If you're an "old timer" music fan like me, you probably have a significant amount of great music on an analog format, whether it's vinyl or tape... cassette, 8 track, even reel to reel! If you'd like to get this precious material into your iPod, here's how...
Real time record your content into an audio program. I use Audacity.
When the entire album is recorded, select each song by click/holding and dragging selection.
(**NOTE: click on the images for a larger view**)
Choose "Export selection as mp3" from the file menu.
Name your song and save it where you want it. To keep everything consistent and organized, you probably want it in a folder with the album name which is in a folder with the artist name. You save this to wherever you save your music on your hard drive.
Don't worry about the ID tags window in Audacity that will come up, you'll adjust these later.
When you have all your songs saved as mp3s, you're done with Audacity, so you can close it. It's up to you if you want to save the project first, but if you've saved all the individual songs right, you shouldn't need this file any longer. Also, after I select a song and have it saved to my hard drive, I delete it from Audacity. This makes it easier to find the next song, as it will be at the beginning of the timeline. You can actually undo (ctl-z) all the way back to restoring the entire album if you didn't already save the project.
Next, go to the file on your hard drive, and select all the songs you've just saved as mp3's. Right click and choose properties. A window will open where you want to select the "summary" tab.
Be sure the Advanced tab on the lower right is selected. If it's not, there will be a button that says Simple. If that's the case, click on that, and you will be in advanced mode.
You can now enter the information you want. I only enter Artist, Album, Year and Genre here.
When finished, click the OK button.
Your mp3 files should all now be named with Artist and Album title.
Next, open iTunes and drag/drop your file into your iTunes music library.
This next step I found to not always be necessary, but it is on many analog transfers to have the correct sequence in your iPod. In iTunes, right click each individual song and select "get info".
Another window will pop up where you want to choose the second tab, "info". Enter the track number in the first box under "Track Number".
Hit OK.
Finally, for the album art, select the entire album's songs and right click "get album artwork". If nothing shows up, you have another option: drag a jpeg of the album cover into the "drag album work here" box. Note, you need to have the down arrow along the bottom selected for this to show up.
If you only select one song, the artwork will only appear on your iPod during that song. If you select the entire album, the artwork will appear for all the songs on it.
The artwork can be from your hard drive, but doesn't have to be saved there first. Personally, I just grab them off the 'net where you can just drag and drop directly if right clicking "get album artwork" doesn't give me anything.
Now, the only thing left is to sync your iPod and you have your analog music digitized for the road!
It does take much longer than ripping a CD, especially one the iTunes on line database recognizes, but for us "old timers", that's not always the case with our music tastes!
