Vinyl to MP3s even easier

About a year ago, I posted my intentions to rip all my vinyl into mp3s using the ionAudio – Vinyl Recording USB Turntable.  Needless to say, I haven’t even started ripping my first vinyl record.  That might change in the near future thanks to a new turntable that makes it even easier and less time consuming to transfer all your vinyl into MP3s: The LP 2 Flash Turntable made by the same company, ion.  With this new generation of turntable, you simply set the record and forget it.  The turntable will automatically rip and will seperate the record in tracks when it senses silence between tracks.  All I need to do is add the MP3 tags afterwards to all the tracks.

After ripping all my vinyl into MP3s, all that will be left to do is to get rid of it.  I might sell all my vinyl records on eBay.  It seems that there is still a market for them.

120GB Zune

When it came time to purchase an MP3 player, I invested quite some time in researching which was the best player for me.  These were my requirements (in order of importance):

1. Large Capacity

2. Fast Desktop Software (one that will respond quickly even with a large collection.

The only two players I really took into concideration were the iPod 160GB Classic and the 80GB 2nd Generation Zune.  I ended up picking the Zune.   Even though, both players were similar in pricing, I ended up with the lower capacity Zune 80GB.  What really convinced me was Zune’s desktop software more than the player itself.  The desktop software is very fast with my current collection size (at about 70GB, I have way more than that, but i only import to the Zune player my tagged files).  It is also easier to import songs into the Zune software than the iTunes.  You merely place the file into the Zune folder and the software will automatically import it.

My current dilemma is that I am about 6GB shy of filling up my 80GB Zune.  I prefer to have *all* my files with me all the time.  Therefore, I will have to upgrade to a higher capacity player.  Just in time, I hear news that Zunes will come in 120GB in the near future.  Not a really big jump from 80GB, but at least it shows that they’re working towards higher capacity players.  I probably won’t invest in a new player for just 40GB – so I still have the problem in excluding some tunes from being synchronized with my player.  I will just have to wait to at least a 160GB Zune player before I concider replacing my 80GB one.

The Digital Music Lexicon

Over at Out Digital Music blog, they have started a series of blog entries to define the most commonly used terms revolving around digital music.  Yesterday’s term was “AAC” and today’s term was “Bitrate“, for example.  I highly recommend to anybody starting to collect digital music to follow this blog to get acquainted with the Digital Music lexicon.