Lehigh University Jazz Band 1979-1980

01-Groovin' Hard

5:55

02-Gary

5:45

03-Tiger of San Pedro

4:54

04-I Remember Clifford

4:29

05-Wind Machine

3:13

06-West End

6:24

07-Jaberwocky and Titinium Blues

11:36

raw audio

44:40

Hosted by the Internet Archive ⓘ

This whole album is very fun. Apparently track 3 is named after a Sherlock Holmes story (Wikipedia)

The title is based on a character in one of the 56 short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. Don Juan Murillo is a deposed dictator from Central America, formerly known as “The Tiger of San Pedro”, living in England, in the story “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge”.

Converting records with a USB turntable and Raspberry Pi Peviously I left a laptop sitting by my record player running Audacity but that was inconvenient so I stuck a Raspberry Pi over there and run these commands via SSH.

I am not an expert, I’m just using the equipment I have so please don’t interpret this as “the best way to convert records”

You can hear some records converted by this process at by browsing posts tagged “vinyl”

Components:

• Record player with USB output (AT-LP120XUSB)
• Raspberry Pi (Using a 3B but probably anything will work)
• NAS

Prior Art:

• Hi-Fi analog to digital with IceCast
  Utilizes IceCast to stream audio around your network. Involves running several services and is primarily focused on streaming.

• PiDeck
  A system for DJing with your turntable, not for converting

• Z-LiveRec
  This is an interesting piece of software but is built as a desktop application. I’d rather run everything from the command line. If it had a web interface I would consider purchasing it.

• Ripping Vinyl Records on a Raspberry Pi
  This is very close to what I am doing! Ed describes some issues writing to his local storage and file server but I haven’t noticed anything similar. Perhaps he was using an older Raspberry Pi? (I’m using a Raspberry Pi 3)

My Setup:

1. Connect Raspberry Pi to record player via USB

2. Ensure mount directory exists and mount the NAS via SMB

   mkdir -p /tmp/nas;
   sudo mount.cifs //nas.local/home /tmp/nas -o user=daniel,nounix,uid=$(id -u),gid=$(id -g)
   

3. Change to the relevant directory

   cd /tmp/nas/my_new_record
   

4. Identify the correct audio device

   arecord -l
   

   I’m going to be using card 2, device 0 which is indicated on the second line:

   **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
   card 2: CODEC [USB AUDIO  CODEC], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
       Subdevices: 0/1
       Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
   

5. Begin recording

   # Start a tmux session so the recording continues even
   # if the SSH connection gets disconnected
   tmux;
   
   sudo arecord --device "hw:2,0" -vv --vumeter=stereo -c 2 -f "S16_LE" -r 44100 raw_audio.wav;
   

   Explanation:

   • --device "hw:2,0" This means “card 2, device 0” that we found in step 4
   • -vv Double verbosity. Activates the VU meter
   • --vumeter=stereo Shows two channels in the VU meter
   • -c 2 Record two channels
   • -f "S16_LE" Record in Signed 16-bit little endian. I picked this simply becuase it matched the Audacity default that I was previously using
   • -r 44100 record in 44.1 kHz. Again, picked because it matched the Audacity default

6. Finish recording by pressing ctrl-c on the arecord command

Future work:

• Automatically mount SMB on startup
• Detect the end of the record / the record getting stuck and send a Pushover notification
• I thought about automatically recording when the Pi detects a record playing but I decided that it would be too confusing to have to deal with unlabeled files

Digitizing Tapes in 2025

My friend ended up with a big box of video tapes from their childhood from VHS, Video8, and MiniDV.

I have been given / volunteered for / chose to digitize these and I’m trying to strike a reasonable balance between cost, quality, and effort.

There is some very interesting work happening with softwared defined decoding in the VHS-Decode project but it’s a little more moving parts and soldering than I want to do right now. Perhaps in a few years when I can buy a single piece of hardware for a few hundred dollars I’ll revisit this.

1. First attempt: Try to get everything via an analog capture card

Camcorder -> Composite / S Video -> Black Magic Intensity Extreme -> Computer

I bought a used BlackMagic Intensity Extreme including a Thunderbolt cable which claims to be able to capture NTSC (fun fact, this is literally the first time I have ever touched a Thunderbolt cable!). These are pretty cheap. I read online that this isn’t great but I hoped it would be Good Enough™️.

It wasn’t!! Lots of black frames and stuttering. The video wasn’t watchable.

2. Second attempt: Convert the MiniDV tapes via FireWire

These should be the easiest. It’s digital data stored on tapes. The camcorder has a FireWire port on it… but I don’t own any devices with a FireWire port.

Apple made a FireWire to Thunderbolt adapter (MD464LL) which I could plug in to my 2014 MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt but they’re pretty pricey on eBay at this point.

2.1 PCIe FireWire card via USB

PCIe FireWire cards are cheap… but I live in an NYC apartment and don’t have computer with a PCIe slot lying around.

Camcorder FireWire -> PCIe FireWire card -> PCIe to M2 Adapter -> USB M2 NVMe Adapter -> Computer

Edit: This doesn’t work

1. M.2 NVMe to USB adapter $16
2. M.2 M-Key to PCIe adapter $10
3. LinksTek 4-Ports 1394A PCIE FireWire 400 card $20

~Total cost $50. I probably should have just bit the bullet and waited for an Apple adapter to pop up for $100 and avoided this horrible chain of converters.

2.2 FireWire -> Thunderbolt adapter

Camcorder FireWire -> Belkin Dock -> Apple Thunderbolt 2 to 3 (USB-C) Adapter -> M1 MacBook Pro

This works!

Instead of the pricey Apple adapter, you can get a Thunderbolt dock with a FireWire port! I got the Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock F4U055 on eBay for $29 + shipping. It’s big and bulky and requires an external power supply but it worked without any fuss or driver installation. If you have a Mac with a Thunderbolt port you can open iMovie and get to work!

I was able to buy a used Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 adapter cheaply allowing me to use this dock with iMovie and Final Cut Pro X on my M1 Macbook Pro (Sequoia 15.5). Again, no issues!

Warning:
Apple removed support for FireWire in MacOS 26. I assume that will break this setup.

Note:
There doesn’t seem to be much difference between importing videos via FireWire via iMovie and Final Cut Pro X. FCPX offers some options like “Remove Pulldown in video”, “Balance color”, and “Find people” for video and “Fix audio problems”, “Separate mono and group stereo audio”, “remove silent channels” for audio but I’m not using any of them. If you only have iMovie I wouldn’t rush out to buy a copy of FCPX.

3. Step 3: Get the Video8 via another camcorder with Passthrough to FireWire

I want to follow the instructions on page 88 of this manual. All of this to be continued as soon as I find a camcorder with both FireWire passthrough and a TBC on eBay…