Editing iTunes Files in Audacity

[whinesiii]

After copying a vinyl record into iTunes, then how does one open the iTunes files in order to edit in Audacity?

[Retconaddict]

Well, I can assume that your files are "aac", right?

If so, click on the "edit" at the top of the iTunes bar, then click preferences. Under the "General" tab, click "Import Settings".

Then choose one of the audio files - AIFF, WAV, and MP3 work with Audacity. Now you have a choice - you can either import the Vinyl again, or you can right click on each song and click "Create MP3/WAV/AIFF version of this song".

If that doesn't, answer your question, just give a little more detail and I'll try to help!

[kozikowski]

Totally, but a note here. AAC is, or can be a serious compressor. One of the ways of getting a million songs on your iPod is to sacrifice a bit with "High Quality" instead of "iTunes Plus" in the preferences. If you do that you can occasionally hear an error here and there as the iTunes compressor does its thing to create really tiny sound files.

MP3 is also a destructive compressor using different technology. The damage between compressor types tends to add up. So, no, I would not convert anything to MP3 if I could help it.

Microsoft WAV is top quality and pretty universal -- it will play on all three computer platforms. Apple AIFF is also top quality and, from fuzzy memory, can carry song information, but it will not play on a Windows machine unless you install the Free Apple QuickTime Player for Windows.

Koz

[kozikowski]

You understand that if you purchased music from the Apple iTunes Store in the past, it's protected and you can't export and edit it. The latest iTunes software will allow you to purchase non-protected music, but if you have older music, it still has FairPlay copy protection.

The conventional way to get around that is to burn a Music CD with the song and then rip the song from the CD. FairPlay will not follow you through a CD.

Koz

[Irish]

I'm slightly confused by the original post:

After copying a vinyl record into iTunes,

How did you get from vinyl to iTunes?

PO'L

[whinesiii]

Thanks to all for the help. The procedure recommended by Retconaddict worked just fine. For Irish, I bought an ION turntable that connects to my PC via USB. It came with a program called EZ Vinyl Converter plus iTunes and Audacity. The converter places the songs in an iTunes library, from which I can create a playlist and burn the playlist to a CD. A couple of the old records were so scratchy that I wanted to edit some of the songs, but Audacity wouldn't accept them in the MP3 format.

[Irish]

You can make life easier for yourself by recording from the ION with Audacity, and skipping the EZ Vinyl and iTunes steps.

Take a look at these articles from the wiki.
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Trans ... uter_or_CD
and
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/USB_turntables

PO'L