Why hasn't anyone come up with something like an iTunes Music Store for 12" singles? There's a business idea for someone.

Actually, you could stop calling them 12" singles I guess if they're not on vinyl any more. I'm sure some vinyl purists will say that it's better to rip your vinyl because of the quality of sound you get playing through a turntable, but is the difference really that important when you consider the ease of portability with digital music versus vinyl? Well, then there's the debate over whether the experience of mixing on software or even using an interface like Traktor/Stanton Final Scratch is the same as mixing vinyl. I don't know. My apartment is small and I'm a bedroom DJ, so I'd like to use one of these more often if I could get past the barrier of having to rip all my vinyl.

I as talking to a few colleagues at the IA Salon about some new ways to use hardware/software to control audio -- applications that mix tactile physical interfaces with digital audio.

FinalScratch is commercial software and hardware (cable interfaces and special records) that work with turntables to allow a DJ to play and scrub (move back and forth) through MP3s on the computer. A video on TechTV shows how it all works.

Audiopad is a remarkable project at MIT that uses a projected image interface (a la Minority Report) and a physical widget that looks something like a plastic disk to select and control play of audio tracks and use filters against them. The video is truly amazing.

I've been enjoying emusic immensely, but I really have to spend more time listening to music on GarageBand.com. There is just so much independent music out there, some of it good, some of it not so good. There's no reason to limit yourself to whatever iTunes Store or the Virgin Megastore have to offer.

Update: Appropriate tools are finally available for you to rip your vinyl without these kludgy methods. I'm currently using my turntables through Numark's DMX01 USB Mixer.

Last week I documented my experience ripping MP3s from vinyl using the free tools that came with Roxio Toast and iTunes. This week I looked further at inexpensive commercial audio digitizing applications to find out what the advantages are over using CD Disk Doctor and iTunes. To skip to my summary, head down to the end of this page.

Note that this is a summary of software and not a tutorial on connecting your turntable to your computer. There are some good web sites with detailed information about how to connect your gear, such as this one. The rundown in this: 1) you need to connect your turtable to a preamp or mixer, 2) can connect yor RCA jacks to your Mac's audio input if you have one using an RCA to stereo 1/8" mini plug (alternatively use an audio interface such as Griffin Technology's iMic or Powerwave or Gigaport AG).

Giving up on free for better quality MP3

After ripping a few singles I found the Poor Man's Process to be serviceable, but lacking with respect to editing and encoding and file compression. CD Disk Doctor does not let you manually edit your recordingss. So if there are gaps at the beginning and end of your recording, you have to find an audio editor or be very careful to cue your tracks on the turntable and hit record on the Mac simultaneously. Additionally, iTunes doesn't seem to compress the AIFF files when converting MP3s, resulting in large files that are unaccepatable for MP3s. I also found that having to convert my AIFFs in iTunes then removing the original AIFF files from iTunes seems an unnecessary hassle. So I set out to look for tools that will let me 1) record/digitize audio, 2) edit and normalize, and 3) convert/export to MP3. The tools had to do all of this without using multiple applications. Someone suggested that I try the Linux application Gramofile, which supposedly works on OS X, but I didn't find much documentation about getting it to work on OS X and am skeptical about fine editting audio with a text interface. I was lucky to find that the July edition of Mac Addict magazine had an article on turning vinyl into MP3s, so I started demoing the apps they suggested first.

The software

I demoed some audio recording tools, and discovered that they do recording, but not MP3 conversion. Here's the tools I demoed that didn't help me meet my goals.

• Black Cat Systems Audiocorder 3.7.1 (Suggested pricing, pay as little as a $1)
• Kumulipo Jasmine 1.5.7 ($29.95)

Here are the tools that I seriously evaluated because they offer recording, editing and encoding. (I included Sound Studio below even though it doesn't offer encoding because there doesn't seem to be a reason why it shouldn't.)

• Audacity 1.1.3 beta (free)
• Felt Tip Sound Studio 2.1 ($49.99)
• Bias Peak LE 3.2 ($109 for disk shipped from Bias; If you own Toast Titanium, Jam with Peak LE can be purchased for $89.95.)

Reviews

Audacity

Audacity 1.1.3 beta is a promising open source audio recorder and editor that offers MP3 exporting using the LAME encoder. I demoed the beta because earlier versions on OS X don't offer MP3 exporting. Some drawbacks to using Audacity include a UI that needs a lot of work toward being more usable. There is no play-through option (so you can hear what you are recording), editting is difficult because there is no visible eyebeam/insertion point icon when using the selection tool. I also encountered a few show-stopping bugs which I hope would be fixed when the application is out of beta such as poor quality sound on MP3s and pitch insonsistencies (MP3s sounded faster than recorded tracks) and had a few unexpected quits while exporting. For a free application, Audacity looks like it will be a worthwhile app., but it needs a bit of work before I use it on OS X. Windows and Linux users might have better luck with it.

Sound Studio

I demoed Felt Tip Sound Studio 2.1 because it reminded me of SoundEdit, which I remember being a very easy to use audio editing tool. SoundEdit is a well designed audio recording and editing application that makes recording and editing a simple task. It offers play-through, input level sliders, simple playback and record buttons, a timeline for getting an overview of your entire track, editing timelines for Left and Right channels, simple click and drag selection to edit areas of your track, and a good selection of filters to normalize, apply EQ and fades to your track. Sadly, Sound Studio doesn't offer an option to export to MP3. The company indicates that this is a conscious decision not to license the technology in order to keep the price low. I'm a little confused on that point, however, because Audacity and Peak use the open source LAME encoder, which is offered under the GPL. It seems more likely that they don't have the resources or time to include this functionality, which means you'll be doing your encoding in iTunes or some other app.

Peak LE

Bias Peak LE 3.2 is the most costly of the applications I looked at and has the most features. The UI is a bit cluttered and not as cleanly designed as Sound Studio, resembling an OS 9 app that needs a bit of an OS X face lift. The biggest gripe I have is that I have to organize the windows a bit manually. The application would help users by allowing window docking and perhaps allowing us to organize our multiple windows into a single window with tabs perhaps. I have this same gripe about the UI on tools like BBEdit, which I want to look more organized like PhotoShop. UI minutae aside, Peak offers the best functionalities of the inexpensive tools I've looked at, including play-through while recording, MP3 encoding with LAME (be sure to download the LameLib_Bundle.sit and drop the expanded file in your Peak folder), simple cursor positioning and selection of track areaas for editing, a good selection of filters, simple ID3 tag entry, and creates small MP3 files. Peak also offers the ability to select a skin to alter the colors of your editing window so you can view your waveform more easily.

Summary

All-in-all, Peak seems to be the application that works best for my needs at the moment. It makes the process of ripping and encoding vinyl much smoother for me than the cheap/free tools I evaluated a week ago and ensures that I can get my vinyl to my Mac quickly and with little effort. Sound Studio would replace Peak as the better tool if they could get LAME encoding included in their app (no idea why they can't). Audacity looks like it's on its way to being a good app once the bugs are worked out. Apparently Gramofile is supposed to be all that, but for the life of me, I still can't see editing a wavefile with a text-based UI. Someone can prove me wrong if they document the process on OS X, but I have yet to see that. So I've ordered my Jam/Peak upgrade from Roxio and am going this route for the time being. I welcome any feedback from anyone sharing my experience or with suggestions or tips for better vinyl ripping.

ESI GIGAPort AG and the Griffin PowerWave seem to be best audio interfaces for the Mac.

Update: Read the reviews here.

I've been doing more demoing of audio recording and encoding applications this week and plan on a review/analysis of the offerings by next week. Here's what I'm looking at:

• Audacity 1.1.3 beta (free)
• Black Cat Systems Audiocorder 3.7.1 (Suggested pricing, pay as little as a $1)
• Kumulipo Jasmine 1.5.7 ($29.95)
• Felt Tip Sound Studio 2.1 ($49.99)
• Bias Peak LE 3.2 ($109 for disk shipped from Bias; If you own Toast Titanium, Jam with Peak LE can be purchased for $89.95.)

Apparently Gramofile (free software) works on OS X as well, but I haven't seen anyone document their experience installing it. I'm curious to see how a text-based audio tool would work. If anyone has any tips for installing on OS X, I'd be happy to review that as well.

Goal this time around is to find the applications that provide the best experience recording and encoding audio from vinyl to MP3. Am paying attention to usability with regard to: interface and interaction design as they relate to recording/monitoring, editing and encoding; quality and size of encoded files; best price for features and experience. A lot of these tools are looking better already. More to come. Stay tuned.

Second update: Appropriate tools are finally available for you to rip your vinyl without these kludgy methods. I'm currently using my turntables through Numark's DMX01 USB Mixer.

Update: The "Poor man" experiment was my first try at coming up with a process to rip vinyl. I've concluded that the poor man process produces rather large MP3s of decent quality, which is unacceptable to me. I am demoing shareware and low-cost commercial recorders/encoders that produce smaller file sizes with better sound reproduction and which allow editing. See Better Vinyl to MP3 Conversion (Mac OS X) for a review of alternative applications. Someone has also suggested using ProTools Free, but that only works for OS 9, unfortunately.

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In the past 6 months I have been freeing my time up from professional activities to focus on getting our family settled in our new Park Slope home and to allow myself more time to get back to some of the things I enjoy that have been neglected. One of these things is mixing music.

I was once a mobile DJ in high school and college and have long been a bedroom DJ. But personal and professional commitments pushed mixing music to the side for a long time. A few weeks ago, however, I found Traktor DJ Studio and wondered if I could find a way to play at mixing again. So I started planning to set up my turntables on my desk so I could experiment with low-cost methods of getting my vinyl onto my Mac as MP3S. Thanks to a bit of terminal insomnia, I got up this morning around 3am and burned my first two tracks. Here's my notes about the process.

Equipment

Hardware

• Apple Macintosh G4 QuickSilver 1.42Ghz DP with 120GB HD
• Cornea MP704 17" LCD monitor
• Mini Stereo (3.5MM) to Dual RCA Plugs
• Technics SL1200MK2 Direct Drive turntables
• Vestax Mixtick Pro Mixer
• Benwin flat panel speakers
• Headphones

Software

• CD Spin Doctor (comes with free Roxio Toast 5 Titanium ~ USD $89.95)
• iTunes 4 (free)

The process overview

Set up was fairly easy. I set up the turntables and mixer on the desk and ran RCA -> mini stereo cables from the Rec out on the mixer (or preamp if you don't have a mixer) to the audio input on the back of the mac. Then it's just a matter of recording your tracks to the Mac as .aiff and encoding the .aiff as .mp3. Recording and encoding tracks went like this:

Step 1. Record audio using CD Spin Doctor

1. Open "Applications > Roxio Toast Titanium > Roxio Music > CD Spin Doctor > CD Spin Doctor 1.5.1"
2. Cue track on turntable
3. Press red record button on CD Spin Doctor and play/release record and wait until the song finishes.
4. Press Stop button on CD Spin Doctor and stop turntable.
5. Optionally click the waveform-looking button to run any normalization filters in CD Spin Doctor to remove pops or boost volume.
6. Select "File > Save as" and save your .aiff track somewhere.

Step 3. Convert aiff to mp3 in iTunes

1. Open "Applications > iTunes".
2. In the Finder, open the folder where you saved your aiff file and move your windows around so you can see the folder and iTunes.
3. Drag your aiff file into iTunes.
4. Find your aiff file. Easiest way to do this that I know of is by being in Browse mode (click the Eye icon in the upper right). Select "Library" in the Source pane on the left. Select "All" in the artist pane at the top . Your track should be at the bottom of the list because it will have no Artist value.
5. With the track selected, select "Advanced > Convert Selection to MP3". iTunes will show a temporary playlist that reads "Converting Songs..." while it encodes your track.
6. Remove the original aiff file. Select the new track and click CMD-i to add Artist and Album information if you want. I also added Genre "Vinyl" to my tracks so I can find them quickly. I don't use Genre otherwise in iTunes.

Voila. You now have an mp3 of your vinyl. I found this very simple. I had done this a long time ago on my G3 using a shareware app like Peak LE or something (I don't recall the correct name of the app). This went much smoother because of the built-in MP3 encoding in iTunes and because of the speediness of my Mac. The main purpose of this experiment was to see if I could get away with ripping my vinyl without having to spend a lot of money on ProTools and other hardware. I really spent nothing to do this because I already had the hardware and Roxio Toast Titanium.

So I'm going to keep at it, ripping selected tracks from my collection so I can start playing with mixing on a computer using Traktor (see screenshot below of my first play session). If you know of any easier way to do this process with little investment, please tell me about it.

Read more in: "Better Vinyl to MP3 encoding".