{"id":5134,"date":"2014-02-18T11:01:42","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T19:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=5134"},"modified":"2014-02-18T11:10:28","modified_gmt":"2014-02-18T19:10:28","slug":"ripping-vinyl-to-itunes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/18\/ripping-vinyl-to-itunes\/","title":{"rendered":"Ripping Vinyl to iTunes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ripping-vinyl-to-iTunes process has two main stages.
\n(1) Getting the info off the viny disks and into mp3 files.
\n(2) Importing the mp3 files into iTunes in a usable form.<\/p>\n

Here are the links to my old (but recently revised) posts on this.<\/p>\n

(1) \u201cRipping Vinyl to MP3s for iTunes<\/a>\u201d\u009d<\/b><\/h2>\n

(2) \u201cManaging Music in iTunes<\/a>\u201d\u009d<\/b><\/h2>\n

Taming those wiggly audio wave forms.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

By the way, the second post can be useful whether or not you\u2019re in fact ripping from vinyl\u2014it has some good info about making iTunes more transparent and more accessible to your control.<\/p>\n

Context?<\/p>\n

I just finished writing an SF story called \u201cLaser Shades\u201d\u009d for an interesting book project, The Superlative Light<\/a><\/em>, by the photographer Robert Shults. Shults got some good funding for his book, and I think it\u2019ll come out in late 2014 or in 2015. Eventually I\u2019ll post my story where you can see it too.<\/p>\n

In any case, I have a little free time just now, so I went back to a kind of obsessive time-wasting project that I was into back in 2011: ripping some of my old vinyl records to MP3 files that I can load into iTunes and copy to my smart phone.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n[A happy hacker using VR goggles to guide a little camera-equipped drone helicopter around Steamer\u2019s Lane in Santa Cruz.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

In 2011, I wrote those two blog posts describing how I\u2019m doing this, and I linked to them at the start of today’s post. I\u2019ve found it\u2019s important, when I\u2019m doing something ultrageeky, to write down what I did\u2014because this is the kind of info that I tend to forget in a few months, and certainly in a few years. Learning how to do something intricate on a comptuer is like learning all the part-numbers for a 1975 Ford Galaxie carburetor and memorizing the thing\u2019s little manual. Impossible to retain.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n[Just before midnight on New Years Eve in Pinedale, Wyoming! (Lo-res smartphone photo.)]<\/em><\/p>\n

So I went back and found my two old webpages, and used the info, and upgraded it a little bit. And here, for your own use are the links to those pages. My two prereqs for the software tools I used were
\n* To find free, reliable, non-malware-type software to do what I needed, and
\n* To be able to use the software pretty easily.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n[My 2013 painting \u201cFractal Skate Posse,\u201d\u009d see my paintings page <\/a>for info, prints and my Jan-March 2014 show at Borderlands in SF.]<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a Windows user, so some of the wares I found are in fact available only for Windows. Finding good free software for the Mac OS can in some cases be a little harder, but if you know of some, do put a comment on this page or on the pages I\u2019m directing you to.<\/p>\n

One final note on this issue\u2014by \u201cfree\u201d\u009d software, I don\u2019t mean commercial software that comes with a \u201cfree trial\u201d\u009d which a crippled, or partly disabled, or money-begging mode\u2014or outright malware! \u201cFree\u201d\u009d means solid, programmer-written wares that you find on a reliable programmer-run site like Sourceforge.<\/p>\n

So now dig out that crufty old turntable and rescue such massive gems as Ton-Loc’s “Wild Thing,” simple as wallpaper but somehow quite wonderful.<\/p>\n