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Having the Audacity
Since moving to the Mac, I’ve been discovering lots of different software. One of the most useful so far is called Audacity.
Audacity is a free utility that lets you turn your old analogue music (you know, cassettes, vinyl, etc) into shiny 21st Century digital media - all at the click of a button. I’ve been looking for just this for ages now, but didn’t want to spend too much money on it - I’ve only got a small number of tapes and vinyl LP’s that I’d want to transfer over. So, I saw this mentioned in a blog post (which I now can’t find) and thought I’d give it a go.
Once you’ve downloaded (there are versions for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows) the software and installed it all you have to do is connect up your source. I’m using an old tape deck that I picked up cheap a few months ago. I’ve connected the left and right outputs on the deck to my Mac’s input socket using a two-into-one cable. To record, just run Audacity start your source and click the big red button. That’s it.
When you’ve finished recording (I’m transferring my old Jasper Carrott tapes at the moment so each recording takes 45 minutes), you’ve then got the option of what to do with the file. You can export as .WAV, .MP3 or Ogg Vorbis. I haven’t tried that last one, and to make MP3’s directly from Audacity requires a plug-in that looked a little complicated to install so I export as .WAV. I then open the file in iTunes and convert it to MP3 from there. Job done.
I only started using this software the other day, so haven’t had a chance to really delve deeply into it and see what it can do but so far I’m really quite impressed. I’m fairly sure that it also has more advanced features like removing noise, etc, which I’ll want when I start moving some of my vinyl over. I’ll keep you posted on how I get on.
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I think you know what to do....
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