From Vinyl to Digital

This creates a Makefile that includes the timing for splitting the tracks and the album, artist and trackname information for Ogg or MP3 creation. The counts must match those in the track's files. To adjust the bitrate, add --rate 192, for example. Now simply typing make copies each track's content to a separate wav file and encodes it to an Ogg file with a descriptive name. Here's an abbreviated directory listing from our example:

Makefile                    9.5k
where1.wav                  196M
where1.wav.tracks           1.2k
where2.wav                  191M
where2.wav.tracks           1.2k
where_processed_101.wav      52M
101_Scared_To_Be_Alone.ogg  8.2M

Use make mp3 to split tracks and create MP3 files instead of Ogg files. Typing make proc simply splits the tracks, allowing you to apply a filter to selected tracks. By deleting the original unfiltered file and renaming the filtered file to the original name, make creates an Ogg file from the filtered wav file. For more options, try xmcd2make --help.

There you have it—wav files to burn to an audio CD-R and Ogg files to play back on any capable device or burn to a data CD-R. If you're new to CD burning, there are many fine HOWTOs available. Once you've set up the system, you can repeat it for stacks of albums and enjoy the results. By the way, in 2002 the last of Dory's albums finally were re-issued on CD, but I already have my Linux-made disks.