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[samarah88]

I am currently converting my LP and Cassette collection to CD, I am using a standalone Philips CDRW that is hooked to my stereo system.

I have tried several recording methods and have found the easiest way is to record the entire LP/cassette side to a CDRW-Music. I then copy this full track into Media Center 10 and here is where I need help.

What I am trying to do is cut each song from the large track and then tag them manually. I have tried Media Editor but it is taking quite some time to locate and cut the songs from the large track.

Is there any functionality that would allow me to easily locate the start and end of each song, then cut out the songs to create seperate tracks?

Any help would be appreciated. I do have other media tools such as Acid 2.0 and Sound Forge, but I would like to stay within Media Center if there is an easy solution.

[MachineHead]

You should be able to set track points with your stand alone, shouldn't you? A friend of mine has an Aiwa that will do this for his LP to CD conversions. But it took a call to their support to figure out how to do it....

[samarah88]

Well there are several modes I can set for recording. There is a mode that is supposed to recognize the silence between tracks and increment automatically. This works only about 70% of the time. Because of that,  I still have to split the tracks if I want seperate songs. There is also a manual mode, but I have to manually press "increment track" between songs. I do have workable method, but I'm looking for a better method. The way I do it now is just more time consuming than I would like.

Thanks for the response though.

[DJMUK]

I have over the years been converting old tapes and LP's to APE files and I agree that it is a very, very time consuming task.

I do not have a stand-alone CD-RW but if the large file you are transferring to MC is a WAV file rather than an MP3 you might like to consider a small utility called 'CD Wave Editor' from www.cdwave.com.

It, like your recorder, will try to split the track by the silence between them but if this does not work you can do it manually.  The advantage is that you see a representation of the WAV file and can easily spot the gaps yourself.  If needed you can play from any point in the file to check you have got it right.  You then click the gap to mark a track change.  Having done that for all tracks they are written out as separate files based on the names you provide.

I have used this for some years now and it is much quicker than having to listen to the whole recording to manually mark the tracks.

If the file produced by your stand-alone CD-RW is MP3 you could do a similar job with Adobe Auditron (formerly, Cool Edit Pro) but this costs quite a bit.  There may be other similar utilities that I do not know of.

I hope this is of help.

David

[samarah88]

Thanks for the information.

I am going to spend some time over the holidays playing with a few different software packages and pulling out the old turntable.

[zevele10]

For LPs you can put time of the songs .
Recorder will ,in this case ,make a new file for each tracks

You have to click on tracks on the top right just after the Artist & Album to get the window.

Most of the time cassettes do not have time of the songs .
But ,by playing with 'Enable Automatic Tracks Splitting ' you may get much better result than 70% succes.

It takes some time to set all, because you have to try and see the result.
But ,after that it will work fine.

Of cause you ALWAYS will get some cassettesor lps not giving a good resul .
But not that much.

[DJMUK]

I am going to spend some time over the holidays playing with a few different software packages and pulling out the old turntable.

Good luck!  I still have about 300 LP's/tapes to do, unfortunately, work gets in the way!

I tried numerous software packages but have always come back to 'CDWave' for the initial recording of the WAV file.  I usually then take the whole file, i.e. one LP/Tape side into 'Auditron' to de-noise and de-click it, also to 'normalise' if needed.  Then return the WAV to 'CDWave' to do the track splitting.

Prior to finding MC I used to then use 'dbPowerAmp' to convert to APE or MP3 and 'MP3 Tag Studio' to tag.  I would now import the split up WAV's into MC and do the rest from their.

David

[modelmaker]

I use Magix AudioCleaningLab (not free), it's similar to CD Wave Editor, but also has all the clean-up tools built in and an mp3 converter. AcLab can also rip and burn CDs. (I usually export the completed wav file(s) and convert with MC to APE or MP3).

Track splitting on LPs is about 95% accurate and w/ tapes upwards of 85% and is fully adjustable, (tapes have more background noise so that threshold needs to be adjusted for).

Amoungst pop/click/scratch/adjustable hiss/noise removal and 12 band EQ, it can also adjust speed and pitch. Also accepts directX plug-ins.

Next to MC it's the best $50 I've spent for converting all of my tapes and LPs. It also gets an A+ for ease of use. It looks and works like a piece of audio equipment - not a computer program. It's very intuitive and efficient.

Just my 2 cents. I do NOT work for the company!


Listening to: 'Where Do the Children Play?' from 'Tea for the Tillerman' by 'Cat Stevens' on Media Center 9.0

[zevele10]

There is a program that allows you to rip your LP at greater speed.
45 or [ i think]78 RPM.
Ask Charlemagne8 , he brought it one or two years ago.

True that automatic splitting when ripping is less easy with cassettes.

I also used dbPowerAmp. But i think that with a correct volume setting you get better sound with Mc.

But i do the first general volume setting with dbPowerAmp.
When the volume looks ok with dnPo..A.. , i take this setting as the starting one to set volume in MC.

All my LPs are mint ,so i never used any very sophisticated software.
From time to time i got a noise present in the original pressing.
But i do not feel it is worth time and money to correct it.
So i use only Mc recorder.