Presentation Materials

Digitizing Old Vinyl Music Records  (ppt)  (pdf)

Computers & Technology Group Co-Chairman Phil Goff opened the meeting at 9:00 am. Executive committee members in attendance were Dean Steichen, Phil Goff, Floyd Skelton, Jack Bevis, Dick Chaffee, Ollie Greenlee, Derek Southern, Lo McCarley, Chris Satterthwaite and Vic Moore. Total attendance was 57.

Our coffee Masters followed up and purchased the new, previously discussed 100-cup coffee pot, which saw its first service today.

Phil displayed the group website and explained again how it works. It will always be available at this address. Sir-web.org/computer.

Phil said that he has supplied some information to the State SIRS organization and that our group will be written up in the state newsletter.

He announced that the April presentation would be by Ken Haley on working with Photo Shop Elements 6.0.

Phil said that if there is sufficient interest shown that the board would consider purchasing a record transfer device that members could use at home. This would be a Turntable with the required software and connections to play records directly into a computer. The device costs about $200. A fee of about $15 per month for its use would amortize the cost in a reasonable time. There will be a signup sheet after the meeting to gauge the amount of interest. (Only 4 people signed up. The idea will not be pursued further.)

Analog to Digital Music Conversion

 Presented by Jim Meskauskas

Jim discussed the situation that many of us find ourselves in. We have old vinyl records that we still listen to, would hate to throw away, would like to convert to digital but struggle with the question of how to do it.

He asks should YOU convert? How many albums do you have? Maybe some have been repurchased as CD’s. Consider the condition of the discs.

If you have mostly tapes to convert you are in trouble. Jim says they are difficult to convert due to tape stretch. Remember that there is a great selection of music available that you could get from cable.

If you decide to do it suitable equipment is required. Dedicated converters are available. These are players designed to handle conversions such as the one that Phil Goff was describing to the Group earlier. Jim showed pictures of a number of such machines.

The alternative to dedicated converters is the equipment that many of us still have around the house: a turntable and stereo system, with amplifier. Also, likely to be available: a computer with audio input and CD burner (or MP3 player) and music management software.

Jim uses the alternate method and has done a number of albums. He cautions that the process is time consuming in that it is done in real time.

He walked us through an example using a laptop computer, windows Media Player and version 7.5 of Roxio Easy Media Creator. He noted that Roxio is up to version 10 presently but hasn’t seen any need to upgrade.

He said that there is a free program available called “Audacity” that can be used instead of Roxio and gives satisfactory results. Another tip is that you can use the microphone input jack if your computer does not have sound in jacks.

WAV is the favored audio file type. It is compatible with most CD players found in older automobiles and elsehwer. MP3, AAC and WMA are some other file types.

The software gives you an amazing amount of control over the recording and editing process. Set it for track detection and you have control to separate the tracts and to title them individually.

Windows Media Player supplies automatically the track names. It also can search the Internet for information about the music. In most cases it will give you the artist name and the information that is normally found on a CD’s label. Windows Media Player also provides the tools to store and manage your music.

The final question is whether it is worth all of the work required to do it. That is a very personal question.

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