Audacity Forum

Greetings all: This is my first post about a subject that may have been covered ad infinitum and if it has, please point me in the right direction, I'll appreciate it.

I recently got a iKEY-AUDIO iCONNEX USB SOUND CARD so that I could dub my cassette tapes to MP3s then burn them to CD-Rs. I'll tell you upfront that I shouldn't have gotten it since it seems that my PC, a GATEWAY 500GR with an Intel Pentium 4 530 CPU operating at a "scorching" 3.0 GHz and sporting Intel's Hyper-Threading technology plus a 200GB hard drive. Before I bought the SOUND CARD I sort-of "knew" that I could attach my cassette deck into its rear input but I wasn't sure how the computer was going to treat the deck and if there was any software already installed that would allow me to dub the tapes without any headaches.

When I saw that I could buy the SOUND CARD with the software and the selling blurb made it sound as simple as 1-2-3, I forgot about my PC's rear input. I received the SOUND CARD and following instructions from iKEY-AUDIO's PDF "Iconnex setup guide" I did a test recording (for those who don't seem to know where such help is located and who have stated their problems on another thread, here is the URL for the QUICK SETUP GUIDE: http://www.ikey-audio.com/pdf_manuals/I ... NGLISH.pdf) and after trial and error because of the instructions' sometimes faulty logic, I was successful in recording and saving to a WAV file.

However, since I'm interested in saving to an MP3 file instead so that I can burn the saved songs to CD-Rs I visited this forum and other parts of AUDACITY WIKI (I was confused about the separation of WIKI and this FORUM but I was set straight via emails with Arturo 'Buanzo' Busleiman. It seems I registered with WIKI and thought that was good also for this FORUM, which it isn't).

Okay, let me cut to the chase. I've learned that there is a heck of a lot of work ahead for me in dubbing successfully my cassette tapes and I'm going to have to do a lot of printing of the various instructions necessary. I first found out that in order to save music to MP3 I have to download the LAME encoder. I did and it's saved to my DESKTOP but I haven't triggered it yet. Oh, yeah, the AUDACITY CD that comes with the SOUND CARD is Version 1.1 so I also upgraded to 1.2.6.

I thought that was it, but then I thought "How do I separate the tracks?" One solution I was going to use was to simply just record one track at a time and bring each track file into one folder which I would then send to the CD burner. Not efficient. I found here or at WIKI that I had to follow certain complicated steps dealing with LABELS, I think, that would allow me to separate tracks. But, frankly, after reading the instructions I'm really confused and while I may attempt on my own to follow the instructions I thought, perhaps, you savvy guys have achieved this with simpler, 1-2-3, instructions. So, if this topic has been covered on another thread(s), please let me know where I can find it/them.

I don't know what else to ask. I am also going to experiment by connecting the cassette deck directly to the PC (no iCONNEX SOUND CARD) and since it seems that the AUDACITY software is more important that the hardware, I'm hoping I'll be able to record without any problems. My PC has an Intel High Definition Audio chipset.

Any other help you can include will be appreciated. I know I'm in for a long hard drive (a little pun there and am ready.

You probably want to export perfect quality WAV files and burn them to a CD. Then convert or Export the show to MP3 for your iPod. MP3 damages the quality. WAV doesn't.

If that's what you're really doing, I would change my Audacity Preferences to 44100, 16-bit, Stereo. That's the Music CD sound standard and you can do all your work in that except the downgrade to MP3 at the end. Depending on how you're getting to your iPod (itunes??) you can use the WAV files for that, too. iTunes will default to its own Apple AAC compressed file format on import.

So you don't need the MP3 step at all.

I'll pick this up later.

Koz

http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... ate_tracks

Koz

Thanks for your reply, Koz, I appreciate it. However, I'm sure that I want to export the files to MP3 format so that I can burn them onto CD-Rs to play on my regular audio component CD player. My wife says she doesn't think that the CD player can play a CD-R with WAV files. I could experiment and blow a CD-R since it's cheap. But all of my other CD-Rs are burnt with MP3s. I don't mind the compression that takes place as the music still sounds great and "full." I'm not dealing with an iPod as I don't own one. Strictly for speaker or headphone listening.

Thanks for the link which I'm already aware of and I have to study it seriously before I get involved. The instructions may look simple but to me, a computer nerd, they're "threatening." It would be nice to have a neighbor such as you that could sit by my side and tutor me.

Some complain that they do not get sound through their computer speakers or the headphone output. Following the instructions for AUDACITY from the iKEY website results in that since I also did not have sound after I finished my test recording. I had to go into the computer's sound pages and click on a box that I think said something like HD... meaning the rear jack I have my computer speakers connected to had to be re-activated since the AUDACITY instructions "disconnected" this jack.

Sorry, your wife is not correct. Many CD players will NOT play CDs that have MP3s on them - PCs will, and some specially enabled CD players will.

You need to have WAV files exported at 44.1kHz 16-bit stereo (the Red Book standard for CDs) to pass to CD burning software to burn a music CD. See this article from the Wiki: http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... o_burn_CDs

WC

<<<You need to have WAV files exported at 44.1kHz 16-bit stereo (the Red Book standard for CDs)>>>

Which isn't strictly true, either. CDA, the music format on a Music CD is loosely based on WAV, 44100, 16-bit, Stereo, yes, but it's up to the Music CD Authoring Program (Nero, Easy, Toast, etc) to convert whatever you give it to a format appropriate to the disk.

If you give it 44100, 16, Stereo is doesn't have much converting to do at all. Just throw away all the housekeeping bits and all the song labels. Keep the quality as it is, burn it to the disk and go home.

If you give it MP3, it has to upconvert to 44100, 16, Stereo, so there is a conversion step. All conversion steps create damage.

If, like me, you give it 48000, 16, Stereo, the television sound format, then it has to downconvert slightly to get to 44100, 16, Stereo.

There is always the same format on a Red Book Music CD which give you the 80 minute time limit. No options.

If you make a Data CD, then all bets are off. Those are like little hard drives and you can put anything on there in any format. If your computer or player happens to figure out what you did, then you win. If not, the disk won't play.

One more little oddity. Audacity defaults to 44100, 32-floating, Mono and there are known CD Authoring Programs that have trouble with that format. So that's not a good thing.

Koz