Tag: Audacity

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Digital sound

Starting small

Our smartphone capability – (audio memos, sound recording apps for Android and Apple music recognition (Shazam) and streaming services.

The terminology and technology involved in audio is mind-boggling. You really have to be an expert to get your head around it – and I’m not going to try. There are a wide range of differences in Audio Formats – What is HiRes Audio? It would appear that Spotify has only just recently entered the field of HiRes audio. I’ll just take it as read that I want the best, if I possibly can get it. Currently Apple seem as good, if not better, than the rest.

How to play hi-res music and lossless audio on your iPhone

To get the best quality audio for iPhone and for Android, you may need to dip into those two articles. For the Apple user, you can use AirPlay to stream audio (Apple) to a different device (eg a TV or HomeHub), or use Bluetooth (both Apple and Android) – but Bluetooth is generally not up to the mark on both platforms. Alternatively you should seriously consider using a wired connection using the headphone jack (some Android) or a lightning to aux (headphone jack) dongle (Apple). On my MacBook I do have a headphone jack and when on the desktop it’s connected to a pair of powered Logitech speakers.

Streaming services and their apps

As mentioned above, there a huge set of services requiring you to set up accounts, and install apps – unfortunately (but understandably) most of the free ones are not ad free, which can be distracting …

Best free music apps 2023: free music on Android and iPhone (from What Hi*Fi?)

The best free music apps for iOS and Android (from Digital Trends)

The 7 Best Free Music Streaming Apps for iOS and Android (2023) (from LifeWire)

8 Best Streaming Music Services With an Offline Mode (from LifeWire)

My conclusions from this? We use Apple Music with the recently launched and integrated Classical service as well. Both of these are part of our Apple One subscription which we share with other members of our family. Three of the family still use Spotify, but our son in Australia uses Tidal (for HiRes streaming) and Soundcloud (for new music). You can (and I have) convert Spotify playlists to Apple Music playlists (and vice versa) and I have using this app – Songshift but there are other apps.

Then we turn to Audiophiles, and the world of digital to analog convertors. By an audiophile (in this instance) I’m really just talking about someone who wants to connect a better set of speakers to their digital devices than the internal speakers that are supplied with the device. [In other words I’m setting the bar very low.]

The starting point is to begin to understand the world of Digital to Analog convertors (DACs), so this video hopefully will give an introduction and explain what’s going on in this mysterious world of interconnecting equipment.


I’ll follow this with a couple of articles that you might wish to peruse ..

What is a DAC? And why do you need one? (from What Hi*Fi?)

What is a DAC and why would you need one? (from Digital Trends)

You want to use your mobile device as your music player? Use a lightning to USB dongle to connect Apple to a DAC and then to your speakers, or headphones, but be sure to get a Samsung ACTIVE USB to AUX dongle for Android phones, or a USB-C to USB-C (or USB-A depending on your DAC) dongle to connect to your DAC, and on to the headphones or speakers.

So, if you’ve got this far, you might wish to really play your music at the best quality that it has been stored in digital format on your device Watching these two videos might help – or confuse you even more!

For Android …

For iOS …


Recording and editing music/sound on your device – use Audacity, Garage Band (iOS, MacOS) or BandLab (Android or iOS).

Then we turn to digital sound playing systems.

A wide field of options including the portable MP3 player – but would anyone want one of these nowadays – and the smart home speaker (with voice assistant) – which we looked at last year, and is definitely a device to look at.

Finally integrating with your home HiFi system.

I wrote about my setup in 2016 and again in 2019 for the group. I also wrote about my experiences on trying to make iTunes work for me better back in 2018 – from this latter post, the MacMini and Plex still remain as part of my setup but I don’t use either to stream music, and iTunes is thankfully dead and buried – well almost!

So what has changed from 2016? Well the external speakers connected to the Marantz amp have disappeared to be replaced by a Sonos Beam Soundbar connected to a new Samsung TV. All the other HifI components remain and are connected to the Marantz amp which is in turn connected to the Sonos Connect “hub”. The Bose speakers are still connected to the Marantz amp, but are rarely used now as we now have an Apple HomeHub which I can stream to using AirPlay, and which can be integrated with the Sonos speakers (I now also have a Sonos Move portable speaker) to provide home wide sound.

It has to be said this is a technological project, rather than an audiophile one, as my hearing has deteriorated to the point where I couldn’t detect HiRes from ordinary sound anyway, and the last time we actually had the same music in the whole house must have been the week after we bought the HomeHub.

The Apple HomeHub is a delightful device – we can “talk” to it using Siri or from Apple Music, and link the Sonos devices to it so that we can direct music to different speakers as required. It’s also the heart of our SmartHome project – more another day, and will provide moths of technology challenges for me using the Apple HomeKit and the interfaces that are being developed to link smart devices to that platform.

The next project – we’re installing solar panels this week, with a battery and a gateway to link to link to the Grid (using Octopus flexible tariffs) – definitely a topic for next year when we’ve got it all sorted.

Jonathan sent me his Sound setup which I reproduce below …

Just for info. – my home audio/cinema set up has some similarities to yours.

When we moved to Cardiff we bought a new house in Pontcanna which was still being built and I took the opportunity to have wiring installed in the walls to ceiling speakers in three rooms. I took advice from an AV specialist who advised Sonos, Spotify, blu-ray player and mini mac for my digital collection. 

Sonos serves all 3 rooms, plus a portable speaker, via a marantz amp in the main tv room ( surround plus sub ) and Sonos amps in the other two ( stereo )

Spotify provides all my music needs and I never now use the mac. Nor do I have a CD player in the house since the blu ray/receiver packed up. My cds are all packed up in boxes in the loft! The only stuff I miss is Neil Young and Joni Mitchel after Neil left in a huff!

I have Samsung tvs in 4 rooms – 3 of them Smart and all of them now support Spotify, Youtube, netflix etc. We subscribe to Sky with a main Sky Q box in the main tv room and mini boxes in 3 others.

I’m really happy with it but conscious that the Sonos gear is now 12 years old. They keep trying to get me to upgrade. One day it will be inevitable I guess. Sky might be considered an expensive luxury but we all need one or two of those. It’s brilliant!

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Notes of meeting – 11th May 2023

Brief notes this time – apologies. I started the meeting by reviewing recent posts on Flipboard, looking at our Group webpage on the Cardiff u3a website and inviting help in facilitating the General Meeting on June 13th. I re-iterated my encouragement for members to subscribe to the free Which? Scam Newsletter, they also do a free Technology newsletter amongst others that members might also find of interest..

Anne was having problems with her TiVo box and the transfer tio VM360. Unclear instructions from VirginMedia. [Partly resolved by next meeting. Update??]

Tony had been searching for an alternative broadband supplier; he’d got a reduction from BT after price-matching from VirginMedia. He’d also had problems with unzipping files. [Update??] He was also more than a little disappointed at the way HP was blocking the use of compatible cartridges on their printers. A good reason to migrate/consider tank printers??

Ralph was unsure why Google seemed to cease working (or finding sites previously visited). Suggested that a solution might be to clear the browser cache.

Jim suggested that a solution to Stella’s previously reported problem might be to search the whole disk for missing files (TV programmes). He updated the group on what he had recently been doing using Audacity (see previous post). He’d wanted to take output from Video2MP3 music video (on YouTube??) and cut it into segments for easier playback. He’d used Audacity to do this. He was continuing to experiment with his new Pixel phone and was curious as to why some photos were being stored as thumbnails (I don’t know whether I’ve reported that one right??)

Ian was investigating a change in his iMac identity connected to separating work from home use. [Update??]

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Sound session – 25th July 2019

Boot-up
Renee has asked a question about PDF converters. I’ve attempted to answer part of the question, but have not come up with any answer yet on electronic signatures – any thoughts, anyone? A former colleague has suggested that OpenOffice might provide the solution that Renee requires. I haven’t had the time to test that idea, but if it works – it might mean that this software is a better choice than LibreOffice which we looked at earlier in the year but you’d have to forego the ability to read AND write in Office formats (.docx and .xlsx), I believe.

The other thing I wanted to raise with you was how I was going to decide whether to use Apple Music (rather than Spotify, Google Music, Amazon Music, or whatever). I really haven’t had the time to give it a serious tryout but I can see that there’s some music available that I haven’t seen anywhere else – compilations of live music for an artist, for example – which looks very interesting. So I’ll subscribe for a while, see how the breakup of iTunes this autumn works out and then make a decision about whether £9.99 a month is a worthwhile subscription cost.

There was no interest from my family – I could have added them at an additional cost of £5pm – they’re all Spotify users. I guess that’s the issue. If you’re a user of another service and have set up Playlists, or whatever, and know the interface – why would you change? Me … I’m very slow into digital music. I’ve always wanted to hold the CD, and before that the vinyl/cassette, but as I have no interest in the latter anymore, perhaps it’s also time to ditch the former too!

Whatever I decide to do, I must remember to back-up my iTunes Library and iTunes Media Folder before I do anything – and that includes cancelling my iTunes Match subscription, which I’ve not been totally sure what it gives me, but which I know now is unnecessary if I have Apple Music.

Anything else anyone?
News
Continuing our paranoia theme of the year – ways in which to find out if accounts are linked to your email or phone.
How to avoid fake ads disguised as fake download links.
An unexpected upgrade for old iPhones.
Sound
So this part of the session is a bit of a “digital project”, but one where I have very little expertise, so I’m hoping (praying) for some help from Jim and anyone else who knows something about this area!

The challenge was thrown down by Renee. To paraphrase what she said: “How do I get music off old analog devices” (ie cassette recorders and record decks). I knew I had a a device to help in that – it was just a challenge to find it, to see if it would still work and more importantly whether it would work with current hardware PCs and Macs.

I’m delighted to say I found it (in the same box as my record deck); it appeared to be still working; which was then confirmed when I connected it to both a PC and my Mac running the latest versions of Windows 10, and MacOS (Mojave). So as long as I didn’t want to use the software provided by Creative – which I didn’t – all was ready to go.

Here’s the Creative SoundBlaster Audigy NX-2 external sound card – to be found in every home … NOT, just in a geeks home, like mine!

On the back you have a number of ports and the power connection, but most importantly the USB port.


On the side you have the port I’m going to use for input (Line In) – but you can see also a port for Mic In.


So having connected the power cable, and the USB cable to the SoundBlaster and the computer, it’s now time to connect the sound source cables. For that you’ll need either a cable like this …



… or have a splitter to join two red and white hifi cables to the Line In …



… or in my case for testing only, a cable like this …



… so that I can connect my iPhone to it! Yes, I know that’s totally pointless as the music on that device is already digital BUT I wasn’t going to lug a cassette deck in today, let alone a record deck! I haven’t tested output from a headphones socket into Line In which would use a similar cable. I can’t see any reason why that wouldn’t work as well. [NB This won’t work with more recent Apple devices than the iPhone 6s which I had at this time, as Apple have discontinued the headphone jack on their devices.]

You might also be able to connect another music device – keyboards or whatever using this method.

There is one caveat if you’re using the red and white cable connectors. You may well (certainly in the case of a record deck) need to take the feed from an amplified source as the sound output is unlikely to be sufficient for the software on the computer to pick-up. So you may need to take the feed from your hifi amplifier rather than the decks. Which neatly leads us to the software we’re going to use. Which is called Audacity …


and which can be downloaded from this link. Make sure you choose the right format – Windows or Mac. Below are a couple of screen shots of the software in action, but now (drum roll), I’m going to try another live demo, which I have absolutely no confidence of achieving success, whatsoever!

However, hopefully, Jim will have helped me a bit and it’s not been a complete disaster and it’s good to know that the software is well documented here.

I’ve got a printout of the instructions on how the SoundBlaster card works, and I can make them available if anyone wants to borrow the device and cables.