By Howard Stob I love my IPod. All my CD’s are on it, categorized and lots of playlists for every type of music I can think of. Then I thought about all my LP’s boxed up in the closet. A lot of this music never made it to CD’s, or I didn’t want to spend all the money for them. What’s an easy way to turn the analog LP’s into digital CD’s?
I won a program called Instant Music for MAC version 1.2. from my local Mac User group. It contains Roxio CD Spin Doctor 2 (developed with Sonic by deepseasoftware.com.) Would this be an answer to my ‘problem’?
I opened the package, hooked up the little box to my computer with a supplied USB cable and my turntable with supplied RCA plugs.
After opening the application, a window gives me some options:
- Import Audio into CD Spin Doctor with a new recording,
- Opening a previous audio file
- or Open a recent audio file
I chose new recording.
Then more choices:
- Automatically stop recording after designated minutes
- Play through speakers.
- Input settings
- Built in audio
- USB audio
- CODEC
- Recording quality
- Voice
- CD
- DVD
- Custom
- Recording information
- Size and time
I got the old LP ready, selected the side, lowered the needle, and did a practice run to verify the balance of right and left inputs. Spin Doctor gives a very good visual of this balance. I clicked the Ready to Record button in Spin Doctor on my computer and sat back.
I listened to the whole side of the LP, reliving some very good times. I clicked the stop recording button at the end. (There is also a pause feature.) Now comes the fun part before the analog is changed into digital: editing with lots of choices. I can auto-define all the tracks and give each track a name. After that's done, I can send all this to ITunes with the artist name, album title, and a choice of encoding as AAC or MP3.
Other editing choices allow you to:
- Save as (not in your ITunes)
- Sync start time with previous tracks
- Sync stop time with previous tracks.
When I clicked the ITunes button, it opens and the music is digitized. Each track was entered by artist and album, but untitled tracks. So > Get info and I entered the track names, numbers, and genre.
My LP’s (for the most part) are now digitized and on my IPod. Would I recommend this product? You bet. Out of the box ease, simple directions, fantastic recording, good exporting choices. Of 5 stars, I rate it a high 4 and a half. I haven’t heard of any easier product to do the work that this one did. Of course it’s a Mac product...
Posted: Sunday, July 16th, 2006 |
