Friday, November 09, 2007

Rediscovering Vinyl

What to do with the old records? I hadn't owned a turntable in years. And while there is a lot of sentimental value to those old discs, when you live in a little Baltimore rowhouse, storage space is a premium. And 250+ LPs take up a precious amount of space.

So. The Girlfriend and I went through our collective discs. We tossed the dupes, and those that we had on CD. Those all went to my old friend Rick, who can never have enough music.

The rest? Well I bought a $100 USB turntable, and have been using this very cool freeware called Audacity. And I've been ripping these old discs into iTunes, reliving some of the early 80s. The Cars. ZZ Top. Stanley Jordan. Stuff that I haven't heard in years. The Audacity software is a little intimidating at first, but it's surprisingly powerful. The "click removal" effect has earned its keep on some of my scratched-up discs. If only there was a way to tell it to only record for a set amount of time... I tend to set a disc a-recording, go off and do something else, only to remember a few hours later... and Audacity has been merrily recording silence for hours...

Speaking of which, I started recording "Building the Perfect Beast" before beginning this blog entry. Gotta go.

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