HI Cicero

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:06:32 GMT, Cicero
wrote:

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:57:07 +0100, Adrian wrote:

Hi Cicero

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:37:58 GMT, Cicero wrote:

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:49:44 +0100, Adrian wrote:

HI All

Firstly - apologies for the fact that the last 10 years' developments
in personal music technology seem to have passed me by... but I've been
busy at other things g

Like many others of my generation, (I suspect ) - I have a couple of
boxes of vinyl lps and singles, and cassette tapes in the shed....
despite being 'much loved' - they never seem to get played...

Sort of at the back of my mind for some time has been a plan to dig out
these 'classics' and transfer them to something more modern - like CDs
for instance.

Then I got to thinking (always fatal !) The new (old) car, a '64 Moggie
Traveller needs some sort of music system, if only to drown out the
rattles and bangs.

So - is there 'another way' to get the vinyl transferred into a format
that could be used in the car ?

Possible plans so far
1) Grab the audio through my (pretty good) computer soundcard and burn
to CDs

-- drawback - it's a tedious process, and ties up the PC for hours on
end

2) Buy a dedicated CR-recorder and grab the audio and burn directly to
CD. Thinking of the Sony RCDW100 Twin CDR - about £200.

-- drawback - cost
- advantage - stand-alone solution

3) Grab audio to mp3 format, and diy an electronics solution to play
mp3's in the 'new' car. Thinking of an mp3 player with line in and
removable memory cards, combined with a simple homebrewed power amp /
psu tucked away in the car somewhere. (There's the DIY angle !!)

-- drawback ... don't know ?? - price of the MP3 player perhaps ?
--advantages - playback is 'bump-proof' - combination of Irish roads
and 1960's Moggie suspension might cause problems for a conventional
in-car CD player..

Any comments / suggestions etc ??

Many thanks
Adrian

===================================
It might make sense to combine (more or less) (1) and (2). A second
computer either new or second-hand could be used as a dedicated 'music
box' with permanently attached turntable and tape player. The advantages
are that second-hand computers are dirt cheap or if you decided on new
(about GB 200 pounds for a reasonable base unit) you would have a spare
computer to cover any breakdowns.

Oh no - not more computers, please !
I guess it's not so much of an inconvenience really - but the nice thing
about the Sony machine was that it was intelligent enough to understand
'tracks' on an lp and (allegedly!) break up the final CD into tracks.
I guess it'd have a reasonable resale value - so it it's not necessarily
£200 down the drain...

Still tedious, of course, but less frustrating than an unavailable
computer.

True...

Thanks
Adrian
===================================
The Sony machine you quote (Sony RCDW100 Twin CDR) appears to be a CD
copier (CD to CD) so it wouldn't really be any help in transferring your
LPs and tapes to CD. You would need something with inputs from a turntable
and tape player which doesn't appear to be the case with this Sony
machine. If it does have these inputs I would be quite interested as it
would be a genuinely dedicated machine. Have you got any further
information?

http://www.richersounds.com/showprod...f6f883a5ddb725

Sorry for the long link !
There's a link on this page to the manufacturer's PDF operating manual
- which seems to say that you can do cd-cd copies as well as burning
cds from any other analogue (?or digital) inputs.

Apparently it also has the ability to recognise track breaks..

As far as recognising track breaks is concerned, I think that most
commercial copying software (e.g. 'Spin Doctor') and probably most
Shareware software will do this but not entirely reliably. It appears to
work on the basis of recognising longer periods of silence which is
reasonably accurate for most LP / Tape / CD tracks but it can give
spurious results when the music itself includes periods of silence such as
often happens in Classical music.

Yes - wouldn't be the end of the world if the odd spurious 'non-track'
got into a cd.....

Still can't decide which way to jump g - sounds as if mp3 might be
the way to go. The 'purist' approach regarding fidelity isn't a big
issue for me - music tends to be on in the background or while driving
- so as long as it's 'listenable' then that'd be fine...

Just had a quick play around BearShare - looks interesting......
now need to go looking for mp3-capable car radios (though I believe
they're known as 'heads' nowadays. Funny - in boating circles 'head'
has a completely different meaning g.

Regards
Adrian

Cic.