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I have put off writing a page about Music on PC's because it is quite a complex
subject. But I have had a number of enquiries about how to go about
things like putting a Vinyl record collection onto CD. So, here goes.
May 2008 A contact wished to download some videos with
music which he had found on
www.youtube.com, so I investigated.
Although Youtube says it is not possible to download their videos I found
a way. The clue to this is to get the latest RealPlayer program from
www.realplayer.com. You will
then find that when you hover the cursor over the video a " Download the
video" notice will appear above it. Clicking this will download it
to your PC. Realplayer also has the facility to burn music and videos
to a DVD (or CD). Many o the videos are in FLVC (Flash Video) format,
which cannot be viewed with Windows Media Player
Jan 08 Copying music from a CD to a home computer could be
made legal under new proposals from the UK government. Millions of people
already "rip" discs to their computers and move the files to MP3 players,
although the process is technically against copyright law. Intellectual property
minister Lord Triesman said the law should be changed so it "keeps up with
the times". Music industry bodies gave a cautious welcome to the proposals,
which are up for public consultation until 8 April.
BUT The government is looking into ways in which the can persuade
ISP's to cut people off the net if they continue to download copyright media,
after a warning.
For a list of popular oldies music and over 300 lyrics see
here or go to
http://pgoh13.free.fr/evergreens_list.php
Not sure how these folks get round the copyright rules but
http://www.remlapsoftware.com/clickster.htm
is supposed to allow lots of music downloads
Oct 07 Universal Music are making thousands
of tracks available in MP3 format that are free of DRM protection. EMI
is also selling DRM-free music on iTunes and through other online music stores
Radio. You can tune into radio programs from your PC from
http://www.accuradio.com (You
can select your own kind of music) Also check out
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio
Thanks, Jack, for that contribution
Apple iTunes online music store are selling music that can be played on any
player.. i.e. not just for iPods. What is more the 15,000 tracks in
EMI's catalogue will no longer be copyright protected. However the tracks
will cost 20p more, so will be around the £1 mark. People who downloaded
DRM protected music will be able to upgrade them on payment of the additional
20p. The newly available tracks will be encoded at twice the quality
of the old ones. EMI is also hoping to be able to supply Beatles songs
for the first time.
You can convert videos to iPod usable format with a free converter from
http://www.videora.com/en-us/Converter/iPod/
Microsoft's free Windows Media Player (10) now allows for the ripping and
recording of MP3 files.
There are a couple of booklets available at
http://www.convertfromvhs.com
on getting your records and video tapes onto CD
A good explanatory site on the music scene is at
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,62664,00.asp
Another site devoted to LP to CD recording is at
http://www.delback.co.uk/lp-cdr.htm
**
Downloading Music from the net
n.b. Keeping music on a hard disk can be risky due to hard disk failure or
inadvertently deleting the tracks. Fewer than half of the insurance companies
provide cover for music and other digital downloads in their general computer
policies. So back up your music to CD or DVD or upload what you have to a
site such as Diino
Tip : If you have downloaded MP3s on your machine and
they haven't got the full details (referred to as ID3 tags) then go to
www.mediamonkey.com and this will
add the missing data from the Amazon website
Downloading music has become very popular, particularly with people who have
Broadband, as music files of any kind tend to be rather large and, so, take
a long time to download. With an 56k dialup modem you may manage to
get them at the rate of one megabyte a minute, so with each tune occupying
at least 2 mb space you can see that downloading an album would take quite
a while. This would be cut to a 10th with a slower Broadband connection
and to a 20th or less by one of the faster ones.
Limewire is the latest
in the file sharing programs and can be installed under any operating system....
Apple, Microsoft, Linux. Unlike Napster no files are kept on a central
server. It is pure peer-to-peer file transfer between willing parties.
The same copyright rules apply but the program itself is given a clean
bill of health by guru Bob Rankin. No advertising, no spyware, no viruses.
Of course you can still get a virus from downloading any file which
contains one, so you still have to be careful.
Music is also available from www.Tiscali.co.uk/music/musicclub,
www.MSN.co.uk/musicclub, Woolworths, www.Wanadoo.co.uk/music (ISP's) plus
www.mycokemusic.com and www.wippit.co.uk (from 29p per track), although Computer
Active ( No166) considered Napster the easiest to use. Wippit also provides
movies from 99p. There is quite a lot of free music being supplied
by groups wanting to make a name for themselves. See
www.myspace.com. See
http://askbobrankin.com/add_music_to_myspace.html.
http://uk.launch.yahoo.com/index.html
is BT/Yahoo's answer to illegal peer-to-peer music sharing. But the choice
of music is limited and it costs as much as to go out and buy a proper disk,
plus a monthly fee. As they say, "on price, it's difficult to compete
with free"
So, how come you can't just download and save the stuff anyway ? New
software called a DRM license has enabled the sites to lock the tracks until
you pay. This license follows the track onto your machine and without
it the tune won't play.
Unfortunately, not all music is available from these sites, due to copyright
restrictions and you won't find any Beatles or Elton John there
Another article in Computer Active (No.218), Digital Music Guide, is worth
downloading from www.computeractive.co,.uk)
** Another great site on recording to
disk from guru Fred Langa is at
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=166401664
In America, Wal-mart are now allowing the compilation of various artists
on one disk. After an initial charge of $4 each additional song costs
88 cents
www.islandtunes.co.uk. the well
known label is now on line to order disks or download music. The site
offers good quality 30 second previews of each track before buying. To
play the music you will need Windows Media Player.
Infima is patenting a new method of compressing files (Music, video, Mp3s
etc) which they claim will reduce them by up to 80% without loss of quality.
You can get a free Beta copy (12Mb) from
(www.myinfima.com)
Vinyl to CD/DVD
If you have many vinyl disks you need to put onto disk (or the computer)
be aware that there is such a thing as a USB turntable. Just plug it into
a USB port and record with the supplied Audacity software :
www.firebox.com but it is £8.95
They also do a USB Cassette Deck from Ion at £99.95. Creative
do a Sound Blaster Connect box for £35. See
www.tinyurl.com/3cfdq8. The
software with this will convert output from a tape player or turntable to
MP3, so you can burn them to CD.
Otherwise : To copy your tracks from vinyl to CD You will need
(and see article above
** )
When it comes to computers there are a number of file formats for sounds.
A file format is determined by its ending. Thus music files might
have any of the following endings : WAV, MP3, MID, RM, WMA, CDA. In order
to hear these one must have a suitable 'Player'. You might have an
MP3 player or you might have some software on your computer such as
Sndrec32.exe which enables any PC to record and play back Music or speech
in WAV format; a program such as Windows Media Player, which is capable of
playing speech, music and Videos in all the formats mentioned but cannot
record them. There are other free sound playing programs such as
RealPlayer and Winamp.
MID files are rather unusual in that they use programs which are burnt in
to the sound card in your PC and these interpret the MID file into the
various instruments in a band or orchestra. Because the instruments
are 'built in' to your sound card the MID file can be remarkably small e.g.
The file which is playing now (if you have sound on) is a mere 4k in length.
But creating these is another story.
What we want to end up with is a CD which can be played on any CD Player
(CDA format) and/or a CD which will play on an MP3 player (MP3 format)
It would be a good idea to establish whether your equipment will play
MP3's because, as they are highly compressed, it will allow you to get more
music on a disk. Many, but not all, CD and DVD players will play
MP3s But the CDA format is how the standard music disk is made
so you may prefer to keep them that way.
First you must have some way to output the music from your turntable. The
best way would be from a Line-out or Aux socket on the record player's amplifier.
Some record players do not have one so you might have to use a the
earphone socket or, as a last resort, a microphone next to the speaker.
This last is not as satisfactory.
Connect a cable from your record player amplifier's output socket (or a
microphone) to the Input or Mic socket on your PC's sound card. The simplest
sound recording software comes with Windows and is called the Sound Recorder.
It is called Sndrec32 these days and can be found in Programs,
Accessories, Entertainment. However this is only capable of recording
in the very large WAV format and is also limited to the length of recording.
So, you will be well advised to download more sophisticated software.
There is one called Audacity, which is capable of recording directly
to the much more compressed MP3 Format. It also has the facility to
edit the recording to take out any blank space at the beginning and end.
Another good recorder is Audio Recorder DeLuxe, which has WAV,
MP3 and WMA formats from
http://www.soft32.com/download_13371.html.
It is 'Try before you buy" and $30
Windows Media Player is an excellent program for playing and cataloging various
music formats but it didn't used to include the facility for recording MP3's
but the latest version does all that. It is a whopping 13.3Mb download from
HERE
. However, there are various plug-ins which will help with that. In
Version 11 click on Tools, Options, the Copy Music tab and click on 'Learn
more about MP3 formats'. Computer Active suggests that you go to
www.computeractive.co.uk/download/1115391
and type in MP3. They recommend CDex as a suitable additional program.
To ensure that your computer is accepting sound via the input socket of your
choice you should go to Programs, Accessories, Entertainment, Volume Control
or, if you have a Speaker icon on the taskbar (bottom right) just click on
it. Make sure that Line in is not muted and that the volume is up towards
the top, though you may have to adjust this later if distortion occurs.
Click on Options, Properties and make sure that that Line in and Recording
are both selected
Method 1. Recording to the computer first
Run the program Sndrec32 (which has a very limited recording length) or,
better still get another Audio program, such as Audacity.
If you are using a microphone I suggest a couple of practice sessions
by speaking into it. In Sndrec32 click the red dot when you are ready.
Click the black square to finish recording. Go File, Save and
name the file and make a note where it is saving. The file will
automatically be saved as a WAV file. You will find that WAV files
are uncompressed and will be large (megabyte) files. Now start a record and
go through the same procedure. You can now play the file with Sndrec32 or
Media Player or Real Player or a number of other players. However,
to convert it into CDA format for playing on most CD playing equipment you
now have to burn that file into a CD-R. CD burning software such
as Nero or Roxio Easy CD will offer the opportunity to turn the files in
CDA format and will accept either WAV or MP3 files. So, if you have
an audi recording program that will Save your recording as an MP3 you should
save it that way because of the benefit of MP3 compression (compared with
the WAV format)
When you have converted a file to the format you require and sure it
runs satisfactorily you can delete the Wav version from the hard disk.
When you have a collection (WAV or MP3) they can be burnt to CD as
CDA files.
Method 2. Recording Directly to CD
If you have software such as Nero Burning it is possible to record directly
from your vinyl to your CD. Proceed as before but start Nero, Nero
6, Soundtrax. Go to the Tools Menu and select Wizards. Choose
LP to CD Wizard. Choose the correct input (Audio Input Line,
Line In. Start playing a record. and adjust the recording volume slider until
the level meters are showing that the incoming audio peaks mostly in the
yellow area. It should not peak too high or you will get distortion. Now
click on the Red button to start recording and the Stop button when you have
finished. I suggest that you do a trail run of a single track
Then click Next to proceed to the next stage. Nero can automatically
split up the recordings into individual tracks but may need some preparation.
You need to set the maximum noise level for pauses between tracks by adjusting
the Silence Threshold. 0.52DB is suggested. To make sure that
deliberate gaps in music are ignored you can set the Minimum Duration of
a Pause (say 20 seconds) and a Minimum Duration of a Track (say 20 seconds
or more) Click Detect. Click Next. At this point the software allows
you to make the settings and you can use sliders to set the Denoiser, Declicker
and Decrackler levels. There is a Preview facility to check what improvements
it has made. Click Next.
You have now (hopefully) recorded to the computer, split and cleaned
up the tracks so click Burn Project Immediately. Click Finish and click
the Burn button to write to the CD
Article by a very experienced Music CD 'Ripper'
I have summarised his article. He says " There are also
various CODECs available for encoding MP3s. One of the best CODECs is Fraunhofer
IIS MPEG Layer-3 Codec (advanced) Some others are Ogg Vorbis, Lame and Xing.
But what makes more difference in the quality of the MP3 is the sampling
rate. The rate can be as low as 8 Kbps and up to 320 Kbps. At 128
Kbps the music sounds like AM radio. At 160 Kbps the quality improves. 160
is good, 192 is better, and 224 is almost indistinguishable from the original.
256 is considered Studio quality and 320 Kbps rate, the music from the CD
is ripped at Lab quality. The down side to this is that the higher the bit
rate, the larger the MP3 file size will be. The file size is also affected
by whether you are using "Fixed" or "Variable Bit Rate" Encoding. A CD-R
burned with MP3s, even at 320 Kbps, can hold around 80 songs. Audio Books
are available in MP3.
Also recommended is the MusicMatch Jukebox software
(http://www.musicmatch.com) which is available in a free version and
a Plus version for $20.00. Both excellent. The free version is ad and spyware
free. It is just stripped down and slower than the Plus version. With MMJB
you can rip your music CD collection and also burn your MP3s to CD-Rs. Another
excellent feature of MMJB is its database function. And Nero 6 Ultra will
burn CD-R/RWs and DVDs with out a hiccup. It also will rip, make Video CDs/DVDs,
edit audio and much more.
n.b. The quality of the blank CD, the software used to burn and the drive
used to burn are the key."
****************
To Summarise the LP to CD process
1. Connect the turntable to the amplifier if it is separate.
2. Connect the amplifier TAPE OUT /LINE OUR/AUX socket to the sound card
LINE-IN.
3. Make sure your PC volume control software (found in All programs Accessories,
Entertainment, volume control) has the RECORDING controls set with Line In
checked, and the slider up towards the top.
4. Start up some suitable sound recording software. The one that comes with
Windows is called Sndrec32.exe and can be found in All programs
Accessories, Entertainment
5. Put the record on, hit the record button (red spot?) on your recording
software when the music starts. When the record is over, hit stop on the
software (black square?). Delete any silence from the beginning and the end
using suitable audio recording software, hit File, Export or File, Save and
save it as a .wav or .mp3 file. Sndrec32 will only save as Wav file and these
are massive, so you would need some Wav to MP3 conversion software. Be sure
to convert to a quality (bit rate) that you require.
6. Use crackle removing software if you have some.
7. If it is an LP, you may want to save as separate tracks - you can do this
with your some sound recording software, such as RIP VINYL.
8. Your CD burner will have come with software such as Easy CD or Nero, although
Windows XP has a basic CD burning facility. Now you can use this to select
which tracks you want to burn to audio CD.
Suggested recording software : (The one that comes
with Windows has not been developed for 10 years)
Windows Media Player 11 is a large and very powerful program provided free
with Windows XP and Vista. To download a version to suit your PC click
HERE
bearing in mind that on dialup it will take an hour at least.
Apart from the fact that WMP can be set to play almost any music (and video)
format it is now capable of copying (ripping) music from music CDs and turning
them into WMA (Windows Media Audio) or MP3 file types. These can be
compressed to various degrees and can be played on CD or DVD players, say
in a car or on a portable CD player, or can be played on various portable
devices such as MP3 players. Although the MP3 players may be the size
of a memory stick (the size of a cigarette lighter) they have various
capacities and can certainly hold upwards of 80 recordings.
256Mb model
Simply copy music from a CD onto your PC and save them as MP3 or WMA type.
Plug the player into a USB port. XP will instantly recognised it as an additional
hard disk and you can copy the music to the player - or delete them - in
the normal way. It is a good idea to rename the files appropriately
(rather than leave them called Track 01, Track 02 etc) A program is supplied
to enable earlier Windows versions to recognise the player.
Spin it Again from
www.acoustica.com/spinitagain/
Free trial download (three disks) then $29.95 In addition
to recording your tapes and LP records, dividing tracks up and burning CDs,
it also cleans your recordings!! Get rid of those clicks and pops and crackles!!
DMC, downloaded from
www.dbPoweramp.com. WAV - MP3 conversions
A music wave file editor, free from
www.nch.com.au/wavepad
Audio Recorder DeLuxe, which has WAV, MP3 and WMA formats from
www.computeractive.co.uk/download/1120611
It includes a n MP3 editor for cropping out gaps and introducing fades
Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net
RealPlayer Another program that can 'rip' music from and burn music
to CD's is a 9.7Mb download from
www.real.com.
A useful program for one-click recording of music and video can be found
at http://www.wmrecorder.com/
As you can see music files have various formats and you may need to convert
them from one to another. Cheetah Audio Convertor is a free 9.1Mb
download from
www.computeractive.co.uk/downloads/1154368
Roxio Easy CD or Nero 6 CD recording software from Roxio or
Ahead (Nero)
One can get music organised with Winamp5 Player (4.3Mb, free
from www.winamp.com ), which has been
developing quite a bit of late. Apart from being a music player it is capable
of creating playlists for you (from the music on your hard disk) on the basis
of the sort of music you like. The system is called Predixis Music Magic.
Another program that does this for you is called The Filter, free
from
www.thefilter.com
Creation of music is also covered in the same magazine and they suggest
that can use a program such as Dance Ejay (£30) and a Midi keyboard
to create music, even if you have never had a music lesson in your life,
by dragging and dropping music sequences (loops) into a file and saving it..
The following site also deals with the subject
http://www.jakeludington.com/convert-vinyl/
Recording from and Internet Radio Station
Although it is possible to use Windows Media Player to access radio stations
it does not have facilities to record the programs or music. For this purpose
it is recommended that you get an additional program such as Replay Radio
from Applian. You can download this form www.replay-radio.com to test
it out before buying. There is a setting up procedure, which includes
selecting a radio station. For full details see Page 52-55 of Computer Active
No. 178
Converting Video Tapes to DVD See Computer
Active No 189 Page 53 and
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/getstarted/downloadvideo.mspx
and
http://askbobrankin.com/convert_vhs_to_dvd.html
There are stories that VCR tape recorders are on their way out and companies
such as Dixons will no longer sell them. In this case you may wish
to consider putting your favourite tapes (Weddings etc) onto DVD. Of course,
to do this you will need some equipment that records DVD's. This might
be a DVD recorder sitting next to (or integral with) your VCR. However,
this section concentrates on recording to a DVD recorder in your PC. If
you haven't got one you will find that the prices have come down substantially
and the can be added to your PC quite easily either in addition to your CD
drive or instead of it. However, I would not recommend attempting this
process without a very modern PC with USB2 ports, a chip speed of 1.5Ghz
or more and many Gigabytes of free hard disk space.
Some machines already have internal video capturing cards and have suitable
software to go with them. Otherwise it will be necessary to purchase an external
device e.g. the Dazzle DVC90 from www.pinnaclesys.com, which comes with
video capture software. This device plugs into the USB port and XP
will automatically detect and install a suitable driver. You need to connect
the VCR (or camera) to the Dazzle with a suitable cable. If the camera
has an S-Video socket this is the preferable connection. Otherwise
you need a triple phono to phono cable (£10 from the High Street or
£1 from a cheap store). Or you may find that you can use a Scart to
phono cable from your VCR (similar prices). If you use Pinnacle Studio software
you will find that the recording can be made in MPEG2 format and you can
choose between Low quality Video CD and Medium and High Quality DVD. There
is also the option to record in AVI format but these are very large and not
recommended for this job. You may need to download an MPEG 2 Codec from Pinnacle
at this time. Have a go at recording a couple of minutes then check the result.
If it says there are a lot of 'dropped frames' you may need to reduce
the resolution from the standard 720 x 576 in order to get a better result.
Next record a longer piece of video and note where it is saved on the
PC hard disk. It is suggested that you break up the files into more than
one, naming them different things. Next, to burn the video to disk you will
require some additional software such as Nerovision Express. A trial
version can be downloaded from Nero.. Load the program and click on
Make DVD and select DVD-Video. Select Add Video Files and then go to
the folder where you have recorded them and select all of the files you created.
You will be given the opportunity to Create Chapters. If you do this
the viewer will be able to jump from one chapter to another using their video
player - otherwise they will only be able to go though the video from beginning
to end though they could Fast Forward. Click the green button to start recording
and click Add Chapter where you wish to make a Chapter break. If you
prefer you can experiment with the Auto Chaptering facility whereby chapters
are inserted at set intervals. With the Pinnacle software you are offered
Templates for titles, which can be amended with text such as " Our Holiday
2005". Click on Next and Burn. It is possible to amend the speed
of recording at this stage.
Please help me improve this site by completing my
Feedback Form especially if any links are bad
Since 1999 there has been a great deal of illegal track downloading by people
(and swapping of music between PC owners) who paid nothing for the tracks
despite them being copyright. Eventually the music industry got fed
up with this and successfully took music sites and individuals to court,
so that illegal downloading is now much reduced. The original illegal
site, Napster www.napster.co.uk, has
now become legitimate and charges a monthly subscription. This gives
access to 2,000,000 tracks. But if you wish to put the music onto a CD or
portable player you will have to pay an additional 99p per track. HMV have
a similar arrangement (monthly fee + pay per tune if you want to put hem
on CD/DVD. Tracks on all sites (apart from Apple) are coded as WMA (Windows
Media Audio) or MP3 and can be played with Windows Media Player. Apple uses
an AAC format that is only playable on iPods or with iPod software on a PC.
To convert Itunes tracks to MP3 format see
http://www.askbobrankin.com/convert_itunes_to_mp3_format.html Also
have a look at
http://askbobrankin.com/download_with_bittorrent.html
for downloading with Bittorrent software
If you want to make sure a site is legal go to the British Phonographic Institute
site at www.pro-music.org. Parents should bear in mind that they would
be legally responsible for the downloading habits of their children and could
be fined.
A record player with amplifier and Line Out, Aux or headphone socket
A suitable cable from this to the Line In socket on your sound card. You
CAN use a microphone but may get extraneous noises off.
A CD or DVD writer, blank CDs and software such as Ahead Nero or Roxio
EasyCD
Some form of cleanup software if you wish to clean up pops, hisses and crackles
e.g. Nero Soundtrax
To edit and convert sound files you may wish to download other software.
See suggestions below
So, how does one start to record from your old turntable and get the music
into a format that can be heard on your PC or on your car's CD player, MP3
player or even your DVD player ?
Quintessential player is free from
http://www.computeractive.co.uk/vnunet/downloads/2128832/quintessential-player-51
. around
£30 upwards depending on capacity
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