AudioA2D

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Digital audio from Analog sources Preserving music / audio from Cassette, LP record, VCR audio, et. al.

--eagleheart 22:45, 13 Jan 2005 (EST)

A simple description which I view as a starting point for something ultimately more detailed
and useful. Most certainly welcoming additions, corrections, enhancements, etc. ;^)
This write-up relies upon KDE tools but there are certainly other approaches.

Contents

[edit] Creating WAV files

[edit] Wiring

  • Grab a 3.5mm-to-RCA stereo adaptor cable. About $1 from your favorite electronics retailer.
  • Red and white plugs in Line Out of your legacy device; other end to the blue Audio In of your sound card (but you knew that, right?).

[edit] Kmix

  • Initially Kmix will show up as an icon on your taskbar. Right click and select Show Mixer Window.
  • Make sure the Line (In) volume is activated. About 2/3 of the way up is a good start. Tweak at will.
  • Move the IGain volume up, to perhaps 1/3. Again, adjust as necessary.

[edit] Krecord

  • If you wish, select Options-> 'Freq spectrum...' and 'Input Level...' monitors.
  • File ->"New memory buffer". (File->“Delete buffer” first if necessary.)

[edit] Ready to Record.

  • Start your legacy audio device.
  • Verify that you have sound coming thru (line out of your sound card to speakers, and /or freq spectrum display).
  • Position to start and pause.
  • Krecord: Start recording by clicking the red "record" button. Start (unpause) legacy device. You might have a root console separately running `watch -d free` (or `nice -n 19 top`) to monitor your free RAM. You want to avoid going over into swap (virtual memory).
  • When finished with the immediate session in krecord:
    • click the square grey stop button.
    • File->”Save buffer as...”: Create a .wav file.
  • Check your work with XMMS or any other good audio player.

[edit] Creating (pc-independent) playable cd's from WAV

[edit] kernel < 2.6 requiring SCSI cd drives or SCSI-emulated ATAPI drives

  • Move or Copy all targeted .wav files to a dedicated directory.
  • (CLI) $ cdrecord -scanbus
    to identify your writer's “channel,id,lun(logical unit number)”. Below it's 0,0,0.
  • (CLI) $ cdrecord -v -eject speed=0 dev=0,0,0 driveropts=burnfree -audio -pad /path-to-wavs/*.wav

[edit] kernel 2.6.x

  • (CLI) $ cdrecord -v -eject speed=0 dev=ATAPI:0,0,0 driveropts=burnfree
    could someone confirm this and also whether udev needs to be active / properly configured? Thanks

[edit] Simple editing with audacity

  • Start program audacity. You may want to enable a 'safe setting' regarding your .wav source in File->Preferences->File Formats->"Make a copy of the file before editing".
  • File->Open...(select .wav). It will take several seconds to import depending on the size.
  • Play to review.
  • Left Click and Drag to select the section you want to export.
  • Export Selection to .wav, or to ogg vorbis / mp3 (see below).

[edit] Writing Digital Music Player files with audacity

(Note: you could transfer the .wav file to a digital audio device - well, iPod can handle 
.wav - but .wav files are relatively huge compared to compressed formats. Other reasons for 
choosing ogg/mp3 vs .wav ...??)
  • Open .wav file with audacity.
  • If necessary, select portion for export (see "Simple Editing...", above).
  • Choose export [selection] to ogg or mp3.
  • If you choose mp3 it will prompt you the first time for the location of libmp3lame.so.
    • If you don't have it you can download the source tarball from
      http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=290
    • (CLI) $ ./configure [--prefix=/usr]
      ...or another prefix of your choosing if you don't want the default of /usr/local.
    • there are some options in configure for a GTK frame analyzer and other stuff but they aren't needed for your task above.
    • (CLI) $ make; make install
      ...may need to be root for latter.
  • Again, if exporting mp3, it will prompt you to enter the ID3 tags: Choose 1 of ID3v1 / ID3v2. ID3v1 is called "more compatible".
  • As before, check your work with a (desktop) audio player.
  • Transfer to iPod or other Digital Music Player. Rio and Samsung have models that support ogg vorbis. I'm sure there are others.

[edit] Writing Digital Music Player files with glame

TBD

[edit] Useful References

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/MP3-HOWTO.html   Well written, detailed. Last updated Dec 2001 but 
still very relevant. 
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/MP3-CD-Burning/index.html   Actually MP3 to WAV to cd, Some finer points
concerning cd preparation, using disk-at-once method, etc. 
http://www.alsa-project.org/
http://www.djcj.org/LAU/guide/index.php  this link appears on the alsa main page but is worth mentioning
 by itself.   
http://plus24.com/mp3-howto/  last updated 2001

[edit] Testing Specs

Compaq Presario, Athlon 1.67Ghz
512Mb RAM
'soundcard' used was an on-board VIA VT8233/A/8235 chip. A real card - Soundblaster or whatever - is recommended for quality encoding.
SUSE Linux 9.0
kernel 2.4.21
KDE 3.1.4
alsa 0.9.6-96, (SUSE binary rpm)
KMix 1.91
KRecord 1.15
audacity 1.2.0 (SUSE binary rpm. Current (Dec-2004) stable version is 1.2.3)

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