100lbs Manure in a 10oz Bag?

Fanning through the Sunday circulars one might infer that PCs are designed predominantly for photo editing and filing. What, if like me, one is more a music kind of guy? I have 4-step process – with an optional 5th (Hey, you’ll need that at the end!)

The picture of seven boxes contains LPs, CDs, cassette tapes. (No, I am not proud of this.) Worse, the combined weight exceeds 250 pounds/120Kg/20stn. Is that the millstone one wants to carry around through moves – particularly when some have never been played? Sure, easy to throw out the duds (and Barbra Streisand sure made a bunch …), but some are classics: whether it is all the Beatles or all the Gilbert & Sullivan. Some cannot be found anywhere else – they never made it to CD level. Like my prep school rock band.

The process to convert all this music was surprisingly simple:

1. A turntable (with or without stereo attached! Mine is stand-alone.)

2. A cable with adaptor pieces to connect the turntable (3 RCA components in my case) to the PC. On a stereo, it could be as simple as an 8-foot cable going from the headphones/out on the stereo to the mic/in on the PC

3. Program to capture and edit (I bought Polderbits for $30)

4. iTunes program – a free download from Apple.

The iPod (at $250) actually is not necessary, as one can play the music on the PC and even through the stereo. It could be as simple as reversing the cable to headphones/out on the PC to mic/in on the stereo. Just follow the flow: out from where the music is to in on where it is to be played.

All of this is necessary for LPs, tape cassettes, 45’s, 78’s – anything that cannot be played on the PC. CDs, therefore, can go straight into iTunes with so little effort, one wonders if one did something wrong.

There may in fact be alternatives, but I have not tested them. As the backing-up of music becomes more popular, more tools have been developed. The common ones, Crosley and Ion, convert records to CDs. Others convert audio cassettes.

iTunes is probably the best database product I have seen run on Windows. To get started, I would recommend just copying some music CDs to it to see its power.

Not only have I been able to take digital pictures of the LP covers and transfer them to iTunes, to recognize my music, but also scan in lyrics and post them as well. It is truly a phenomenal package. Just as I would flip through albums in a box, iTunes will scroll through the covers.

On the downside, yes, it is very labor intensive, which is the reason I would start with a Top 10 or 25 albums, or a collection (eg, Beethoven Piano Concertos). On seeing favorites up on iTunes, ones enthusiasm continues to grow. Other than the initial copying from LP to PC – a process requiring little/no babysitting – a simple album (eg, 10 songs, Joan Baez) may take 10-20 minutes from editing to iTunes conversion. Now I am putting more in the database than just the album name, as I post remarks on every track. Less rigorously, one could convert an album in ten minutes – tops. The exceptions are the double albums from concerts, in which applause, screaming, band banter confuses the start of one song and the next. Separation then becomes a radically more labor intensive process.

Of course, one could just keep it simple: Side 1 and Side 2 – which might work for, say, The Mikado or The Messiah.

Oh, did I forget to say one can also catalog all ones VHS/Beta tapes? Lazer disks? DVDs? Well, one can watch old -- or new –movies just as easily on the PC or an iPod. It’s as simple as a handful of cables and programs … ooo, maybe another 500Gb external USB hard drive …


Archie specializes in tutoring and training of seniors in PC security, Windows, Internet, and Microsoft Office. He holds the CompTIA A+ certification and is often featured speaker at Goodwin House in Alexandria; he can be emailed at ama3@tfci-us.com