‘Other news’, of course, being news wherein I do not obliquely express an unhealthy desire for a majority of the planet’s population to vanish. After the last post, I didn’t want to leave you all wondering what had happened to me over the weekend, as I’m going away and won’t be journaling. I wish I could say it was on a mini vacation, but it isn’t. So I hereby provide you with a short recap of what I did while Liam napped:
Plugged the microphone into the minidisc player. Clipped the mic to my music stand. Recorded a chunk of my hour and a half of cello practice this afternoon. Put the headphones on to check for recording quality.
Cue jaw drop. Wow. Just — wow.
I can feed the minidisc signal into a regular stereo and listen to it via the stereo speakers, and also record it onto a cassette, which means it’s analog. Therefore there must exist a way to feed it into the computer and transfer it to a digital file, because I know people do this with cassettes and videotapes and such things. It will be a project of mine next week, the researching of this. It likely involves cables that I do not presently own.
In the meantime — wow, both for the quality of the little stereo microphone I ordered and for the minidisc recording ability. Also, my cello playing does not suck. The purchase of these items may well be paid back by repeated use of them to convince me of this alone.
Cool! If you don’t find a faster/easier way of digitizing, we could experiment with plugging the output of the minidisk player into the cable wot we got for attaching a musical instrument to our Mac/GarageBand.
If you were ever actually thinking that your cello playing ‘sucked,’ I’m very glad that hearing it second hand proved otherwise.
If you’re hooking it up to your stereo then the MD is running it out form either a 1/8inch headphone plug or an RCA plug (probably the former). If it’s the former then you can run it to the line-in on your sound card and hope both the card and your software is good enough to make a nice recording (often times it’s not unless you paid more :( ) if it’s an RCA then you’ll probably need a new sound card that czan accomadate or get an adapter, at which point see first situation.
People are dumb, and people that make things for other people are dumb. Dumb people assume that if the package doesn’t say “plug me right into your computer” then it can’t be done. These same dumb people assume the only way to hook things up to a computer is a USB or Firewire line, and needs some new software. I hate dumb people.
If it’s the former then you can run it to the line-in on your sound card and hope both the card and your software is good enough to make a nice recording.
This is precisely what I’m going to be trying first, because it seemed logical to me when I thought of it.
The minidisc player was purchased by the original owner in 2000, which means it’s likely a 1999 product. So it’s seven years old, and therefore I’m not surprised it doesn’t have a plug-in drag and drop sort of thing. But it’s also simple enough (read: not designed to defeat technology in an effort to control stealing music) to logically connect to the sound card, as you describe. We’ll see.
I think the cable Jan’s talking about plus using their Mac may work too, if the basic line-in doesn’t work.
Paze: I always think I suck. This is directly at odds with the fact that I know I’m good enough to get by without practicing until my fingers bleed. Also, what I recorded was my work on a song I just can’t grasp, so I’m happy on a few levels.
Blade’s right, if you MD has an line-out you should be able to plug it into the line-in of your sound card. You can also use the headphones out if it only has that, but you might have to adjust the volume so that it’s not to loud or soft for the recording.
For recording software I recommend Audacity, it’s free: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
You can also use the Sound Recorder software that comes with Windows. It’s in Start->Accessories->Entertainment
Nice to know my vague logic is being supported by the more technologically savvy amongst my acquaintance. Thanks, gang! And thanks for the linkto Audacity, Scott; I’ll check it out this afternoon.