[NTLUG:Discuss] linux and recordings

[steve at sjbaker.org]

> All
> These are amateur home recordings so we are not talking about copyrights
> or licensing issues, OK?
> We are talking about audio only
> What might be the simplest way to made audio CD's from analog tape
> recordings?

First get the data into digital form - so plug your tape deck into the
LINE input on your sound card, fire up Audacity (for example) - press PLAY
on the tape deck and RECORD on Audacity - hit STOP when you're done.  It
may take a couple of tries to get the volume levels adjusted right - but
once you have the right settings, it's easy.

Audacity will let you chop the file up into separate tracks (or whatever)
and tweak volume levels and such - and save them in a variety of formats.

If you are going to make a true audio CD - then you need to save the audio
as a raw ".wav" file or something and burn your disk with software that
knows specifically how to make an audio CD.  I have done this successfully
under Linux - but I don't specifically recall all of the steps involved.

BUT: Many modern CD players will play MP3's from a data CD.  My car's CD
player will do that - and so will the DVD player that's hooked up to my
home theater system.  My car will even play .ogg files - so you can avoid
the ikky legalities of MP3 recording and be TRULY OpenSourced.  If this is
good enough for you than save your audio into MP3/OGG with whatever level
of quality you can live with and you'll get VASTLY more music onto one
disk than the paltry 72 minutes could get with an audio recording - and
the process of burning the CD-ROM is no different than making a regular
CD-ROM.

  -- Steve