Technology kills the radio star - Part 2 of 3

Part 2 - Recording Music – the time consuming portion

Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is a shareware tool that transfers music CD’s to FLAC files on your computer. It can be obtained at http://www.exactaudiocopy.de. Refer also to http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=30959 for operating instructions. First time through is a bit tricky but it’s easy enough to grasp the basics. Don’t forget to set the filename properties to get the right format.

Albums and tapes aren’t as easy to store digitally since they are analog media, not digital-ready for the computer. Behringer make several products that interface a tape-deck or phonograph to the computer. I explored this briefly but found the audio-capture software awkward (they don’t interface to EAC) and the process very time consuming.

Instead I substituted my albums with albums other people have converted and posted to the internet as bit-torrents for easy download. I found http://thePirateBay.org and LimeWire to be useful tools for this process. The search engine in PirateBay allowed me to search existing FLAC collections for the albums I own. The nice thing about PirateBay is that it doesn’t require registration in order to use and download music. While it’s possible to download thousands of albums, in fairness, limit downloads to the albums you actually own.

Downloading the torrent (FLAC bit-file) through LimeWire allows access to other people’s computers to transfer music. I worry that if I can see their files, they can probably see mine too and so exercise care and caution. Every dozen albums or so I scanned my computer for viruses just to be on the safe side. After the scan I would change the filenames (usually necessary) and move the music to my file server instead of the LimeWire default directory. This prevented my computer from being an alternative source or super server which is something I don’t understand but assume it can’t be good.

As of this writing, 75% of my music has been transferred. Some obscure music, like Eric Clapton’s Backless album and John Mayall without the Blues Breakers are difficult to find. I have an album crate of the albums I couldn’t find on PirateBay. This will probably require the Behringer unit in order to manually convert them.

Got some tips on using the Behringer USB Audio Interface, please leave them in the comment section.

Next step – playing music