Vinyl to iTunes: Audacity vs. Sound Studio

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Level 1

5 points

Vinyl to iTunes: Audacity vs. Sound Studio

I've got a collection of probably 100 or so LPs that I'm planning to record and then import. Any advice people have on the subject would be welcome, but my specific question at the moment is whether it would be worth paying for Sound Studio rather than using Audacity.

I'm not incredibly well-versed in the technical aspects, but I'm not afraid of learning about the techie stuff as need be. However, one major factor for me is time. I've got 3 kids, a busy job, etc., so if it's a matter of having to think through what settings I want and then using them going forward, that's great, but I'm not likely to be able to spend a lot of time cleaning and processing each track individually.

Therefore, one key issue for me is whether Sound Studio will save time as compared to Audacity. Either through the program itself or scripts that may be floating around out there, will Sound Studio automate parts of the process that Audacity will not (or vice versa, for that matter)? For example, I've read that labeling and splitting tracks into separate files can be a bit time-consuming in Audacity and somewhat more efficient in Sound Studio. Another area where I could imagine there might be differences would be in naming and managing the audio files with a minumum of steps and keystrokes.

Any views out there on the Audacity vs. Sound Studio question, especially regarding efficient use of time?

PowerBook 15", Mac OS X (10.4), 1.67 GHz G4, 1GB RAM

Posted on Aug 3, 2007 7:46 AM

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Answer 1

J. J. Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 3, 2007 8:06 AM in response to J. J.

Probably should have mentioned that I'm using a turntable with a USB connector, in case that matters.

I also should have proofread the post and corrected the typo in the word "minimum."

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Answer 2

Aug 4, 2007 5:52 AM in response to J. J.

For my efforts I used Roxio Spin Doctor and Griffin Final Vinyl and an iMic.

Your largest expenditure of time will be in the actual conversion of analog to digital as it is in real time and cannot be done any faster than you can spin the vinyl.

MJ

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Answer 3

J. J. Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 5, 2007 8:41 AM in response to Mike Johnson12

I know. If I were 10 or 15 years younger, I'd be asking where the 24x turntables are.

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Answer 4

WOZ

Level 1

65 points

Aug 10, 2007 5:03 AM in response to J. J.

The usb turntable will give you a nice clean input, naming the songs will take a while, you could pass on that. Audacity is very fast and easy, and if you get stuck you can email them, they are very fast with help, and very nice. I would go with them.

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Answer 5

Aug 15, 2007 4:26 PM in response to J. J.

Before digitizing a vinyl LP, you should probably ask yourself: "Why am I doing this?"

If the answer is "Because the music on the LP is not available on a CD," then proceed - but if the answer is "Because I'm too cheap to buy the CD," please reconsider. The process of converting an LP to CD is very time consuming, not free, and the finished product will probably never sound as good as a commercially made CD.

For general recording, including LPs, I recommend "Audio Hijack Pro" ($32 - http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/) I prefer Audio Hijack Pro to Final Vinyl and CD Spin Doctor, because I can use it to record from many more sources (including streaming audio from the internet), it has many more options for effects and file types, a better Help manual, and, in my experience, fewer crashes. I haven't used either Audacity or Sound Studio.

If you are recording into standard AIFF (16 bit, 44.1kHz) - which is what I would recommend, I'm not sure naming your tracks with your recording software will do you any good. As far as I know, Album Title and Track Title are not encoded into AIFF, so if you move the files to iTunes, you would have to rename everything. If you record into MP3, it is possible the track names can be encoded into the files.

If your main goal is to burn the LPs as CDs to play in your home or car stereo, there is really not much point in naming them at all. If the main goal is to keep the music in your iTunes library so you can listen to it on your compter and burn custom-mix CDs, then you will need to name everything, but I would do that in iTunes, and I don't know of any way around the tedium of reading the info from the back of Album jacket and typing it in, one letter at a time.

For a suggested work flow, you might want to read my expanded post here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1081927

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