Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Ripping Music CD's

Here is an excellent tutorial on the best way that I've found to convert your music CD library to digital format. The article explains how to convert to the FLAC format, which is a "lossless" codec as compared to MP3. You can also just convert to MP3, as the ability to do so is already in the software.

This article is from the MaximumPC web site at the following link:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/flac

Make Bit-Perfect Archives of Your CDs With FLAC

Audio CDs are susceptible to damage and aging, so it’s a good idea to make archival copies of your collection. We’ll show you how, using the lossless compression algorithm FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec).

A lossless encoder compresses digital audio files with absolutely no compromise in fidelity compared to the original. The only drawbacks are large file sizes (though they’re much smaller than WAV files) and scarce support among portable players. On the other hand, FLAC enjoys wide support among audio-streaming boxes.

What You’ll Need

STEP 1: INSTALL EAC AND FLAC

Exact Audio Copy (EAC) will detect and attempt to auto-configure any optical drives on your system during setup. Check those you wish to use and click Next. Use the “I prefer to have accurate results” option and click Next.

Choose the option “I don’t trust these values…,” drop a clean audio CD in the drive, and click Next. It’s crucial that the drive you rip from has an “accurate stream,” meaning it does not produce “jitter” (if the drive can’t accurately seek a specific sector on the disc, ripped tracks will have audible distortion).

Remove the checkmark next to “Install and configure LAME…” and click Next. Enter an email address and click Next. Choose the Expert option at the final prompt and click Finish. Exit EAC.

Install FLAC, ignoring the Winamp and Nero messages. Leave checkmarks next to all the default options and click Install.

STEP 2: INSTALL ACCURATERIP


Using AccurateRip and EAC’s Test & Copy option will provide an added measure of assurance that your rips are precise and worthy of your archive.

Install AccurateRip and then copy the file accuraterip.dll from C:\program files\illustrate\dbpoweramp to C:\program files\exact audio copy. Put a CD in the drive and relaunch EAC. Click the Configure button and then click OK. Select all tracks and click EAC’s Action menu. Choose Copy Selected Tracks from the drop-down menu; use the uncompressed option.

AccurateRip will compare your results to a database of rips by others and report a confidence level. “Confidence 30,” for example, means your rip is identical to that of 30 other people, so there’s a high probability it’s accurate. Click OK.

STEP 3: CONFIGURE EAC

Click the EAC menu and choose EAC Options. Click the General tab. Leave these options at their defaults but place a checkmark next to “On unknown CDs” and select the option “Automatically access online freedb database.” Click the Tools tab and place checkmarks next to everything except “Create ‘.m3u’ playlist…,” “Do not open external…,” and “Activate beginner mode.”

Click the Filename tab and enter the values %A\%C\%N - %T into Naming Scheme to create a nested directory structure that follows the Artist Name\Album Title\Track Number - Track Title scheme. Check “Use various artist naming scheme” and enter the values Various Artists\%C\%N - %A %T so compilation albums are stored in a “Various Artists” folder broken up by album. Click OK.

Click the EAC menu again and choose Drive Options and Extraction Method. Make sure Secure Mode is selected, with a checkmark next to “Drive has Accurate Stream feature.” Click the Drive tab and check “Spin up drive before extraction.” Leave everything else at default and click OK.

Click the EAC menu once more, choose Compression Options and External Compression. Check “Use external program for compression.” In the drop-down menu “Parameter passing scheme,” select “User Defined Encoder.” Type .flac in the “Use file extension” box.

Click Browse, locate the FLAC executable (flac.exe), select it, and click OK. Enter these characters into “Additional command line options”: -6 -V -T “artist=%a” -T “title=%t” -T “album=%g” -T “date=%y” -T “tracknumber=%n” -T “genre=%m” -T comment=”%e” -T “comment=EAC (Secure Mode)” %s. Bitrate doesn’t matter, but check “Delete WAV after compression” and “Check for external compression return code.”

STEP 4: COMMENCE ARCHIVING

Place the audio CD you wish to archive in the drive. Click the Action menu and choose “Test and Copy Selected Tracks” using the Compressed option this time. This will perform a cyclical redundancy check (CRC) to verify the integrity of your rip. It’s another paranoid step, but we think it’s warranted when producing critical backups. An OK will appear in EAC’s CRC column if the rip was executed successfully. Repeat until you’ve backed up your entire library.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Places to visit in and around San Antonio

Here is a list of places to visit and things to do while visiting San Antonio:

The "typical" tourist attractions - some free, most not:

1. Downtown San Antonio
2. Fiesta Texas (Six Flags) (about $32 per person)
3. Sea World (about $43 per person)
4. Schlitterbahn ($38 adults/$30 kids)

Local/Regional places to visit (not your typical tourist places)
1. Downtown Boerne (nice to walk around and shop for stuff)
2. Cave Without a Name (really impressive cave system in Boerne $14 for adults/$7 for kids)
3. Government Canyon State Park (hiking/nature trails)
4. Enchanted Springs Ranch ($12 adults/$6 kids, near Boerne)
5. Guadalupe State Park (on the Guadalupe River)
6. Enchanted Rock (terrific, but best done when cool outside)
7. Old Tunnel Bat Cave (bat sightings at dusk)
8. Admiral Nimitz Museum (top quality WWII museum)
9. Ice Skating ($9 a person)
10. Luckenbach (Famous biker destination, country music)
11. Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch ($16.50 adults/$8.50 kids)

Places Near Austin
1. Hamilton Pool (about 40 min outside of Austin)
2. Mount Bonnell Lookout

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Excellent hard drive utility - Testdisk

I recently ran across an excellent utility that helped me save about 350gb of music and movies on my windows vista media center pc. While most other utilities wouldn't touch the drive, sqawking about it being a 'dynamic" drive, testdisk was able to see the drive correctly, helped me to copy the data off of the drive, and then restore the partitions correctly. I highly recommend this software (which is FREE).
The author also has a couple of other useful utilities on his site, such as a picture recovery tool, which I hope I never have to use! ;-)

You can find it here: www.cgsecurity.org

Digitizing your old record albums

I wrote instructions for a friend recently on how to convert his album collection to MP3's. I figured I would post it here to help anyone who may be interested in converting their albums:

Here it is - everything you wanted to know about converting your albums to MP3 or Flac. FLAC is like MP3, but it is "lossless", meaning you won't lose any of the original music signal from compression like you do with MP3. If you set your bit rate high in MP3 encoding, you won't be able to tell much of a difference anyway, but I use FLAC to preserve the recordings for the future - who knows what type of audio equipment I may be using ten years from now (probably the same stuff I have now :-( )

1. OK, first off - you need to connect your turntable and preamp (or amplifier) to your computer. The best way to do this is with ADS Tech 's Instant Music. It converts the incoming sound signal into USB, which produces a very clean signal. It has everything you need right in the box to get going - here is some links to where you can purchase it:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814255005

http://www.directron.com/rdx150.html - I use this vendor often - they have good service and prices.

You can use it to connect your turntable, cassette player, 8 track, or just about anything that has phono jack outputs.

2. Next, you need the software to record the signal. The Instant Music device comes with the best software I have found - SPIN IT AGAIN. It is super easy to use, automatically breaks up the tracks and deletes the silent spots if you leave it unattended for a while. You can also use it without the Instant Music device, but the Instant Music box makes it so simple, it is worth the $50.

http://www.acoustica.com/spinitagain/

Here's an article on using Spin It Again: http://www.pcnet-online.com/content/utilities/transfer-vinyl-to-digital.htm

I use the "Vinyl Light Clean & EQ" filter on all my albums and it does an excellent job of removing pops & clicks and brightens up the music some.

3. OK, after you have the music saved on your hard drive, you can convert it out to several formats. I convert it out of Spin It Again into WAV files and then compress them into FLAC before storing them in my music library. Here's a couple of programs for converting:

Switch Audio File Conversion software: http://www.nch.com.au/switch/
Switch is very simple to use and will convert anything to any other format, but it costs about $30 after the free trial.

FLAC Encoder - http://flac.sourceforge.net/index.html
Windows Interface - http://members.home.nl/w.speek/flac.htm

Either of these utilities will do the job, but the FLAC encoder and windows interface are free (you just have to follow the instructions to set it up.)

Step 4 - managing your music library.

4. MediaMonkey - http://www.mediamonkey.com/
I use Mediamonkey instead of iTunes to manage my music library (150 gigabytes so far of ripped CD's and albums in FLAC). Mediamonkey will help you tag the files, convert the formats, and is a great music player as well. I use MediaMonkey to automatically convert my FLAC files to MP3 before downloading to the various iPods we have around the house. I can compress them as small as possible for the kids so they can fit as much music as they want on their iPods, and it doesn't affect my original FLAC archive.
You can use Mediamonkey for free, or spring for the full version, which includes all the on-the-fly conversion features.

5. Make sure you have enough disk space to do all of this. Like I said before, I am up to about 150 gigabytes and will probably add another 50 gigabytes before it is all done (I'm about 1/3 the way through my albums.) A good external backup hard drive would be a good idea - you can get 500gb versions under $175 these days.


Good luck - it is easier than it sounds!