h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We bought a Denon thing to convert our records to mp3s

It works beautifully, in that I put on a record, put the USB stick where it belongs, start the record and press record.

It's the part where I have to separate the tracks and then put them in my PC music collection. The record player came with some software - Trans Music Manager for DENON.

Does anyone have any experience of using this program? It's driving me absolutely nutty. We've had the thing since before Christmas and while I can now listen to "records" on the mp3 player - they are saved as one file for each side of the record, and they're not split into tracks.

I used similar programs. Those analyse the mp3 file and try to detect the gap in between tracks by searching for a time interval with low (close to zero) volume. The bad news (in the programs I used) was that I had to set the threshold value for the sound volume for the gap in between tracks, and the duration of the gap.
if you don't succeed the first time .. fail, fail and fail again

The problem I'm having is that when I separate the tracks, I can't find them again. If I could do that I don't even mind having to manually label them, etc - but I just can't find the pesky thing.


I hate technology!

oh? aren't these in a subfolder of the "my music" folder?

ah... you know, I haven't looked there

Use Polderbits You get 7 days free then one extension, then you have to pay if you want to continue use... but it's worth it I think. It's a very simple uncluttered program for MP3ing anything you can input to your PC. A recording level meter and little else that's visible. Records are easy (using an output from an amp- direct vinyl into PC wont work without a phone stage). You can then manually zoom around the recording and split tracks.

phone stage= phono stage

But I don't want to pay for something that I already have - Thanks to Hapi () I have found a sub-folder in my Music folder that indeed contains the tracks.

They're already in mp3 format, split into tracks on two folders - one for side 1 and one for side 2.

The question now is - I moved them into a folder for that band, and made a folder for the album. To rename and label them, etc, I now need to find them in the media player.

Any clues how to make them visible?

(sorry, I realise that the "manual" probably explains this - but I don't speak Manual)

One of the free id taggers is probably easier to navigate than windows media player

I use easyTAG in linux, and this looks quite similar:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Audio/Tag-Editors/Multi-ID-Tag-Editor.shtml

BTW, it's hard to beat Audacity for filtering and editing audio files

I use it to digitize vinyl and tape

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I can only tag it in Windows Media if it can be found, but I can't find it

I have used Audacity - but it's a faff for me because of not saving files as mp3s.

I'm getting to the point where i'm going to send the ing thing back and just give up now.

Audacity can save as wmv or mp3 - you'll have to go to their website and download something called 'LAME', though.

Or even wav.

it's not that I don't appreciate everyone's help...

The point is this: I can automatically have the LPs converted to mp3. The record player does that.

The software that came with it then splits the tracks. The problem I then have is finding them to tag, then finding them in the media player to put them on the mp3.

I'm sure it's not just me that thinks that something that is marketed as a non-technical relatively easy way to do something, should not require a degree in IT related stuff

Isn't there a 'save to' or options button anywhere in the supplied software?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. You say you have them in a folder. Do you mean you can't find the folder?

when I split the tracks, the program automatically opens a Denon folder in the Music folder and stores them in there as two sub-folders, one for each side of the record.

Usually when I want to play music, add a picture or whatever, I go to Windows Media Player and find what I want by name, artist, genre whatever.

In this case it's Making Movies by Dire Straits. I made a new sub-folder in my Dire Straits folder, moved all the tracks into there - but now I can't find them in Media Player to tag them or whatever.

And that's the problem. If Media Player can't find them - I can't synchh them to the mp3 player.

Can't you just right right-click the sub folder and say_ add to media player Playlist?

No idea, I'll have a go next time I get some quality PC time.

oh .. usually these programs allow you to connect to the Gracenote Musicid (internet based) database, search for the right album in that and (more or less automatically) tag the mp3 files. Does your program have such a function? like gracenote? musicid? cddb? (* cddb is an alternativ ename for the musicid database *)

I found the musicid database has almost every album in it .. trick is how to find it in the heap ..

it has that function but so far I've failed to make it work

Frankly speaking, I wonder how that can work when the album is split into two files... but I expect the magic and the hamsters will take care of that if I ever get that far.