Yesterday I finally finished my first audio 'project' using only Linux! The task was: Burn a bootleg recording of Saul Williams (on MiniDisk) to a CD as a birthday present for my sister.
I recorded the concert using my Sony MZ-N910 MiniDisk Walkmen and a very small aiwa stero condenser microphone. The microphone is small enough to hide in ones pants (which is seldom neccesary, as I tend to visit concerts that don't include an airport-like security check) and has a very good pickup quality.
While the MD walkmen has an USB interface, Sony crippled it to not transfere stuff recored via line-in/mic to the computer. Bastards! So I couldn't use their (win-only) software to get the music into my computer.
I took out my (old, bought 2001 in Berlin) Roland UA-30 USB Audio Interface, connected it to my laptop before turning it on (a lession learned earlier) and connected the MD via line-out/line-in (which means some da/ad converting, but what the heck..).
I fired up Audacity, hit 'record' there and 'play' on the MD (after fiddling a bit with volume levels) and listened to the concert (which was great, btw) on my headphones.
After the recording, I applied some effects (normalise etc) and split the big .wav into several smaller ones. I could have used tools for this too, but I didn't have time-marks to split it automatically and because of applause and background noise it would be hard/not very exact to split on waveform.
I then assembled the tracks with gcdmaster which is a very nice tool to generate toc files for cdrdao. The nice thing about cdrdao is that it doesn't insert 2 seconds of silence before each track, which is highly annoying in live recordings or mixtapes.
I burned the cd using cdrdao via gcdmaster and the new direct kernel interface (i.e. not the old scsi workaround).
While I was at it, I also made a 'backup copy' of the proper Saul Williams CD I bought my sister as another birthday present. According to my vinyl dealers this album is not going to be released on vinyl. Suckers! I'd bought it if they did, but as I do not have a cd player (besides the one in my laptop) I hardly ever listen to CDs and thus do not buy them.
