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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Thursday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week - March 2, 2005 |
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Bringing
Baby Boomers into the MP3 generation, or – do you bear the mark of the
Geezer? When I
was a boy in the 50’s I used to love to listen to music on my
folk’s stereo. I listened to 45 rpm records of early rock’n’roll songs. Since then, music has gone
through several generations of storage media – to 8 track tapes, to
cassette tapes, then to cd’s , then dvd’s, and now to the most popular form of music
storage – MP3 players. A lot of
baby boomers like myself are very familiar with
computers, but we’ve lagged far behind in terms of music
technology. We have boxes of old
records stored somewhere in our house or garage, with the best intentions of
someday having a record hop party and inviting all your friends over to do
the bop, and wear jeans and a tshirt, or a blouse
and poodle skirt. I had
thought of doing that recently, and dragged out a box of my old records, and
then realized I didn’t have a record player any more. I tried playing
some of my old high school 45’s on a friends system, and they sounded
horrible, with all the scratches and pops and hisses. So I
turned to the internet for help, and found an old friend who had just the
solution to my technology fix. There used to be a great computer electronics
catalog named the DAK catalog back in the 80’s and 90’s which
always had great electronic gadgets, ccompanied
with a lot of hyperbole, but the products always were good. Now this
catalog is online DAk Catalog and they have a gadget designed for Baby
Boomers to painlessly enter the MP3 world - Sold as the “LP’s to
CD’s and MP3 Perfection, - for $ 75 including shipping, this is a
hardware/software combination that lets you record your old records to your
computer, eliminating all the scratches and noise. The PC
Mixer interface connects between your record turntable and your pc, and is
very simple to operate – set a few switches and you’re ready to
go. You download the software from the DAK website, and that installs easily,
and you also get an electronic book tutorial on how to do everything. Then you
put your first old record on the turntable, start it playing, and record it
to your computer – in real time – or about 3 minutes. You save
this first as a wav file – which is pretty big – maybe 35 megs
– and then you run the pop/hiss filter software on it to eliminate noise
– maybe another 3 minutes. Then you use the recording software again to
convert it to an MP3 file, which reduces the file size by about 90% down to
less than 3 megs. Maybe 8 minutes total to record an old record, eliminate
the noise, and convert it to MP3 format. I
estimate you could burn about 250 of these MP3 files to one music cd, or you could download them to an Mp3 player also. If you
don’t have a turntable. Dak sells a
professional turntable with the software for under $ 250. So I
still plan on having a 50’s record hop party someday, but the music is
going to sound a lot better – cd quality. Now
I just need to find my blue suede shoes ... Betty Lou, have you seen my
shoes, wonder if that hound dog got ‘em ... For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2005 MTA Micro Technology
Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html (509)624-7230 |
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