Philosophy from "The Association" - RV-Dreams Community Forum

Terry and Jo · RV-Dreams Family Member

Philosophy from "The Association"

rjenkins · RV-Dreams Family Member

Terry what are you using for digitizing your albums. I have some great vinyls from the 60's on until they disappeared from the stores and I know I can get them on CD nowadays for a price, but there is just something about those vinyls that perfectly made CD's can not reproduce, especially if its good ole rock and roll.

Terry and Jo · RV-Dreams Family Member

rjenkins wrote:

Terry what are you using for digitizing your albums. I have some great vinyls from the 60's on until they disappeared from the stores and I know I can get them on CD nowadays for a price, but there is just something about those vinyls that perfectly made CD's can not reproduce, especially if its good ole rock and roll.

Rick,

The computer program is Goldwave, and it has quite a few editing features. For instance, if a record is pretty "noisy" from scratches and such, it can be cleaned up some. However, I think in the clean-up, some music quality is lost. Fortunately, my LP's have been stored right and most are in pristine condition.

The music can be saved in several different file formats, but I tend to use the .wav files. They seem to convert to music CD's pretty good in that format. Wav files may be "bigger", but I'm not real conversant nor prone to experiment with the other file formats. There may be some that are better.

As for equipment, we have an HP PC, with sound card of course, a Radio Shack turntable, Sherwood receiver, along with a Radio Shack dual deck cassette player and a Sanyo four head VHS VCR. I can digitize from a number of sources with all that.

On a side note, I also have a computer program that will let me digitize VHS tapes as well. It is called Magix Movies on DVD 7. I'm still learning with that one, and there may be problems if one's VHS movies are over 2 hours long. I'm still "playing" with that one to learn more about it.

Magix also has audio and photo editing software too. Another of theirs that I like using is called "Photostory on CD and DVD" that lets me put in pictures and music together onto a DVD to playback everything on a TV via one's DVD player. Still playing some with that one to get the "formating" right so that part of the pictures don't get "crowded" off of the TV screen. You know, like the image is just a wee bit too big for the screen.

Link to Goldwave website:

http://www.goldwave.com/

Link to Magix website:

http://www.magix.com/us/

Terry

-- Edited by Terry and Jo on Saturday 18th of September 2010 12:57:10 PM

NorCal Dan · RV-Dreams Family Member

I use an Ion Turntable and Audacity software to rip my albums to mp3's. Can be used with Mac or PC computers wink

RVKevi · RV-Dreams Family Member

I also use Audacity. I find it really easy to use. It has a lot of features, most of which I know nothing about, but if you do know more about sound than I do, they would probably be pretty neat. I do clean up the static sound a bit. Have to be careful because too much, and, like Terry said, you can lose some music quality. The nice thing about Audacity is that it is free! Almost forgot. I make WAV files, but you can make MP3 or, IIRC, some other kinds of files, too.

-- Edited by RVKevi on Sunday 19th of September 2010 08:15:39 PM

Terry and Jo · RV-Dreams Family Member

In reference to Audacity, I agree that "free" is kind of important. However, when I worked in the sound booth at church, they came in and changed from recording the services onto tape and went with digital on the computer. They used Audacity, and I wasn't happy with it. For instance, after the services were over, it took several minutes for the program to "export" in order to change the file format to an MP3 file, which is what the minister wanted.

Now, perhaps someone didn't know enough to originally record in MP3, but I don't know because I'm not really familiar with Audacity. However, with Goldwave, I can pull up a wav. file and "save as" into another format in seconds. Seconds versus minutes may not mean much to many, especially those that are RV'ing, but if I want to wait for something, I'd rather wait for an animal to get closer for a photo than wait a few extra minutes to convert a music file.

Just saying....

.....everyone has their own priorities.

Terry

RVKevi · RV-Dreams Family Member

Oh, dear. Audacity isn't really geared toward recording. It's really meant for digitalizing and editing files. When you use it, the file is a very large project file, and must be exported as one of the other files. I'm a little surprised the church used it that way unless they were editing or using it to break up into tracks.

I may not be expressing this well, and someone who knows more about it may be able to express it more clearly.

-- Edited by RVKevi on Sunday 19th of September 2010 09:09:06 PM

Terry and Jo · RV-Dreams Family Member

Well, I really intended this thread to be about various RV'er philosophies, but it kind of went off-kilter somehow. Oh, well. Guess I'll continue the off-kilter topic.

Yes, the "church" decided to go with the free Audacity even though I had offered to buy Goldwave for them. No, they don't really do much editing, but start the program just before the minister starts his sermon and ends it after the last song. Now, they may edit out the song, and I have no idea of how much trouble that would be with Audacity.

Another thing I like about Goldwave is that it has "VU meters". With that, I can play through an album, listening for "pops and cracks" while I watch the "meters" to make sure I don't overdrive the audio. Maybe it is an audiophile "geek" thing, but Dionne Warwick taught me many years ago about raising the recording level too high.

Terry

RVKevi · RV-Dreams Family Member

Editing out a song is easy in Audacity. But the rest of what you said is greek to me! biggrin

But then, I am far from being an "audiophile geek." biggrin

I just have a few records and tapes I like to get into digital form so I can have them on my computer and make cd's for my own use. But I'm sure that what you use is better for what you are doing.

-- Edited by RVKevi on Monday 20th of September 2010 08:11:18 PM