Audio Archive

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

http://hasakife.t35.com/

Friday, August 13, 2010

Steve Martin - A Wild and Crazy Guy Warner HS3238

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Rolling Stone Springsteen clipping May 20 1976

How to Clean, Maintain and Protect Records by Cecil E. Watts

See also: http://www.smartdevicesinc.com/Watts.pdf

I remember one of the salesmen at HiFi House on Concord Pike said something about Cecil Watts being embalmed in anti-static fluid. I guess I thought that was pretty funny, because I still remember it. I had a Preener and a Dust Bug. Eventually the Discwasher and Zerostat replaced those first generation record care tools. In retrospect, the lack of a handle on the Preener is a startling omission.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Bruce Springsteen at Allegheny College April 16, 1976 poster

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Bruce Springsteen is the featured exhibit at the Rock and Roll hall of fame during my July 14, 2010 visit.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Commander Cody Live from Deep in the Heart of Texas

Buffalo Springfield - Buffalo Springfield Atco SD 33-200A

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Linda Ronstadt - Living In The USA (Asylum Records 6E155 - 1978)

The third of Lans' three Linda Ronstadt LPs. The condition was quite good but the material lacked a bit of the fire of the previous albums. Amazon has a whole array of offerings of this album. The basic CD runs 7 dollars. Used LPs start at a dollar and up. A vinyl picture disc is available for somewhere close to $50.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Linda Ronstadt - Simple Dreams (Asylum Records 6E104 - 1977)

The A side was nearly flawless but the B side had a little bit of dust popping. 7 bucks gets you this either as a CD or download.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Linda Ronstadt - Prisoner in Disguise (Asylum Records 7E1045 - 1975)

I really wanted to Hasten Down the Wind but I don't have that one. This is the first of three Linda Ronstadt LPs that Lans had. This came up as a segue from Warren Zevon, though there aren't any Zevon tunes on this album. Like I said, I wanted to Hasten Down the Wind. The quality was good but not flawless. Amazon has the standard cd for 7 bucks, or you can spend $30 for the Original Studio Master version.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Warren Zevon - Excitable Boy (Asylum Records 6E118 - 1978)

Kind of an amazing album really. It was in great shape. Lans probably committed this to tape when he got it though there is some ringwear on the jacket. Possibly the wear is a function of this falling at or near the end of an alphabetic sort. Amazon has the CD for 8 bucks or 9 if you download the remastered in 2007 version (which is 15 bucks on CD). I don't see any resellers selling the LP.

Monday, February 23, 2009

The Masked Marauders - The Masked Marauders (Diety/Reprise 6378 - 1969)

This was definitely the kind of inside joke that Lans appreciated. This copy is a cut-out (clipped corner). There were a few pops here and there but quite listenable. Amazon has a CD version for $27 and the used LPs are selling for 10 bucks and up.

Background

I want to explain how and why I'm doing what I'm doing.

It's about enjoying and at the same time preserving the audio art. Years ago I recognized the deleterious impact that playing records had on the media. In their own way, records were a defective product because their very use ultimately destroyed them. One way of dealing with this was to copy the records to tape (cassettes in my case) and enjoy them that way. The tapes had the added benefit of being playable in cars.

Enter the digital era....

The ease of handing and the durability of CDs made the ordeal of playing a vinyl record album look pretty burdensome. Sure, there are those purists and audiophiles who decry the thin, flat sound of CDs but that's a different subject. To my ear, the CD that I can make from an album is a more faithful reproduction than I've ever been able to get from a tape. Taking the CD one step further and loading it on a computer opens up new worlds. That along with an iPod, addresses the portability issue. So.... digital is one obvious way to preserve the original media and still enjoy the art.

Some time early in this century I began the process of converting my LPs to CD. That process experienced surges and lulls over the years and continues to this day.

Hardware

I've heard the mainstream PC described as an electronically "dirty" environment. A minor grounding problem in an audio environment might create a hum that would be unacceptable for listening to music, but in a computing environment, such a problem is almost always a non-issue.

When I first looked into the idea of converting analog audio to digital, one obvious solution was to use the "line in" jack found on many computer soundcards. The "Sound Recorder" software that came with early versions of the Windows operating system looked like it should enable this capability but this approach was fraught with complications and in my opinon many of those problems still exist today despite many advancements in hardware and software.

My conclusion was that performing the initial analog to digital conversion outside the computer system using components dedicated to the purpose was the way to go. My thought was that once the music has been digitized, the computer was more than up to the task of managing the bits and bytes.

My first CDR (Compact Disc Recorder) was a Philips 775. Just about as the original 1 year warrenty was about to run out, I got an offer in the mail to purchase an extended warranty from the manufacturer. "Psheww... extended warranties are for suckers" I thought. I pitched the letter in the trash. A day or two later the machine exhibited some very unsettling behavior and ceased to function. I rummaged madly through the trash and recovered the letter and purchased the warranty and got the machine repaired under terms of the extended warrenty a week or two later. Within less than a year, the machine failed again and this time, the warrenty program opted to replace the machine with a new 0ne (CDR-795) which was effectively an upgrade in terms of features and performance. That second CDR deck lasted several years and I never again heard from the manufacturer regarding renewing the extended warrenty. Eventually that machine failed and I replaced it with the current Sony machine (RCD-W500C) which I believe is the only such piece of equipment being sold by Best Buy.

The CDR deck behaves very similarly to a cassette deck but the media is CD instead of tape. Like many later cassette decks, all three of my CDR decks have been dual bay. That makes it possible to dub from one CD to another but I've very rarely used the machine that way.

Process

All of the CDR decks that I've had work only with recordable discs that have the "Digital Audio" banner as part of the Compact Disc logo.

My current process involves me pressing a button on the CDR remote to mark the tracks. There are clearly other ways to do this and having to "babysit" the album is a burden, but I've concluded that this is actually the most efficient process I can devise. However it's VERY easy to slip up and miss a track mark. If using a recordable CD discs, there isn't really anything that can be done to fix a missed track mark. On the other hand, if I'm using a rewritable (CD-RW) discs, the CDR deck will allow me to back up and try again. The limitation is that I can only erase by whole tracks. Still, this beats making stacks and stacks of coasters. After recording the source to the CD-RW disc and finalizing the disc, I move that disc to the PC.

I then use Media Player to rip the CD-RW to the "My Music" folder on my Entertainment Center PC. But before ripping I use Media Player's "Get Album Info" option to download the album and track titles from the web. Overall, I probably am able to download this information about 90% of the time. In the exceptional case, I enter this information myself.

If I rip the album BEFORE entering or downloading album and track information, Media Player will put the album in a folder labeled "Unknown Album..." and the tracks will also be named generically. If I enter the album and track titles, AFTER having ripped the album to the PC, Media Player will recognize the revision but the underlying folder names and track file names will not be updated. I prefer the folder and track names to jive with the names as they appear in Media Player.

Photographing album art from the LP.

Custom tags

My archival CD-ROM copy

System backups

Blogging

Unfinalizing and Erasing the CD-RW disc for re-use