Ripping Vinyl

This is cool. I've been toting around some old vinyl for dogs' years in the form of 33's and a couple 45's. I once had some 78's but those are long gone.

Now, vinyl was old when I was young. It seems to be enjoying a minor resurgence among audiophiles in certain niche markets. Those who can hear the difference (I'm not one of them) say it's a warmer sound than digital; which makes sense since analog is a continuous waveform, whereas digital is discrete ones and zeros.

Most of my records were given to us kids in grade school by our adoptive grandparents when we lived in California. When I was in high school, I saved up my hard earned dollars and paid a whopping $300 bucks for my first stereo, which included AM/FM radio, dual tape decks, turntable and speakers. By that time, I was almost the only one left with a record player and maybe the only one who cared. I actually purchased a couple of records in high school (mostly Beatles or their solo acts).

I left the record player and stereo long ago, but for some reason kept toting around the vinyl. I'm amazed that none of them ever got broken, even with my five kids using the furniture for target practice and spring boards.

Ever since I "discovered" iTunes a couple of years ago, my music listening has enjoyed a renaissance. This Christmas I received this very cool Ion USB Turntable which gives me the ability to transfer my vinyl directly to my computer using the very cool open source software, Audacity. Now I can enjoy them in MP3 or Ogg Vorbis form, play them in iTunes, put 'em on my iPod, or even hook the turntable up to the modern stereo.

I have to say, I'm stoked; the old music is new again!