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Feeling groovy: Baby boomer gets nostalgic as he transfers his old vinyl records to modern format Date published: 6/20/2009
FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR
"JUST TAKE those old That lyrical sentiment, from The albums had been collecting dust in alphabetical order beneath my early 1980s Sony stereo component system. Like most old rack systems, the crowning unit is an LP (long-playing) turntable. The speakers can still shake the windows and rattle the walls, plus they're big enough to hold my mummified remains should my family decide one would be a fitting sarcophagus. They say your life flashes before your eyes when you're near death. I discovered it does the same when you're sitting on the floor, sipping wine and looking through old album liner notes, side-1 and -2 song lineups and copyright dates printed by the record labels. The magic begins when you cue up and drop the tone arm. Somehow that diamond stylus translates the intricacies of grooves in pressed vinyl into an analog signal that presents itself as music. The 1960s term "feeling groovy" supposedly had its origins with jazz musicians of a generation earlier when great music was flowing easily, perhaps ready to be captured in record grooves in wax or vinyl. My mission was to translate the old records into something no longer needing a turntable. The tool was an Ion USB turntable, which cost about $120. Pop the software CD into your computer, download the music-transfer program and plug the USB cable into your computer. As quickly as you can spin the disc, it is transferred to a 160-byte-rate MP3 format now suitable for playing on a computer, burning to a CD or adding to an iPod or similar digital device.
Date published: 6/20/2009
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