Friday, October 06, 2006
They Call Me DJ Old-Timey
Just a few days after my last post I was able to get the PhonOcord to play those records, although for the most part pretty faintly. It is tempting to leave you thinking that this accomplishment might have involved some tools or arcane knowledge of vintage electronic components, but the truth is I figured it out while talking to my mom on my cellphone one night while coming home from San Francisco. It turns out that these are special records that play from the inside out! Problem solved!
Well, not really because they still need to be digitized. I decided that since there are so many of them, it would be unfair to burden Mattmarg with this task. So I ordered a USB turntable (you heard me right) that I thought was special because it would allow me to capture sound at 78 RPMs. I felt kind of dumb when I realized that you actually just digitize the sound at 33 or 45 RPMs and adjust the speed of the file with a pulldown menu in the accompanying software. Nevertheless, I’m extremely happy with it and excited about getting this project started. After a couple of test runs yesterday, though, it’s become apparent that I have a lot to learn about cleaning up audio files. Since a lot of the records are made from cardboard, they sound pretty dirty. I sure hope there is something that can be done for them.
