material, though the CDs are sometimes rare. So I need an excuse to get to NYC so I can flip through the used-CD racks at Other Music, or failing that find the nearest Chicagoland alternative.
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How's the sound quality of those files, BTW? I was getting some amusement out of the faithful digital reproduction of various vinyl sonic flaws in the tracks I've worked on so far. (Have to resist the urge to crank the music during playback --> feedback through the phono cartridge.)
I've also been noticing via discographies that there's a bit better CD coverage than I'd thought of some of my targeted material, though the CDs are sometimes rare. So I need an excuse to get to NYC so I can flip through the used-CD racks at Other Music, or failing that find the nearest Chicagoland alternative.
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