1237cedf035f
tech



Hello Roy - 

WC>>> That would be a major ouch. 

CA>>> Probably going to happen to MP3 music file 'traders' more
CA>>> than the rest of us. I can't imagine what would be 120
CA>>> gig that I would want to maintain on the hard drive here
CA>>> at home. 

RJT>> Not intending to "trade" or such stuff, but I do plan to
RJT>> put much of my music collection here on HD, when I can
RJT>> manage it... 

CA>> Before you can 'trade' it is necessary to put your music
CA>> into MP3 format files on the hard drive. That is the first
CA>> step. ;-) 

RJT> No kidding. 

No, not kidding at all. ;-) 

CA>> When you realize how time consuming this is to do a decent
CA>> job of it you will not want to lose it all and start over
CA>> again. 

RJT> I know how time-consuming it can be, we've been through
RJT> all of that, in here, a while back. But if I'm going to
RJT> bother with it at all, then I'm going to want to play it
RJT> at least once, right? The rest of the steps are not the
RJT> time-consuming part... 

Not sure what you refer to as "the rest of the steps"? 

Take one 3:30 minute track as an example. You have to cue that
track then wait 3:30 minutes while it plays/records into
software that can create the WAV file. Then you have to listen
to the WAV file to be certain there are no dropouts, clip the
'silence' off the ends of the WAV file and normalize the volume
to match all the other tracks you have saved. Another 3:30
minutes (7:00 minutes at this point). 

If you need to improve the recording using the equalizer or
reverb or any other WAV editor function you wait for that and
listen once more which adds time for the equalization and
listening (7+2+3:30 = 12:30 minutes). 

Then you try to make an MP3. This is usually trial and error
since some music has more drums and other music has more high
pitched instruments. Making the MP3 can take as long as playing
the music so we have 3:30 x 2 here (19:30 minutes). If your
first guess setting up the MP3 conversion sounds wrong you do
this again and again until you get what you consider a
reasonable facsimile of the original and keep that one. 

It's not unusual to spend from 20-45 minutes to get one good
MP3 of one track of music assuming nothing goes wrong in the
process. For vinyl with maybe a dozen tracks it could take from
4 hours to as much as 9 hours for just one record. 

Even if you're not fussy and skip listening to the recordings I
would guess an hour or more per record would be 'normal'. 

That's why kids want to 'rip' from CDs. It can be done on
automatic somewhat. Still is slow but you can do something else
in the meantime. :-) 

RJT>> Just the convenience of being able to play it without
RJT>> having to deal with the hassle of *finding* it, and the
RJT>> sequential-access hassles of tape, is probably a lot of
RJT>> why I'd consider this worth my time. 

CA>> They have this new technology called CDs that can hold
CA>> 100s of MP3 files now. You should give them a try. :-) 

RJT> Yeah? I have some of those here. Also have a *lot* of
RJT> stuff on tape and on vinyl that I'd just as soon not pay
RJT> the CD prices for replacing, just to get them in a new
RJT> format. 

That was a joke, sort of. What I meant was you can burn your
MP3s to CDs once you have created them. You don't need all of
them on the hard drive and once on CDs there is less chance you
would have to redo them anytime soon. 

fwiw: Buying commercial CDs has the advantage of saving you the
4-9 hours of time converting vinyl plus the pros have better
turntables, better software, and more experience at removing
imperfections from the originals. Usually the 'remastered' CDs
are very very clean and sound quite good (to me). 

CA>>> When I worked as a PC consultant I maintained several
CA>>> months of daily reports on employee efficiency (detailed)
CA>>> and the telephone system for 4-6 months plus training
CA>>> texts and other graphs and charts all on one 110 meg hard
CA>>> drive. :-) 

RJT>> Using what for tools? Probably couldn't manage it with
RJT>> the bloatware that's out there these days. That size
RJT>> drive wouldn't be big enough to store the OS...! :-) 

CA>> This was at the time of Windows v3.0 (not very good
CA>> really). 

RJT> That's an understatement. It was a *joke*, at the time,
RJT> considering the state of most hardware in those days. 

I refused to use Windows v3.0 and the company eventually
allowed me to use DOS. :-) 

CA>> I used DOS v3.3 and Desqview for the OS with LOTUS macros
CA>> for daily charts and graphs. I wrote some of my own
CA>> software for statistical analysis that I would only use
CA>> when requested to by the company VP for forecasting to
CA>> predict trends etc. All the other 'tools' I wrote myself. 

CA>> The combined setup continued to operate unattended for 8
CA>> years monitoring the telephone system and all employee use
CA>> of the telephones with the only interruptions being when
CA>> people failed to keep paper in the printer. At midnight it
CA>> compiled and printed a few dozen reports for various
CA>> department heads and a 'brief' version for the company VP.
CA>> :-) 

RJT> And I'll bet that if that company were still around that
RJT> *nobody* who's there these days has any understanding of
RJT> how that works whatsoever. :-) 

I was the only one who ever did understand how it all worked on
the computer _and_ on the Intertel PBX programming. I sent
printouts of the code to the main office and their people
admitted they couldn't even begin to follow the programming
logic enough to comment. Their other consultant/programmer said
it was some of the best code he'd seen in some time but even he
didn't quite follow most of it. 

I put a great deal of effort into the 'useability' and user
interface to make the software as easy to use as possible. I
learned the company's existing terminology for what they had
been doing without computers and used it within the user
interface to shorten the learning curve for the people who fed
data into it instead of forcing them to use my terminology or
computer terminology. As much of it as was possible was
automated and if the main computer lost power or was turned off
simply turning it back on again reloaded everything into
Desqview and logged the failure for me to see when I came in. 

Everyone was quite comforable _using_ it but few understood how
any of it worked nor could anyone else modify it without my
help. In time I could've made it easier by fully commenting the
code but the company never asked me to and probably wouldn't
have paid me for the amount of time required to do it properly. 

After having done much the same for the BBS software I
supported for several years I already knew some of what had to
be done to keep it online 24/7 but it was a challenge to see if
I could do it for an entire office of people unfamiliar with
computers. I did, it was fun, but I don't really want to do
that again if I can avoid it. :-) 

Consumed 8 years of my life. 

>
>        ,                          ,
>      o/      Charles.Angelich      \o       ,
>       __o/
>     / >          USA, MI           < \   __\__
 

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