There's a Music Makar in my living room

[jere7my]

This weekend is Oberlin's Dandelion Romp, their big dance weekend, and we're hosting visitors. The wife is a geology prof at Allegheny (and yes, jdh92, she has heard of you, though she arrived just as you were leaving). The husband, I was surprised to learn, is the flutist in the Music Makars. They played a Groundhog Ball in Ann Arbor a few years ago, and Etienne, the bandleader, taught the Pinewoods music class a few years ago; we actually have one of their CDs on our shelves. Regardless, our guests are both quirky and jolly people, fun to talk to, and they seem to love Gus-Gus. The hubby and I have a lot in common; there was a fair amount of, "Hey, that looks like my iMac! Hey, I use SoundStudio to convert my cassettes to digital! Hey, that's a great Nick Cave collection you have there!" And the wife liked my fossils.

Of course, this means I'm trapped in the den instead of watching my new Star Wars DVDs in the living room, but I suppose that's all right. I gots things to do in here.

Comments

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

how does Soundstudio work? Is it hard to handle? What cables/equipment do you need? I've been wanting to do this forever, and never got around to figuring out how....

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

SoundStudio is easy-peasy! You tell SoundStudio which audio source you want to use, adjust the levels so the audio doesn't clip, and start recording when you press play on the cassette. When you're done, insert markers between the tracks and tell it to segment the file. This gives you a bunch of AIFF (CD audio) tracks, which you can drag and drop into iTunes, then convert them to MP3 or AAC and/or burn them to CDs. (Remember to delete the AIFFs when you're done, as they take up lots of hard drive space -- about 10 MB/minute.)

If your computer has an audio-in jack, all you need is a cable with a headphone plug on both ends. Plug one end into the headphone jack on your cassette player and the other into your computer, and you're set.

SoundStudio has a bunch of other nice features—you can remove some of the tape hiss, edit out blank space, fade in and out. I'll probably post a little tutorial when I have a bit of time.

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

I guess I should have also asked: where can I buy it? I tried googling it and it turned up a bunch of stuff, and I wasn't sure. Do you have a link?

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Of course! FeltTip Software. (http://www.felttip.com/products/soundstudio/)