iMic
I've been using the Griffin iMic to transfer old audio media onto my TiBook. Here's a rundown of the why and how, and my consensus on the product.
Why? I have a ton of bootlegs on cassette. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 Maxell XLIIs. I have bootlegs and independent albums on minidisc. I have 7" singles with amazing B sides. There are dusty Funk 8-Tracks sitting in my garage. All of this great music, completely inaccessible to me in my car or at work. I literally have to sit in front of my component rack in my living room to listen to these albums and concerts, which are unavailable on any other media. There was too much invested to let this music rot on tape or warp and scratch on vinyl. Creating digital copies of the music allows me to burn it on CD, convert to MP3, and take with me everywhere on my iPod.
How? I moved my component JVC cassette and Kenwood Minidisc decks onto my worktable. The line out RCA cables go into a four inch diamter, silver puck (the iMic). The iMic has a USB cable which then goes into Dulli (the TiBook).
OS X immediately recognizes the iMic as both an audio input and output device. Change the audio input to iMic. I use CD Spin Doctor (bundled with Roxio's Toast Titanium) to record. Spin Doctor is a very basic program, with no Help menu and several unlabeled controls. You have to do a bit of testing before you're ready to go all out. Set the input levels to max out at the top of the green indicators. This will avoid over-modulation. Press the record button on screen, and then press the play button on your input deck. The main drawback here is that you cannot listen to the input through your Mac's speakers or headphones. The indicators lights are flashing; but you cannot hear anything until the recording is on your hard drive.
Recording is done in real time, so you may want to get a sandwich and watch some TV for the next hour or so. When you come back, and the album is finished playing, stop the recorder. The aiff file will be initialized and a waveform will be drawn out for editing. The program has an "Auto-Define Tracks" function which works fine for recordings with 2 second gaps of silence between songs. For live shows, and for tracks that run into one another, you will have to manually define the tracks, using sliders. If you have any experience editing in iMovie or Quicktime Pro, you should be familiar with the process. There are some limitations in the track defining phase. You cannot merge or seperate defined tracks. They must be redefined and edited from the track list. It can be a hassle with a two hour long concert.
You can also add effects to your new recording. Noise and pop filters take the edge off of vinyl and audience recorded bootlegs. The noise filter, if abused, can take away all of the high end in a recording. Leave some room for the sound to breathe. You can also add extra bass and tweak the overall sound with a basic equalizer.
When your tracks are edited and effects processed, the songs can be dragged into an open Toast project and burned on CD. From the new CD, rip the tracks in iTunes and listen away.
The iMic It's a Mac peripheral that does one thing, and does an adequate job. The price is a definite plus. However, I noticed an excess of hiss and high-end noise on my recorded tracks when compared to the original media. I'm not sure if this is the fault of the iMic or CD Spin Doctor; but it was easily corrected by using the noise filter. For casual recording, the iMic is recommended; but for professional use, you may want to take a look at the Griffin Powerwave.
Originally published at the nonAesthetic in July of 2003.