Improving your process might start with hiring managers
I've been advocating the use of the iPod as a metaphor for better hiring practices. If you have an iPod, you know that it's much more than a music player. It's a complete, integrated music system. You can quickly download music and podcasts, burn CDs, and plug it into your car, home music system or Bose speaker set. You don't even have to read the instructions to do any of this stuff and get great music anytime, anywhere.
By comparison, most hiring processes resemble a group of independent activities that no one even thought about integrating. IT provides minimal support to the candidate tracking system, which only loosely ties to the HRIS. Managers, recruiters, and other interviewers assess candidates using different criteria, and many aren't very good at it anyway. In many companies, the selection process is less intense than the expense reimbursement policy. Competencies and behavior models are often in conflict, and they don't tie to the real performance requirements of the job anyway.
To make matters worse, candidates are treated as commodities, not potential future employees. This is apparent with poorly written advertising, difficulty in finding and applying for jobs, and a minimalist approach to candidate customer service when they do finally get involved. So if you're not finding enough top candidates, collectively this is probably the reason. No wonder third-party recruiters are having a field day.
If you were to prioritize every single hiring issue you have, and develop a project plan that would result in a completely integrated system in the next 12 months, where would you start first?
My vote is with hiring managers. They are the weakest link in the chain. We just completed our Recruiting and Hiring Challenges 2005 Survey (http://www.zoomerang.co
http://www.ere.net/articles/db/DE3F21B4433642F2AFE70B8ED1082A78.asp
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
iPods and the Weakest Link in the Hiring Chain
Improving your process might start with hiring managers
I've been advocating the use of the iPod as a metaphor for better hiring practices. If you have an iPod, you know that it's much more than a music player. It's a complete, integrated music system. You can quickly download music and podcasts, burn CDs, and plug it into your car, home music system or Bose speaker set. You don't even have to read the instructions to do any of this stuff and get great music anytime, anywhere.
By comparison, most hiring processes resemble a group of independent activities that no one even thought about integrating. IT provides minimal support to the candidate tracking system, which only loosely ties to the HRIS. Managers, recruiters, and other interviewers assess candidates using different criteria, and many aren't very good at it anyway. In many companies, the selection process is less intense than the expense reimbursement policy. Competencies and behavior models are often in conflict, and they don't tie to the real performance requirements of the job anyway.
To make matters worse, candidates are treated as commodities, not potential future employees. This is apparent with poorly written advertising, difficulty in finding and applying for jobs, and a minimalist approach to candidate customer service when they do finally get involved. So if you're not finding enough top candidates, collectively this is probably the reason. No wonder third-party recruiters are having a field day.
If you were to prioritize every single hiring issue you have, and develop a project plan that would result in a completely integrated system in the next 12 months, where would you start first?
My vote is with hiring managers. They are the weakest link in the chain. We just completed our Recruiting and Hiring Challenges 2005 Survey (http://www.zoomerang.co
http://www.ere.net/articles/db/DE3F21B4433642F2AFE70B8ED1082A78.asp
I've been advocating the use of the iPod as a metaphor for better hiring practices. If you have an iPod, you know that it's much more than a music player. It's a complete, integrated music system. You can quickly download music and podcasts, burn CDs, and plug it into your car, home music system or Bose speaker set. You don't even have to read the instructions to do any of this stuff and get great music anytime, anywhere.
By comparison, most hiring processes resemble a group of independent activities that no one even thought about integrating. IT provides minimal support to the candidate tracking system, which only loosely ties to the HRIS. Managers, recruiters, and other interviewers assess candidates using different criteria, and many aren't very good at it anyway. In many companies, the selection process is less intense than the expense reimbursement policy. Competencies and behavior models are often in conflict, and they don't tie to the real performance requirements of the job anyway.
To make matters worse, candidates are treated as commodities, not potential future employees. This is apparent with poorly written advertising, difficulty in finding and applying for jobs, and a minimalist approach to candidate customer service when they do finally get involved. So if you're not finding enough top candidates, collectively this is probably the reason. No wonder third-party recruiters are having a field day.
If you were to prioritize every single hiring issue you have, and develop a project plan that would result in a completely integrated system in the next 12 months, where would you start first?
My vote is with hiring managers. They are the weakest link in the chain. We just completed our Recruiting and Hiring Challenges 2005 Survey (http://www.zoomerang.co
http://www.ere.net/articles/db/DE3F21B4433642F2AFE70B8ED1082A78.asp
Sourcing in the Sweet Spot
What Apple's iPod system can teach you about sourcing
As I've mentioned in other articles, the iPod offers a great model for sourcing and recruiting. Three things stand out:
1. It's a system. The iPod is a fully integrated information system — not simply a standalone music player. In comparison, most corporate recruiting departments resemble a hodgepodge of different technologies, tools, competing processes, and poorly linked information channels.
2. It's strategic. Healthy businesses grow and change when strategy drives tactics. The iPod has metamorphosed Apple Computer. When tactics and processes drive strategy, companies languish and so does sourcing. Too many recruiting departments are driven by tactics, bureaucracy, and processes. For example, why do we still post boring job descriptions online?
3. It's customer- and market-driven. The iPod is compelling, easy to buy, simple to use — and fun. The sourcing processes at most companies treat potential employees as vendors. The processes are impersonal; jobs are hard to find; the marketing copy (a.k.a. the job description) is boring and exclusionary; the application process is demeaning; and the interviewing process is unprofessional.
To start addressing this imbalance, it's important to better understand the buying behavior of the people you want to attract. Then you can develop sourcing strategies and campaigns that target these people and address their needs. This is what being market and customer-driven means.
In my article The Sourcing Sweet Spot, four broad candidate pools were described. These had to do with how aggressive candidates were in seeking new jobs, what motivated them to look, and the quality of the candidates in each pool. Here's the quick take:
* Active candidates: This pool represents about 15% of the labor force. These are candidates who are actively looking full time. By definition, they need another job — either because they don't have one, or because the one they have is inferior. While there are some good candidates in this pool, the best are underrepresented. Most companies by default market to this pool.
* Less active candidates: This pool represents candidates on the margin. People in this group sometimes feel underemployed, underappreciated, or overworked. By definition they are fully employed, but on a bad day they might look for another job. The total size of this pool is about 15% to 20% of the labor force, and the best people are overrepresented in this pool. This is a big segment of the sourcing sweet spot, and you need to redesign your front- and back-end sourcing processes to market to it.
* Semi-passive candidates: These people are fully employed, but are open to being called to consider a better career opportunity. The best people are fully represented in this pool. However, the pool is huge, about 35% of the labor force. So who you call and what you say is key to success here.
* Passive candidates: These people don't want another job, so don't bother unless you can't find a strong person using less costly sourcing techniques. Passive candidates will only move for a combination of a far better job, a much stronger career opportunity, and a much richer compensation package. This pool represents the rest of the labor force, about 30% to 35%.
A comprehensive sourcing strategy in combination with a workforce plan is the lesson of the iPod. This needs to define the channels you'll use by job type, the development of advertising programs that meet the needs of those in the sweet spot, how the recruiting team will be organized, and the role hiring managers need to play.
Here are some sourcing channel ideas you might want to consider as part of increasing your effectiveness sourcing in the sweet spot.
Job Board Advertising
The key to success here is compelling ads that are easy to find, combined with an easy application process. This will capture the interest of less active candidates, who might only look for an hour or so every other month. Search engine optimization techniques need to be combined with web analytics to ensure that the best people find your ads and that the application process is designed to minimize the opt-out ratios. To quickly see how well you're doing here, put some of the keywords a top candidate would use to find a job into Yahoo! Search. If your jobs don't show up, you're not sourcing in the sweet spot.
Back-end processing is equally important here. You must be able to call the best people within 24 hours. This means that your candidate search engine must be able to separate the best from the rest, and your recruiters must be competent when calling. Of course, when they call, recruiters must get more referrals if the candidate is not a direct fit or if you have multiple openings. Equally important: The whole recruiting team must be doing this, not just a few.
Most companies complain that their job board advertising programs don't work too well. The reality is that most don't use this important channel to its fullest extent.
Semi-Passive Candidate Sourcing
There are a number of front-end keys to successfully sourcing and recruiting top people in this pool. First is having a compelling opportunity to offer. Top performers want not only a better job but also a better long-term career opportunity. Using a performance profile that clearly spells out the challenges and opportunities in the job is the key to success here. Getting names of hot candidates is next.
However, the most important part of this whole process is calling these people up, qualifying them, recruiting them, and getting more referrals. We'll leave this part to future articles, so for now let me just present a few important name-generating techniques:
* Employee referral programs. Ask your best people for the names of the best people they've worked with in the past. Then call and recruit these people and get more referrals. If you're not a phone wizard, then use Jobster. This is the next best thing — as long as you have a compelling job to describe in your email link. Without this, Jobster is just another wasted tool.
* Online tools. My favorites are ZoomInfo and LinkedIn. These are all you need to hire anyone — if you can get the person on the phone and get referrals. There are other social networking tools in this group, like Jigsaw, that should also be considered. If you have a great job, LinkedIn's new job referral system is worth evaluating. ZoomInfo has just released an email blaster, which is also pretty neat.
* Internet data-mining. Getting names this way is the stuff that made Shally Steckerl famous. You'll get some great names, but to make the techniques work, be prepared for extensive phone calling. Sometimes just getting the person on the phone is the challenge. Once on the phone, you must engage with the person and get pre-qualified referrals. This is the key to cold calling a list of names. You don't need to ever call everyone on the list. You must be able to get referrals and then work only those referrals that are "A" players. This way, you can restrict your phone calls to top tier people.
* Non-Internet name generating techniques. There are probably more great candidates not listed on the Internet than those who are. Getting these names requires a host of clever techniques, including competitive intelligence and advanced networking. I'll leave these techniques for future articles, but the point for now is that these techniques should be considered in combination with Internet data-mining.
If you want to hire more semi-passive candidates, you need to be great on the phone, be great at getting referrals, and have a truly compelling job to offer. Without these capabilities in place, it's best to restrict your in-house sourcing to a dramatic overhaul of your online and career website advertising programs and to enhancing your employee referral programs using tools like Jobster.
If you do have great jobs but don't have the in-house capability to target these semi-passive candidates, you might want to consider the use of recruiter networks like Hireability.com. Hireability.com offers a quick, low-cost way to obtain pre-qualified semi-passive candidates within days. There's no cost to check it out, and the fee is half of a typical contingency search.
Sourcing in the sweet spot is where the action is these days. Not only do you need to be there, but you also need to do it well. It starts with a sourcing strategy that's customer driven. This converts to a tactical plan based on the use of a series of sourcing channels that are designed to optimize candidate quality and time to hire. Higher cost options should only be used if quality declines. This way, you can get the best people at the lowest cost.
As part of all this, don't ignore the customer experience. Make sure the user interface is fun, compelling, and easy to use. Go out and get an iPod to put this all into proper perspective. In the long run, it will be the best sourcing investment you've every made.
http://www.ere.net/articles/db/00362D461F4B4F81A50736B2AF96DA03.asp
As I've mentioned in other articles, the iPod offers a great model for sourcing and recruiting. Three things stand out:
1. It's a system. The iPod is a fully integrated information system — not simply a standalone music player. In comparison, most corporate recruiting departments resemble a hodgepodge of different technologies, tools, competing processes, and poorly linked information channels.
2. It's strategic. Healthy businesses grow and change when strategy drives tactics. The iPod has metamorphosed Apple Computer. When tactics and processes drive strategy, companies languish and so does sourcing. Too many recruiting departments are driven by tactics, bureaucracy, and processes. For example, why do we still post boring job descriptions online?
3. It's customer- and market-driven. The iPod is compelling, easy to buy, simple to use — and fun. The sourcing processes at most companies treat potential employees as vendors. The processes are impersonal; jobs are hard to find; the marketing copy (a.k.a. the job description) is boring and exclusionary; the application process is demeaning; and the interviewing process is unprofessional.
To start addressing this imbalance, it's important to better understand the buying behavior of the people you want to attract. Then you can develop sourcing strategies and campaigns that target these people and address their needs. This is what being market and customer-driven means.
In my article The Sourcing Sweet Spot, four broad candidate pools were described. These had to do with how aggressive candidates were in seeking new jobs, what motivated them to look, and the quality of the candidates in each pool. Here's the quick take:
* Active candidates: This pool represents about 15% of the labor force. These are candidates who are actively looking full time. By definition, they need another job — either because they don't have one, or because the one they have is inferior. While there are some good candidates in this pool, the best are underrepresented. Most companies by default market to this pool.
* Less active candidates: This pool represents candidates on the margin. People in this group sometimes feel underemployed, underappreciated, or overworked. By definition they are fully employed, but on a bad day they might look for another job. The total size of this pool is about 15% to 20% of the labor force, and the best people are overrepresented in this pool. This is a big segment of the sourcing sweet spot, and you need to redesign your front- and back-end sourcing processes to market to it.
* Semi-passive candidates: These people are fully employed, but are open to being called to consider a better career opportunity. The best people are fully represented in this pool. However, the pool is huge, about 35% of the labor force. So who you call and what you say is key to success here.
* Passive candidates: These people don't want another job, so don't bother unless you can't find a strong person using less costly sourcing techniques. Passive candidates will only move for a combination of a far better job, a much stronger career opportunity, and a much richer compensation package. This pool represents the rest of the labor force, about 30% to 35%.
A comprehensive sourcing strategy in combination with a workforce plan is the lesson of the iPod. This needs to define the channels you'll use by job type, the development of advertising programs that meet the needs of those in the sweet spot, how the recruiting team will be organized, and the role hiring managers need to play.
Here are some sourcing channel ideas you might want to consider as part of increasing your effectiveness sourcing in the sweet spot.
Job Board Advertising
The key to success here is compelling ads that are easy to find, combined with an easy application process. This will capture the interest of less active candidates, who might only look for an hour or so every other month. Search engine optimization techniques need to be combined with web analytics to ensure that the best people find your ads and that the application process is designed to minimize the opt-out ratios. To quickly see how well you're doing here, put some of the keywords a top candidate would use to find a job into Yahoo! Search. If your jobs don't show up, you're not sourcing in the sweet spot.
Back-end processing is equally important here. You must be able to call the best people within 24 hours. This means that your candidate search engine must be able to separate the best from the rest, and your recruiters must be competent when calling. Of course, when they call, recruiters must get more referrals if the candidate is not a direct fit or if you have multiple openings. Equally important: The whole recruiting team must be doing this, not just a few.
Most companies complain that their job board advertising programs don't work too well. The reality is that most don't use this important channel to its fullest extent.
Semi-Passive Candidate Sourcing
There are a number of front-end keys to successfully sourcing and recruiting top people in this pool. First is having a compelling opportunity to offer. Top performers want not only a better job but also a better long-term career opportunity. Using a performance profile that clearly spells out the challenges and opportunities in the job is the key to success here. Getting names of hot candidates is next.
However, the most important part of this whole process is calling these people up, qualifying them, recruiting them, and getting more referrals. We'll leave this part to future articles, so for now let me just present a few important name-generating techniques:
* Employee referral programs. Ask your best people for the names of the best people they've worked with in the past. Then call and recruit these people and get more referrals. If you're not a phone wizard, then use Jobster. This is the next best thing — as long as you have a compelling job to describe in your email link. Without this, Jobster is just another wasted tool.
* Online tools. My favorites are ZoomInfo and LinkedIn. These are all you need to hire anyone — if you can get the person on the phone and get referrals. There are other social networking tools in this group, like Jigsaw, that should also be considered. If you have a great job, LinkedIn's new job referral system is worth evaluating. ZoomInfo has just released an email blaster, which is also pretty neat.
* Internet data-mining. Getting names this way is the stuff that made Shally Steckerl famous. You'll get some great names, but to make the techniques work, be prepared for extensive phone calling. Sometimes just getting the person on the phone is the challenge. Once on the phone, you must engage with the person and get pre-qualified referrals. This is the key to cold calling a list of names. You don't need to ever call everyone on the list. You must be able to get referrals and then work only those referrals that are "A" players. This way, you can restrict your phone calls to top tier people.
* Non-Internet name generating techniques. There are probably more great candidates not listed on the Internet than those who are. Getting these names requires a host of clever techniques, including competitive intelligence and advanced networking. I'll leave these techniques for future articles, but the point for now is that these techniques should be considered in combination with Internet data-mining.
If you want to hire more semi-passive candidates, you need to be great on the phone, be great at getting referrals, and have a truly compelling job to offer. Without these capabilities in place, it's best to restrict your in-house sourcing to a dramatic overhaul of your online and career website advertising programs and to enhancing your employee referral programs using tools like Jobster.
If you do have great jobs but don't have the in-house capability to target these semi-passive candidates, you might want to consider the use of recruiter networks like Hireability.com. Hireability.com offers a quick, low-cost way to obtain pre-qualified semi-passive candidates within days. There's no cost to check it out, and the fee is half of a typical contingency search.
Sourcing in the sweet spot is where the action is these days. Not only do you need to be there, but you also need to do it well. It starts with a sourcing strategy that's customer driven. This converts to a tactical plan based on the use of a series of sourcing channels that are designed to optimize candidate quality and time to hire. Higher cost options should only be used if quality declines. This way, you can get the best people at the lowest cost.
As part of all this, don't ignore the customer experience. Make sure the user interface is fun, compelling, and easy to use. Go out and get an iPod to put this all into proper perspective. In the long run, it will be the best sourcing investment you've every made.
http://www.ere.net/articles/db/00362D461F4B4F81A50736B2AF96DA03.asp
Vinyl Records Into your iPod
It was almost three years ago when I first wrote this "How To," and now, with the newly released Toast 7 and the updated CD Spin Doctor, it's time to re-examine how to convert your old records into digital recordings. The extra good news is that if you are placing your digital data into an iPod, there are fewer steps and there are a few fringe benefits (explained later). If you are placing your digital music onto CDs, the process is pretty much the same, but with a few less pitfalls than before.
There are many people like me with hundreds of vinyl albums with which we can't part but seldom play because we like the convenience of CDs and iPods. Either we are faced with the reality that The Best of Peter & Gordon is not likely to be converted into a CD by Capitol Records and/or since we already purchased the album once, why should we purchase the album/CD a 2nd time?
The good news is that you can convert your albums to digital music for CDs and iPods. The "also" good news is that it's not all that difficult to do, but the important thing to be aware of is that it does take a bit of time (about an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half per album) and there are really few steps that can be skipped. It's not an automatic process. Not difficult, but not automatic.
Throughout this "How To," I refer to CD Spin Doctor 3. With the exception of sending completed tunes to iTunes and the use of an equalizer, all other operations can equally be done with CD Spin Doctor 2 (CD Spin Doctor 2 can be used with a G3 and earlier versions of the Mac OS).
I've prepared a 12 step process for the conversion, and if you follow the process you should be listening to your ol' favorites on your iPod or CD Walkman in no timeówell about an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half to be more exact, but a bit less time if you are moving the songs onto an iPod.
To follow these instructions, you will need some or all of the following materials/software/hardware to do this:
* A Macintosh computer, G4 or G5 running Mac OS X v10.3.9 (Panther) or Mac OS X v10.4.x (Tiger)
* Toast 7 (bundled with the new CD Spin Doctor version 3 and Discus version 3) or CD Spin Doctor 3 standalone version
* A CD burner (either the one on the computer or external, whichever)
* An iPod, and/or a CD player
* iTunes
* A phonograph
* Headphones (preferably headphones, not buds, and preferably those that can cover the ears or fill the ear tunnel--do what you can, but don't go crazy on this. However, using the external speakers is not recommended (and if you use the speakers from a Mac tower, you are wasting your time).
But, before we begin, here's a small list of definitions:
* Album (or record): large pieces of flat, round (usually black) pieces of plastic, 12 inches in diameter with a small hole in the middle. Required a phonograph (see below) to play. There never was a phono-walkman, and these cannot be played in a moving automobile.
* CD: Compact Disc. An object that can hold music that can be played on a CD player. One of the objectives of this whole article.
* CD-R: Compact Disc-Recordable. You can record onto this type of CD one timeóyou cannot erase what you've done.
* CD-RW: Compact Disc-Read/Write. You can write onto this type of CD, erase, and write again. Not all CD players can read the information on these types of CDs.
* iPod: A small device (that keeps on getting smaller) that can play an amazing number of songs and has changed the entire recording industry almost single-handedly. (Not to mention, it has also saved Apple's butt.)
* Phonograph player: A device to play Albums. It had an arm that swung over, and physically touched the album as it rotated (see above) with a diamond "needle" and sensed the irregularities of a channel dug into a spiral grove pattern. The "needle" converted these irregularities into sound via an amplifier and sound system. They were limited to playing on flat, non-moving surfaces and had to be placed far from active dancing to prevent the needle from bouncing all over the album's grooves.
Now, once you have all these items, you can proceed. Here are the steps:
1. Select your music
2. Get the music into the computer
3. Open each track (side) in Spin Doctor
4. Set the filters to remove hissing and pops and apply the filters
5. Set the tracks
6. Name the tracks
7. (a) Send the tracks to iTunes or (b) Send the tracks to Toast
8. Turn the .aiff files into MP3 files (optional)
9. Send the names to Discus RE
10. Burn the CD
11. Print the labels
12. Enjoy the music as you assemble your Jewel Box
(1) Select Your Music
I hate to tell you this, but not every album you have is precious. That's probably why not every album you have (unless your collection were only Beatles albums) have already been converted into a CD. Considering that this process is not automatic and will require you to invest some of your time and energy, be judicious. Select with care and love. I'd be the last person to say that your music isn't (or wasn't) any good, but I will say that since you are older now your music tastes are likely to have changed.
(2) Get your music into your computer
This is probably the most challenging part of the whole process. The easiest way to do this is to take your phonograph and set it near your computer. So near that you can plug the adapter cable that may or may not have came with your copy of Toast: the red and white phono jacks go into the phonograph and the 1/8 inch stereo plug into your Mac. (If you didn't get one of these with your copy of Toast, you can obtain one from most stereo/radio stores for between $5-$10). For me, this direct plug-in approach is neither desirable nor practical. I do not want to disassemble my stereo system every time I want to record an album. That's why I eventually elected to purchase a separate CD burner that I can attach to my stereo system. While I do not expect anyone else to follow this approach, it was the most practical for me.
If you are going to plug your phonograph into your computer, you will need CD Spin Doctor 3 (SD3), software that is bundled with Toast 7. When you first open Spin Doctor, the default opening selection will ask if you want to "Import audio into CD Spin Doctoróclick "Continue." If you plan on leaving your computer alone while the album is recording (such as getting a bite to eat), you can have Spin Doctor automatically stop recording after a defined amount of time. Curiously, you have to select the playing of the music through your computers speakers (as opposed to this being a default). Click on the arrow for Input Settings and you have access to the Input Volume. To see if you are over-impeding the music, look at the upper right corner of the sheet where you see a "mic" icon. To the right of that icon, the little bubbles will show the percent of volume for both tracks (left and right). If you see the lights always filled all the way across (peakingóthat's when it's over-impeding), you have the input volume too loud. Try to keep them about 75% on loud music and never peaking on the loudest parts. Over-impeding is when the high volume of a song is so high it cannot be dealt with by the recording. So if you set the input volume too high during the soft sounds, when very loud sounds are played there is a flattening-out of the sound. This is the first place your headphones come into play: put them on and listen to a known "loud" section of your record. Adjust the volume to the point where the volume is loud but not flattening out. [Remember, adjusting the volume on your computer doesn't effect the sound or volume of the recording.] If you are not sure what bad sound is like, jam the input volume as loud as you can and see if the music sounds bad (not poorly, but bad). If it does, drop the volume down. Once the volume is set, start the record and press the record button.
Among the changes in CD SD3 is that you do not have to have an active phonograph plugged into the computer as a sound source to be able to access the various options for sound input. As can be seen below, you can import at either CD Quality (44100 Hz), DVD (48000 Hz), or a variety of lesser quality input levels. Perhaps more importantly, for input you can either use the Built-in Audio or Soundflower (both 2ch and 16ch). Soundflower is a system extension that allows applications to pass audio to other applications.
While this approach is direct, less expensive, and saves time, I find it easier to use a separate CD burner on our stereo system.
Just so you know the details, I have a Phillips CDR 785 (which is no longer made). The good thing about these type of CD burners is that you can easily make copies of CDs and you can burn any analog signal running through your stereo signal into a CD. But there are a few catches: (aside from the extra cost for purchasing this unit): have you ever seen specific CD-Rs sold as Music CD-R or Music CD-RW? You probably also noticed that these are more expensive than the standard CD-R and CD-RW you purchase for your computer. The reason is that these have a special code burnt into the CD to let the CD burners such as my Phillips know that these are Music CD-Rs and Music CD-RWs. These CDs cost more because the extra costs goes to ASCAP, BMI, and other music royalty organizations (the thought is if you are using these CDs you are burning music CDs so let's have you pay the royalties up front). If you try to use a computer CD-R, you will be told that the disk is a "Wrong Disk."
Since you plan on burning CDs of albums you already own, there should be no concern of violating copyright laws. So, if you plan on using a burner such as the one I have, you might want to obtain the Music CD-RW as these can be used over and over.
Following the instructions for your CD Burner, burn your album(s) onto the CD-RW. As a point of interest, many older albums only hold about 25-35 minutes of music. As such, I usually record two albums at a time onto the CD-RW. Once you have completed recording your music, you can then simply drag the 2, 3, or 4 tracks of music into your computer.
Why 2 or 4 tracks of music when each side of an album contains multiple songs? Whether you choose to burn the information directly into your computer or into a CD burner attached to your stereo system, the separate tracks on the album will not become separate tracks in the music you just burnt. The reason is that to create separate tracks, the CD burner, or the computer must hear gaps of no music and/or noise. By definition, all the snaps and hissing on the album is just too much noise to be considered silent and as such, each side of your album will be considered as one track. So, one album will result in 2 tracks, two albums will provide 4 tracks. This will be dealt with later, so don't worry.
(3) Open each track (side) in Spin Doctor
[For reasons I'll explain in the section where you send the music off to Toast, it is easier to fix the music in reverse track order. That is, if there are two sides to an album and if you are going to send your music to a CD and not your iPod, do the second side first before the first side. If your music will stay in iTunes and/or your iPod, it doesn't make a difference.]
As mentioned, one of the programs bundled with Toast is CD Spin Doctor 3. This program has had some nice updates since Toast 6. However, just like CD SD 2, you can open .aiff files directly as opposed to CD SD 1 where you needed to convert them into something like a "Sonic aiff" file (in Peak) and then open the track into Spin Doctor.
As you open an album's sound file into CD Spin Doctor 3, the file is converted into a waveform for a full visual presentation. This process takes about 30 seconds to 2 minutes depending on the speed of your computer, and the full sound file will appear as shown below. There are two files for stereo recordings, one for monoral. As the wave form expands farther from the "x" axis (along the "y" axis) the louder the sound. A flatter wave is lesser volume.
Just below the waveform(s), on the left side, is a slider that lets you expand and contract the waveform. This is just like zooming in and out of the wave form. In the middle of the screen are the start, stop and fast forward/rewind controls that let you listen to the recording. When you click on the start button (the right facing arrow), a line progresses along the waveform. Where the line progresses is the place in the wave form where you are listening. If you click anywhere on the timeline above the waveform, the "listen-line" will jump to that location. This is handy when you are fine-tuning the filters.
(4) Set the filters to remove hissing and pops and apply the filters
Spin Doctor's greatest strength, and perhaps its best reason for its existence, are the Spin Doctor's filters. Using these filters, one can easily remove the hissing, snapping, and popping noises that vinyl is known and loved or hated for. It is because of these noises that a CD burner cannot "hear" nothing between tracks to automatically create the tracks for the CD.
If you click on the equalizer-like button on the top right of the screen, the filter control screen slides out.
The big and obvious new addition here is something that I complained about that CD SD 2 was lacking: a real equalizer. Now, with version 3, a 10-band equalizer helps to fill the empty space on this sheet. As nice an addition as this is, I still have complaints (hey, I'm a reviewer). I would also have liked some numbers associated with each band, but, more importantly, the ability to save various settings for re-use. If you have any questions on how to play with an equalizer, open iTunes and open iTunes' equalizer. Apple provides a bunch of "pre-sets" that can help guide you towards what kind of settings are good for any given music type. Some pre-set settings I would like to see would be those to enhance certain types of recordings such as those from the 30s and 40s. By the way, if you go to the Help menu for assistance and call up "Filters," you will see the image of CS SD2. In other words, as far as the equalizer is concerned, there is no support whatsoever.
The other two filters are divided as "Noise Reducer" and "Sound Enhancer." There is no change on these from previous versions. The good news is that these controls are very effective, the bad news is that the process is too "magical." This is most evident with the Sound Enhancer that has three controls: Exciter, Wideness and Sub-Bass. Excuse me, but what in the devil does "Exciter" really mean? What is "Wideness" really doing? The good news is that these are now complimented with the equalizer.
That notwithstanding, these two filters do a good job. However, the end result will be up to you. That's the real reason you have the headphones; you have to tinker with the sound to a point where you like the result. Keep in mind that the more you increase the Noise Reducer sliders, the more you will be reducing the crispness of the sound. Therefore, do Noise Reduction before applying the Sound Enhancers.
One of the very good options with CD Spin Doctor is that you can create a copy of your music with the applied filters and leave your original alone. This is done by checking the "Create copy before applying." The default has this checked. This is good, so just leave it. Just like digital images, do not remove your original sound files until you are absolutely sure you like the results. Remember, if after you set the filters, set the tracks and burn the CD if you don't like the results you do not want to have to re-burn the original music if you don't have to. This step can take some time to finish, but is entirely processor dependent. If you have an older computer, you may want to have a newspaper handy.
One big warning on using these filters; the idea is you want to set the filters and apply them. When you apply the filter, you should be making a copy of the file with the effects of the filters as part of the sound. The process takes several minutes (depending on the speed of your processor) and once completed, you must listen to some of the music to verify that what you have is what you wanted. The big warning is that I found the quality of the sound changed after I applied the filter from when I was just testing before applying the filter. Typically, I found the music overimpeeded (flattening out during louder peaks of the music). This is why it is important to apply the filters to a copy of the music, not the originals. As such, it was easy to go back to the originals, tweak the filters down a bit and run the process over again. On one occasion it took me several tries to get the sounds to a level I was pleased with.
(5) Set (identify) the tracks
One of the big changes in version 3 is that, previously, if you set the tracks before applying the filters, you'd lose your tracks. Now, it doesn't make a difference. You can do step 4 or 5 in either order.
Either way, now or before the previous step, you need to set your tracks. There is an option with CD Spin Doctor for the software to self-find the tracks (the "magic wand"-like button to the left of the Trash Can on the top seen in the image below), but its success depends that there be no sound between tracks and, as stated, you do not have that luxury with records.
Fortunately, it's relatively easy to set the tracks in CD Spin Doctor. Below, you can see an album's .aiff sound file for one side of the album opened up in CD SD 3.
[In the image below, you see two pairs of a sound wave file. The pair on top (running horizontal) show the entire sound file. If the sound file is 2 or 200 minutes, the entire thing fills up the top window. The small blue rectangle in this window represents the sound file on view on the lower sound file window where you are "zoomed in." In the lower "zoomed in" window, you can see a red "track" being dragged out almost to the end of the song (where the sound wave flattens out). By placing the end of one track just at the end of the song's sound and the next track just at the beginning of the next song, you can avoid saving any of the record's hiss from between songs.]
Below Apple's three dots, there are two options for "Track Mode." Nothing I could do helped me determine the difference between these two settings. And as the Help file is the same for version 2, it could also provide no assistance. Ignore these options. The Auto Define button is only relevant if you have recorded a CD so CD SD3 can auto define the gaps between tracks. If you recorded an album, there are no silent regions between tracks, and you have to do this manually.
First, you magnify the waveform by sliding the size slider seen below the wave form on the left (just below the red rectangle, between the magnifying glass and the "-" and "+"). As you zoom into the wave form, it's easier to see flat sections of the wave form. These are the beginnings and endings of tracks. By mousing down on one of these sections and dragging right or left, you create the track region. If you start to play the music (by clicking on the Play button), you can verify that the tracks start and/or end at the appropriate place. Remember, some music has very subtle fade-ins or fade-outs and you probably do not want to split those off or onto the wrong track.
Once you've done this for all the tracks and labeled the tracks, CD Spin Doctor will look something like the image below. [Note that I've clicked a check box called "Fit" (above the track names). This forces the entire sound file to fit in the lower window providing no zooming of the file.]
If you miss-apply a track, you can remove it by mousing down on the track to make it active and click on the "Delete" key. That track will disappear in a puff of smoke, just like when you drag an icon out of your Dock in OS X. Rather cool.
Notice how each track will have its own color. This is very handy for determining, and fine-tuning, when one track stops and the next one starts. Also observe on the bottom half that CD Spin Doctor shows you the time when each track stops and starts. This is very handy if the music never really stops between tracks and you want to make sure you are not going to overlap the tracks and/or skip a beat of music. As you can see in the above image, these tracks are already named. The next step explains how to name the tracks.
(6) Name the tracks
Have your album by your side here; simply double-click on the "untitled-track" under the "Name" region in the window and type in the name of the song. If you click on the Tab key, you will automatically be transferred to the next song below, ready to type the next name. If you hit the Return key, the name field will be set. Be sure after you enter in the last name to either press the Return key or click the mouse button off to the side to set the last name.
(7a) Send the tracks to iTunes
This is the second big change with the new Spin Doctor (the Equalizer that was discussed in Step 4 was the first). From the File menu, you select Send to iTunes, or click on the iTunes icon on the upper right) and the following sheet drops down from the top of the window. From here you can set the Artist's Name and the Album Title. You can also set how the tracks will be encoded into iTunes (the three choices are Apple Lossless, MP3 and AAC). If you have not applied any filters, you can do that as part of the process of moving the files into iTunes, but I strongly recommend you do not do use this option. As explained in Step 5, I found discrepancies from how the tracks sounded before the filtering was formally applied and how the tracks sounded after the filters had been applied.
One of the supremely wonderful things about the window below is that you can pre-set your songs with the name of the artist and the album. Before version 3, after transferring your songs to Toast and onto a CD, then from the CD to iTunes, none of the artist or album names ever existed, and the names of the songs were always lost. This required you to replace all the data in iTunes, which was tedious.
Sadly, there is one bug when you send the files off to iTunes; all the tracks will arrange themselves in alphabetical order, not the original order of the songs on the album. While this is not a problem if you always shuffle your songs, there is no way you can listen to an album like Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band out of the proper order. It's just wrong. Fortunately, there is one easy way around this, but it does add a small step here. Once you have the songs in iTunes, click on each song of the album and either go to the File menu and select "Get Info" or simply tap "Command-i" on your keyboard and this will bring up a new window for information on that song.
As you can see in the image below, click on the "Info" tab, and on the right hand side there is a place where you can manually add the track number of the total tracks for that album. After you have entered this data, the songs will appear in their proper order if you sort your songs by either artist or album. Since this problem doesn't occur when you send songs to Toast, only iTunes, hopefully this bug will be corrected in a future update.
(7b) Send the Active Tracks to Toast
On the top right of the CD Spin Doctor window, there is a little button/icon with an orange arrow pointing to the Toast icon. If you click on this, all your tracks will be sent off directly to Toast. If Toast is not open, this action will automatically start Toast.
Early in this article, I mentioned that you want to work on the album sides in reverse order (side 2 and then side 1). This is because CD Spin Doctor sends the songs over and places them at the top of the list. So, if you did the first side first, after sending the second side over, the second side's songs would be placed before the first sides songs. If you do create the sides in the wrong order, this is not really a big deal because, in Toast, you can easily drag songs up and down to either re-create the order on the album or play record promoter and place the songs in the order you felt they should have been in the first place.
(8) Add songs from iTunes
While you can no longer use Toast to burn CDs from songs you have downloaded from the iTunes store, you can burn as many CDs as you want from music you recorded yourself (see steps 1-7) or from commercially recorded CDs. New in Toast 7 is a Media tab in the side-panel on Toast. From here you can access your iTunes library and drag files directly into the "about to be recorded" CD and Burn.
The other aspect to consider here is that if you want to burn an MP3 CD, Enhanced Audio CD, or Music DVD, you will need to get the files in another format other than the .aiff format used for standard audio CDs (and Spin Doctor). Thus, after working the songs over in Spin Doctor, you can send them off to iTunes and turn them into MP3, Apple Lossless, or AAC files for burning onto the various Toast options.
OK, why would you want to do this? Simple, it space. A 19.3 MB .aiff file is 2.1 MB when saved as an MP3. A 93.1 MB music file is compressed down to a 10.5 MB. If you are planning on placing these files on a CD, you have 640 (or 700) MB of space and you can fill that up with (say) about 30 songs or about 300 songs. Your choice.
[If you already have some .aiff songs in iTunes, it is simple to convert them into an MP3 (or other) format, open iTunes and open up Preferences. Select the "Advanced" tab and on the top of the window will be three sub-tabs: General, Importing and Burning. In the Importing sub-tab, look for the option called "Import Using:" and select what format you'd like to convert the song to from the drop-down menu. The three check mark selections below are optional, and since what you will be doing will be done on (and in) your computer (not from a CD), you do not need to check the last "error correction" item. Then, after you close the Preferences, be sure to select all the songs you want to convert (click, click-drag, Shift-click, or Command-click) go to the Advanced menu and select "Convert Selection to xxx"). (Here, the xxx refers to whatever format you selected in the Preferences.)
After you finish the conversion, you will now have two versions of the same song: the original .aiff and the new format. The catch here is that there are no apparent differences between the two versions. The best, and safest thing to do now is in iTunes; do a right-click or Control-click on any of the songs of which you changed the format, and select "Show Song File." When you do that, the Finder will come to the front, and the folder that contains that song will be displayed showing you that song file highlighted. Make sure you are in List View so you can see the file sizes. At this point, you can delete all the .aiff files as they will be obvious since they will be much larger in size.]
Now that you've found them, you can drag all these MP3 sound files into Toast, but this time you can select the CD to be an MP3 CD or even a Music DVD. To do this, look at the upper left side of Toast's window when the Audio tab is selected.
If you click on the blue arrowhead just to the left of Audio CD, a sheet will expand from the left of the window showing the various options available. Select the Advanced button and you can see an MP3, Music DVD and enhance Audio CD selections. Once that is selected, you can drag all the MP3s you can fill onto one CD, drag up and down to set the order and have a high-ho time playing DJ.
(9) Send the names to Discus RE
One of the severe limitations to creating music CDs is that even though you may have the names of the songs placed in Toast, after you burn the CD and replace the CD back into your computer, all of those typed in names will be gone. That's one of the reasons why direct import from Spin Doctor to iTunes is such an added benefit. In the past, when you created the CD, then tried to add the songs to iTunes, you'd have to re-enter the song names all over again. When you insert a commercial CD into your computer, the song names, album cover, etc. are all brought up via the web utilizing Gracenote. CDs you make are not likely to have access to Gracenote and therefore will come up as untitled songs.
One of the options you do have is to transfer all the song names onto your CD jewel box cover. Again, Toast comes bundled with software to help you. One of the other bundled software items is Discus RE (now at version 3). Open this program.
Once opened, you are presented with a screen for you to select which part of the CD art you want to work on.
I'd suggest that you create either the Jewel Case Base or the Folding Booklet.
The reasons why I'm going to pass on the CD/DVD and the Jewel Case Lid are different. First off, if you do not have an ink jet printer that can print on CDs or DVDs, you would need to purchase a CD label kit (like Stomper) and this article is not focusing on that. Secondly, these are glue labels you need to place onto your CD. If you ever consider placing your CDs in your car, I am not sure that the glue on these CD labels are up to heat temperatures of over 120?. That is, I'd hate to see what happens when you have a CD in your car's CD player that's been sitting in the hot sun when you try to eject it from your car's CD. I have to say that I've never tried this and I do not know if this is in fact a problem. I just don't know, but I do not want to personally find out that it isn't a good idea. As such, I have no problems just taking a marking pen and writing whatever I need to onto the CD to properly identify what's on the CD. Yes, this is not as pretty and clever as creating great works of art, but when push comes to shove, I do not want to experiment on my car equipment. However, if you have an inkjet printer that can print directly on CDs, have fun. One of the new features in Discus 3 is you can select from a wide variety of printer's layouts, so your CD will be printed properly. Again, you are covered either way.
[I have heard some concerns about using marking pens on CDs, specifically the solvent from the pen will "leak" to the other side wreaking havoc with whatever you burnt. The solvent in just about all "indelible" marking pens is alcohol. Simply put, alcohol cannot effect CDs. If you've had a bad experience, it was something else, not the pen.]
My warning on Jewel Case Lids is only that you shouldn't use regular paper; they can too easily slip out, and are therefore useless. However, since I last wrote this article, Avery and other printing stock companies have added cardboard jewel box stock to properly print on your inkjet. This means that unlike printing on standard paper, the results will not fly out of your CD's jewel box every time you open the lid.
Whether you are printing onto the CD itself or creating jewel box art and information. It is very easy to suck the information out of iTunes, Toast, Jam, or other projects. After you send the songs to Toast, in Discus you go to the Import menu and select the first option:
Once you select whatever option is best from the Import menu, you will be presented with a window asking what information you want placed on your label. I usually select "Track number," "Name," and "Time." Then, appearing on the label are all your track names. Keep in mind that Discus does not use Apple's Quartz drawing capabilities, and what you have there will probably not look very good. Don't worry, you will be printing this and it will look fine.
Also, expect that the default font is not right, and the size is wrong. For track names, I'd suggest a font size of 10-12 points, and this can be controlled by clicking on the small dot. As you drag your mouse toward the small dot, you will see your current font size as a popup window. As you can see in the image below, you can control the size, kerning and leading of all text. Not too shabby. If you have too many titles to fit on one block, you can cut the titles that extend beyond where they should, and then click on the New button to bring up a new text region. Pass the remaining group and click OK to land this block on the window. Move (by dragging) and size them as needed.
Once you have the titles all settled, you can click on the New button and a new text window will show up. Here you can type the title of your CD, and, once you click OK, you can then rotate the text to fit in the fold-up region to the right and/or left of the titles. Provide color, size, fancy fonts, whatever you feel motivated to create.
When you print this, folding and cutting lines are provided to guide your work. If you pry out the back of plastic jewel case (the black part), you can fit this on the back of your jewel case and replace the back of the case. The good thing about this is that standard weight paper is fine for here and will not fall out.
The other option, especially handy if you are doing MP3 CDs, is to use the Folding Booklet as this has more "territory" upon which to write all the song names. As far as any artwork, photos and other embellishments, again, you are on your own.
(10) Burn the CD
Once you have all your tracks ready to go, you are ready to burn your CD. On the bottom right of the Toast window is a big red button. If you click on that you will be asked to place a blank CD-R in your CD burner, and you will be asked to select a burning speed. Toast is now pretty smart, and you can easily select the "Best" speed. Toast will work with your CD burner and get the CD burnt in a reasonable amount of time. You can override this with a selected speed, but for a long time this has not been all that necessary.
(11) Print the labels
While the CD is being burnt by Toast, it is a good time to print out your labels. Once printed, I'd recommend that you do any folding using the hairline folding guides before you cut out the labels using those hairline guides. Once you've cut the label out, the guides are gone and you have no guidance for any subsequent folding.
(12) Enjoy the music as you assemble your Jewel Box
It's probable that by now your CD has completed its burning process and the chime from Toast has alerted you to the fact that it's time to eject your new CD. If you eject the CD and shove it back into your computer, or place it in a CD player, you can now sit back and enjoy your new CD while assembling your jewel box with your new labels.
If you elected to convert your songs into MP3s, AACs or Apple Lossless and placed them on your iPod, you've obviously skipped steps 7b through 12 and you are already on your next album.
My one last suggestion is that you take your original recordingsóbefore using the filtersóand burn them onto a CD for future "what if" use. My thought here is similar to your digital photos: you take them out of your camera, and if you alter them in Photoshop, iPhoto, whatever, you no longer have the originals to work with. If you learn a new Photoshop trick, apply this to your original image, and next week you learn an even better trick to do the same thing, you no longer have the original image to work with. It's gone. The same applies here. If the next version of CD Spin Doctor has a great new enhancement, you will have to re-record your albums from scratch because you tossed your original .aiff files. Similarly, if you like doing this, you may want to purchase one of the professional level sound enhancers and re-do the albums. If you toss the original recordings, you have to record them again. You don't have to do this, but it's a thought.
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There are many people like me with hundreds of vinyl albums with which we can't part but seldom play because we like the convenience of CDs and iPods. Either we are faced with the reality that The Best of Peter & Gordon is not likely to be converted into a CD by Capitol Records and/or since we already purchased the album once, why should we purchase the album/CD a 2nd time?
The good news is that you can convert your albums to digital music for CDs and iPods. The "also" good news is that it's not all that difficult to do, but the important thing to be aware of is that it does take a bit of time (about an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half per album) and there are really few steps that can be skipped. It's not an automatic process. Not difficult, but not automatic.
Throughout this "How To," I refer to CD Spin Doctor 3. With the exception of sending completed tunes to iTunes and the use of an equalizer, all other operations can equally be done with CD Spin Doctor 2 (CD Spin Doctor 2 can be used with a G3 and earlier versions of the Mac OS).
I've prepared a 12 step process for the conversion, and if you follow the process you should be listening to your ol' favorites on your iPod or CD Walkman in no timeówell about an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half to be more exact, but a bit less time if you are moving the songs onto an iPod.
To follow these instructions, you will need some or all of the following materials/software/hardware to do this:
* A Macintosh computer, G4 or G5 running Mac OS X v10.3.9 (Panther) or Mac OS X v10.4.x (Tiger)
* Toast 7 (bundled with the new CD Spin Doctor version 3 and Discus version 3) or CD Spin Doctor 3 standalone version
* A CD burner (either the one on the computer or external, whichever)
* An iPod, and/or a CD player
* iTunes
* A phonograph
* Headphones (preferably headphones, not buds, and preferably those that can cover the ears or fill the ear tunnel--do what you can, but don't go crazy on this. However, using the external speakers is not recommended (and if you use the speakers from a Mac tower, you are wasting your time).
But, before we begin, here's a small list of definitions:
* Album (or record): large pieces of flat, round (usually black) pieces of plastic, 12 inches in diameter with a small hole in the middle. Required a phonograph (see below) to play. There never was a phono-walkman, and these cannot be played in a moving automobile.
* CD: Compact Disc. An object that can hold music that can be played on a CD player. One of the objectives of this whole article.
* CD-R: Compact Disc-Recordable. You can record onto this type of CD one timeóyou cannot erase what you've done.
* CD-RW: Compact Disc-Read/Write. You can write onto this type of CD, erase, and write again. Not all CD players can read the information on these types of CDs.
* iPod: A small device (that keeps on getting smaller) that can play an amazing number of songs and has changed the entire recording industry almost single-handedly. (Not to mention, it has also saved Apple's butt.)
* Phonograph player: A device to play Albums. It had an arm that swung over, and physically touched the album as it rotated (see above) with a diamond "needle" and sensed the irregularities of a channel dug into a spiral grove pattern. The "needle" converted these irregularities into sound via an amplifier and sound system. They were limited to playing on flat, non-moving surfaces and had to be placed far from active dancing to prevent the needle from bouncing all over the album's grooves.
Now, once you have all these items, you can proceed. Here are the steps:
1. Select your music
2. Get the music into the computer
3. Open each track (side) in Spin Doctor
4. Set the filters to remove hissing and pops and apply the filters
5. Set the tracks
6. Name the tracks
7. (a) Send the tracks to iTunes or (b) Send the tracks to Toast
8. Turn the .aiff files into MP3 files (optional)
9. Send the names to Discus RE
10. Burn the CD
11. Print the labels
12. Enjoy the music as you assemble your Jewel Box
(1) Select Your Music
I hate to tell you this, but not every album you have is precious. That's probably why not every album you have (unless your collection were only Beatles albums) have already been converted into a CD. Considering that this process is not automatic and will require you to invest some of your time and energy, be judicious. Select with care and love. I'd be the last person to say that your music isn't (or wasn't) any good, but I will say that since you are older now your music tastes are likely to have changed.
(2) Get your music into your computer
This is probably the most challenging part of the whole process. The easiest way to do this is to take your phonograph and set it near your computer. So near that you can plug the adapter cable that may or may not have came with your copy of Toast: the red and white phono jacks go into the phonograph and the 1/8 inch stereo plug into your Mac. (If you didn't get one of these with your copy of Toast, you can obtain one from most stereo/radio stores for between $5-$10). For me, this direct plug-in approach is neither desirable nor practical. I do not want to disassemble my stereo system every time I want to record an album. That's why I eventually elected to purchase a separate CD burner that I can attach to my stereo system. While I do not expect anyone else to follow this approach, it was the most practical for me.
If you are going to plug your phonograph into your computer, you will need CD Spin Doctor 3 (SD3), software that is bundled with Toast 7. When you first open Spin Doctor, the default opening selection will ask if you want to "Import audio into CD Spin Doctoróclick "Continue." If you plan on leaving your computer alone while the album is recording (such as getting a bite to eat), you can have Spin Doctor automatically stop recording after a defined amount of time. Curiously, you have to select the playing of the music through your computers speakers (as opposed to this being a default). Click on the arrow for Input Settings and you have access to the Input Volume. To see if you are over-impeding the music, look at the upper right corner of the sheet where you see a "mic" icon. To the right of that icon, the little bubbles will show the percent of volume for both tracks (left and right). If you see the lights always filled all the way across (peakingóthat's when it's over-impeding), you have the input volume too loud. Try to keep them about 75% on loud music and never peaking on the loudest parts. Over-impeding is when the high volume of a song is so high it cannot be dealt with by the recording. So if you set the input volume too high during the soft sounds, when very loud sounds are played there is a flattening-out of the sound. This is the first place your headphones come into play: put them on and listen to a known "loud" section of your record. Adjust the volume to the point where the volume is loud but not flattening out. [Remember, adjusting the volume on your computer doesn't effect the sound or volume of the recording.] If you are not sure what bad sound is like, jam the input volume as loud as you can and see if the music sounds bad (not poorly, but bad). If it does, drop the volume down. Once the volume is set, start the record and press the record button.
Among the changes in CD SD3 is that you do not have to have an active phonograph plugged into the computer as a sound source to be able to access the various options for sound input. As can be seen below, you can import at either CD Quality (44100 Hz), DVD (48000 Hz), or a variety of lesser quality input levels. Perhaps more importantly, for input you can either use the Built-in Audio or Soundflower (both 2ch and 16ch). Soundflower is a system extension that allows applications to pass audio to other applications.
While this approach is direct, less expensive, and saves time, I find it easier to use a separate CD burner on our stereo system.
Just so you know the details, I have a Phillips CDR 785 (which is no longer made). The good thing about these type of CD burners is that you can easily make copies of CDs and you can burn any analog signal running through your stereo signal into a CD. But there are a few catches: (aside from the extra cost for purchasing this unit): have you ever seen specific CD-Rs sold as Music CD-R or Music CD-RW? You probably also noticed that these are more expensive than the standard CD-R and CD-RW you purchase for your computer. The reason is that these have a special code burnt into the CD to let the CD burners such as my Phillips know that these are Music CD-Rs and Music CD-RWs. These CDs cost more because the extra costs goes to ASCAP, BMI, and other music royalty organizations (the thought is if you are using these CDs you are burning music CDs so let's have you pay the royalties up front). If you try to use a computer CD-R, you will be told that the disk is a "Wrong Disk."
Since you plan on burning CDs of albums you already own, there should be no concern of violating copyright laws. So, if you plan on using a burner such as the one I have, you might want to obtain the Music CD-RW as these can be used over and over.
Following the instructions for your CD Burner, burn your album(s) onto the CD-RW. As a point of interest, many older albums only hold about 25-35 minutes of music. As such, I usually record two albums at a time onto the CD-RW. Once you have completed recording your music, you can then simply drag the 2, 3, or 4 tracks of music into your computer.
Why 2 or 4 tracks of music when each side of an album contains multiple songs? Whether you choose to burn the information directly into your computer or into a CD burner attached to your stereo system, the separate tracks on the album will not become separate tracks in the music you just burnt. The reason is that to create separate tracks, the CD burner, or the computer must hear gaps of no music and/or noise. By definition, all the snaps and hissing on the album is just too much noise to be considered silent and as such, each side of your album will be considered as one track. So, one album will result in 2 tracks, two albums will provide 4 tracks. This will be dealt with later, so don't worry.
(3) Open each track (side) in Spin Doctor
[For reasons I'll explain in the section where you send the music off to Toast, it is easier to fix the music in reverse track order. That is, if there are two sides to an album and if you are going to send your music to a CD and not your iPod, do the second side first before the first side. If your music will stay in iTunes and/or your iPod, it doesn't make a difference.]
As mentioned, one of the programs bundled with Toast is CD Spin Doctor 3. This program has had some nice updates since Toast 6. However, just like CD SD 2, you can open .aiff files directly as opposed to CD SD 1 where you needed to convert them into something like a "Sonic aiff" file (in Peak) and then open the track into Spin Doctor.
As you open an album's sound file into CD Spin Doctor 3, the file is converted into a waveform for a full visual presentation. This process takes about 30 seconds to 2 minutes depending on the speed of your computer, and the full sound file will appear as shown below. There are two files for stereo recordings, one for monoral. As the wave form expands farther from the "x" axis (along the "y" axis) the louder the sound. A flatter wave is lesser volume.
Just below the waveform(s), on the left side, is a slider that lets you expand and contract the waveform. This is just like zooming in and out of the wave form. In the middle of the screen are the start, stop and fast forward/rewind controls that let you listen to the recording. When you click on the start button (the right facing arrow), a line progresses along the waveform. Where the line progresses is the place in the wave form where you are listening. If you click anywhere on the timeline above the waveform, the "listen-line" will jump to that location. This is handy when you are fine-tuning the filters.
(4) Set the filters to remove hissing and pops and apply the filters
Spin Doctor's greatest strength, and perhaps its best reason for its existence, are the Spin Doctor's filters. Using these filters, one can easily remove the hissing, snapping, and popping noises that vinyl is known and loved or hated for. It is because of these noises that a CD burner cannot "hear" nothing between tracks to automatically create the tracks for the CD.
If you click on the equalizer-like button on the top right of the screen, the filter control screen slides out.
The big and obvious new addition here is something that I complained about that CD SD 2 was lacking: a real equalizer. Now, with version 3, a 10-band equalizer helps to fill the empty space on this sheet. As nice an addition as this is, I still have complaints (hey, I'm a reviewer). I would also have liked some numbers associated with each band, but, more importantly, the ability to save various settings for re-use. If you have any questions on how to play with an equalizer, open iTunes and open iTunes' equalizer. Apple provides a bunch of "pre-sets" that can help guide you towards what kind of settings are good for any given music type. Some pre-set settings I would like to see would be those to enhance certain types of recordings such as those from the 30s and 40s. By the way, if you go to the Help menu for assistance and call up "Filters," you will see the image of CS SD2. In other words, as far as the equalizer is concerned, there is no support whatsoever.
The other two filters are divided as "Noise Reducer" and "Sound Enhancer." There is no change on these from previous versions. The good news is that these controls are very effective, the bad news is that the process is too "magical." This is most evident with the Sound Enhancer that has three controls: Exciter, Wideness and Sub-Bass. Excuse me, but what in the devil does "Exciter" really mean? What is "Wideness" really doing? The good news is that these are now complimented with the equalizer.
That notwithstanding, these two filters do a good job. However, the end result will be up to you. That's the real reason you have the headphones; you have to tinker with the sound to a point where you like the result. Keep in mind that the more you increase the Noise Reducer sliders, the more you will be reducing the crispness of the sound. Therefore, do Noise Reduction before applying the Sound Enhancers.
One of the very good options with CD Spin Doctor is that you can create a copy of your music with the applied filters and leave your original alone. This is done by checking the "Create copy before applying." The default has this checked. This is good, so just leave it. Just like digital images, do not remove your original sound files until you are absolutely sure you like the results. Remember, if after you set the filters, set the tracks and burn the CD if you don't like the results you do not want to have to re-burn the original music if you don't have to. This step can take some time to finish, but is entirely processor dependent. If you have an older computer, you may want to have a newspaper handy.
One big warning on using these filters; the idea is you want to set the filters and apply them. When you apply the filter, you should be making a copy of the file with the effects of the filters as part of the sound. The process takes several minutes (depending on the speed of your processor) and once completed, you must listen to some of the music to verify that what you have is what you wanted. The big warning is that I found the quality of the sound changed after I applied the filter from when I was just testing before applying the filter. Typically, I found the music overimpeeded (flattening out during louder peaks of the music). This is why it is important to apply the filters to a copy of the music, not the originals. As such, it was easy to go back to the originals, tweak the filters down a bit and run the process over again. On one occasion it took me several tries to get the sounds to a level I was pleased with.
(5) Set (identify) the tracks
One of the big changes in version 3 is that, previously, if you set the tracks before applying the filters, you'd lose your tracks. Now, it doesn't make a difference. You can do step 4 or 5 in either order.
Either way, now or before the previous step, you need to set your tracks. There is an option with CD Spin Doctor for the software to self-find the tracks (the "magic wand"-like button to the left of the Trash Can on the top seen in the image below), but its success depends that there be no sound between tracks and, as stated, you do not have that luxury with records.
Fortunately, it's relatively easy to set the tracks in CD Spin Doctor. Below, you can see an album's .aiff sound file for one side of the album opened up in CD SD 3.
[In the image below, you see two pairs of a sound wave file. The pair on top (running horizontal) show the entire sound file. If the sound file is 2 or 200 minutes, the entire thing fills up the top window. The small blue rectangle in this window represents the sound file on view on the lower sound file window where you are "zoomed in." In the lower "zoomed in" window, you can see a red "track" being dragged out almost to the end of the song (where the sound wave flattens out). By placing the end of one track just at the end of the song's sound and the next track just at the beginning of the next song, you can avoid saving any of the record's hiss from between songs.]
Below Apple's three dots, there are two options for "Track Mode." Nothing I could do helped me determine the difference between these two settings. And as the Help file is the same for version 2, it could also provide no assistance. Ignore these options. The Auto Define button is only relevant if you have recorded a CD so CD SD3 can auto define the gaps between tracks. If you recorded an album, there are no silent regions between tracks, and you have to do this manually.
First, you magnify the waveform by sliding the size slider seen below the wave form on the left (just below the red rectangle, between the magnifying glass and the "-" and "+"). As you zoom into the wave form, it's easier to see flat sections of the wave form. These are the beginnings and endings of tracks. By mousing down on one of these sections and dragging right or left, you create the track region. If you start to play the music (by clicking on the Play button), you can verify that the tracks start and/or end at the appropriate place. Remember, some music has very subtle fade-ins or fade-outs and you probably do not want to split those off or onto the wrong track.
Once you've done this for all the tracks and labeled the tracks, CD Spin Doctor will look something like the image below. [Note that I've clicked a check box called "Fit" (above the track names). This forces the entire sound file to fit in the lower window providing no zooming of the file.]
If you miss-apply a track, you can remove it by mousing down on the track to make it active and click on the "Delete" key. That track will disappear in a puff of smoke, just like when you drag an icon out of your Dock in OS X. Rather cool.
Notice how each track will have its own color. This is very handy for determining, and fine-tuning, when one track stops and the next one starts. Also observe on the bottom half that CD Spin Doctor shows you the time when each track stops and starts. This is very handy if the music never really stops between tracks and you want to make sure you are not going to overlap the tracks and/or skip a beat of music. As you can see in the above image, these tracks are already named. The next step explains how to name the tracks.
(6) Name the tracks
Have your album by your side here; simply double-click on the "untitled-track" under the "Name" region in the window and type in the name of the song. If you click on the Tab key, you will automatically be transferred to the next song below, ready to type the next name. If you hit the Return key, the name field will be set. Be sure after you enter in the last name to either press the Return key or click the mouse button off to the side to set the last name.
(7a) Send the tracks to iTunes
This is the second big change with the new Spin Doctor (the Equalizer that was discussed in Step 4 was the first). From the File menu, you select Send to iTunes, or click on the iTunes icon on the upper right) and the following sheet drops down from the top of the window. From here you can set the Artist's Name and the Album Title. You can also set how the tracks will be encoded into iTunes (the three choices are Apple Lossless, MP3 and AAC). If you have not applied any filters, you can do that as part of the process of moving the files into iTunes, but I strongly recommend you do not do use this option. As explained in Step 5, I found discrepancies from how the tracks sounded before the filtering was formally applied and how the tracks sounded after the filters had been applied.
One of the supremely wonderful things about the window below is that you can pre-set your songs with the name of the artist and the album. Before version 3, after transferring your songs to Toast and onto a CD, then from the CD to iTunes, none of the artist or album names ever existed, and the names of the songs were always lost. This required you to replace all the data in iTunes, which was tedious.
Sadly, there is one bug when you send the files off to iTunes; all the tracks will arrange themselves in alphabetical order, not the original order of the songs on the album. While this is not a problem if you always shuffle your songs, there is no way you can listen to an album like Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band out of the proper order. It's just wrong. Fortunately, there is one easy way around this, but it does add a small step here. Once you have the songs in iTunes, click on each song of the album and either go to the File menu and select "Get Info" or simply tap "Command-i" on your keyboard and this will bring up a new window for information on that song.
As you can see in the image below, click on the "Info" tab, and on the right hand side there is a place where you can manually add the track number of the total tracks for that album. After you have entered this data, the songs will appear in their proper order if you sort your songs by either artist or album. Since this problem doesn't occur when you send songs to Toast, only iTunes, hopefully this bug will be corrected in a future update.
(7b) Send the Active Tracks to Toast
On the top right of the CD Spin Doctor window, there is a little button/icon with an orange arrow pointing to the Toast icon. If you click on this, all your tracks will be sent off directly to Toast. If Toast is not open, this action will automatically start Toast.
Early in this article, I mentioned that you want to work on the album sides in reverse order (side 2 and then side 1). This is because CD Spin Doctor sends the songs over and places them at the top of the list. So, if you did the first side first, after sending the second side over, the second side's songs would be placed before the first sides songs. If you do create the sides in the wrong order, this is not really a big deal because, in Toast, you can easily drag songs up and down to either re-create the order on the album or play record promoter and place the songs in the order you felt they should have been in the first place.
(8) Add songs from iTunes
While you can no longer use Toast to burn CDs from songs you have downloaded from the iTunes store, you can burn as many CDs as you want from music you recorded yourself (see steps 1-7) or from commercially recorded CDs. New in Toast 7 is a Media tab in the side-panel on Toast. From here you can access your iTunes library and drag files directly into the "about to be recorded" CD and Burn.
The other aspect to consider here is that if you want to burn an MP3 CD, Enhanced Audio CD, or Music DVD, you will need to get the files in another format other than the .aiff format used for standard audio CDs (and Spin Doctor). Thus, after working the songs over in Spin Doctor, you can send them off to iTunes and turn them into MP3, Apple Lossless, or AAC files for burning onto the various Toast options.
OK, why would you want to do this? Simple, it space. A 19.3 MB .aiff file is 2.1 MB when saved as an MP3. A 93.1 MB music file is compressed down to a 10.5 MB. If you are planning on placing these files on a CD, you have 640 (or 700) MB of space and you can fill that up with (say) about 30 songs or about 300 songs. Your choice.
[If you already have some .aiff songs in iTunes, it is simple to convert them into an MP3 (or other) format, open iTunes and open up Preferences. Select the "Advanced" tab and on the top of the window will be three sub-tabs: General, Importing and Burning. In the Importing sub-tab, look for the option called "Import Using:" and select what format you'd like to convert the song to from the drop-down menu. The three check mark selections below are optional, and since what you will be doing will be done on (and in) your computer (not from a CD), you do not need to check the last "error correction" item. Then, after you close the Preferences, be sure to select all the songs you want to convert (click, click-drag, Shift-click, or Command-click) go to the Advanced menu and select "Convert Selection to xxx"). (Here, the xxx refers to whatever format you selected in the Preferences.)
After you finish the conversion, you will now have two versions of the same song: the original .aiff and the new format. The catch here is that there are no apparent differences between the two versions. The best, and safest thing to do now is in iTunes; do a right-click or Control-click on any of the songs of which you changed the format, and select "Show Song File." When you do that, the Finder will come to the front, and the folder that contains that song will be displayed showing you that song file highlighted. Make sure you are in List View so you can see the file sizes. At this point, you can delete all the .aiff files as they will be obvious since they will be much larger in size.]
Now that you've found them, you can drag all these MP3 sound files into Toast, but this time you can select the CD to be an MP3 CD or even a Music DVD. To do this, look at the upper left side of Toast's window when the Audio tab is selected.
If you click on the blue arrowhead just to the left of Audio CD, a sheet will expand from the left of the window showing the various options available. Select the Advanced button and you can see an MP3, Music DVD and enhance Audio CD selections. Once that is selected, you can drag all the MP3s you can fill onto one CD, drag up and down to set the order and have a high-ho time playing DJ.
(9) Send the names to Discus RE
One of the severe limitations to creating music CDs is that even though you may have the names of the songs placed in Toast, after you burn the CD and replace the CD back into your computer, all of those typed in names will be gone. That's one of the reasons why direct import from Spin Doctor to iTunes is such an added benefit. In the past, when you created the CD, then tried to add the songs to iTunes, you'd have to re-enter the song names all over again. When you insert a commercial CD into your computer, the song names, album cover, etc. are all brought up via the web utilizing Gracenote. CDs you make are not likely to have access to Gracenote and therefore will come up as untitled songs.
One of the options you do have is to transfer all the song names onto your CD jewel box cover. Again, Toast comes bundled with software to help you. One of the other bundled software items is Discus RE (now at version 3). Open this program.
Once opened, you are presented with a screen for you to select which part of the CD art you want to work on.
I'd suggest that you create either the Jewel Case Base or the Folding Booklet.
The reasons why I'm going to pass on the CD/DVD and the Jewel Case Lid are different. First off, if you do not have an ink jet printer that can print on CDs or DVDs, you would need to purchase a CD label kit (like Stomper) and this article is not focusing on that. Secondly, these are glue labels you need to place onto your CD. If you ever consider placing your CDs in your car, I am not sure that the glue on these CD labels are up to heat temperatures of over 120?. That is, I'd hate to see what happens when you have a CD in your car's CD player that's been sitting in the hot sun when you try to eject it from your car's CD. I have to say that I've never tried this and I do not know if this is in fact a problem. I just don't know, but I do not want to personally find out that it isn't a good idea. As such, I have no problems just taking a marking pen and writing whatever I need to onto the CD to properly identify what's on the CD. Yes, this is not as pretty and clever as creating great works of art, but when push comes to shove, I do not want to experiment on my car equipment. However, if you have an inkjet printer that can print directly on CDs, have fun. One of the new features in Discus 3 is you can select from a wide variety of printer's layouts, so your CD will be printed properly. Again, you are covered either way.
[I have heard some concerns about using marking pens on CDs, specifically the solvent from the pen will "leak" to the other side wreaking havoc with whatever you burnt. The solvent in just about all "indelible" marking pens is alcohol. Simply put, alcohol cannot effect CDs. If you've had a bad experience, it was something else, not the pen.]
My warning on Jewel Case Lids is only that you shouldn't use regular paper; they can too easily slip out, and are therefore useless. However, since I last wrote this article, Avery and other printing stock companies have added cardboard jewel box stock to properly print on your inkjet. This means that unlike printing on standard paper, the results will not fly out of your CD's jewel box every time you open the lid.
Whether you are printing onto the CD itself or creating jewel box art and information. It is very easy to suck the information out of iTunes, Toast, Jam, or other projects. After you send the songs to Toast, in Discus you go to the Import menu and select the first option:
Once you select whatever option is best from the Import menu, you will be presented with a window asking what information you want placed on your label. I usually select "Track number," "Name," and "Time." Then, appearing on the label are all your track names. Keep in mind that Discus does not use Apple's Quartz drawing capabilities, and what you have there will probably not look very good. Don't worry, you will be printing this and it will look fine.
Also, expect that the default font is not right, and the size is wrong. For track names, I'd suggest a font size of 10-12 points, and this can be controlled by clicking on the small dot. As you drag your mouse toward the small dot, you will see your current font size as a popup window. As you can see in the image below, you can control the size, kerning and leading of all text. Not too shabby. If you have too many titles to fit on one block, you can cut the titles that extend beyond where they should, and then click on the New button to bring up a new text region. Pass the remaining group and click OK to land this block on the window. Move (by dragging) and size them as needed.
Once you have the titles all settled, you can click on the New button and a new text window will show up. Here you can type the title of your CD, and, once you click OK, you can then rotate the text to fit in the fold-up region to the right and/or left of the titles. Provide color, size, fancy fonts, whatever you feel motivated to create.
When you print this, folding and cutting lines are provided to guide your work. If you pry out the back of plastic jewel case (the black part), you can fit this on the back of your jewel case and replace the back of the case. The good thing about this is that standard weight paper is fine for here and will not fall out.
The other option, especially handy if you are doing MP3 CDs, is to use the Folding Booklet as this has more "territory" upon which to write all the song names. As far as any artwork, photos and other embellishments, again, you are on your own.
(10) Burn the CD
Once you have all your tracks ready to go, you are ready to burn your CD. On the bottom right of the Toast window is a big red button. If you click on that you will be asked to place a blank CD-R in your CD burner, and you will be asked to select a burning speed. Toast is now pretty smart, and you can easily select the "Best" speed. Toast will work with your CD burner and get the CD burnt in a reasonable amount of time. You can override this with a selected speed, but for a long time this has not been all that necessary.
(11) Print the labels
While the CD is being burnt by Toast, it is a good time to print out your labels. Once printed, I'd recommend that you do any folding using the hairline folding guides before you cut out the labels using those hairline guides. Once you've cut the label out, the guides are gone and you have no guidance for any subsequent folding.
(12) Enjoy the music as you assemble your Jewel Box
It's probable that by now your CD has completed its burning process and the chime from Toast has alerted you to the fact that it's time to eject your new CD. If you eject the CD and shove it back into your computer, or place it in a CD player, you can now sit back and enjoy your new CD while assembling your jewel box with your new labels.
If you elected to convert your songs into MP3s, AACs or Apple Lossless and placed them on your iPod, you've obviously skipped steps 7b through 12 and you are already on your next album.
My one last suggestion is that you take your original recordingsóbefore using the filtersóand burn them onto a CD for future "what if" use. My thought here is similar to your digital photos: you take them out of your camera, and if you alter them in Photoshop, iPhoto, whatever, you no longer have the originals to work with. If you learn a new Photoshop trick, apply this to your original image, and next week you learn an even better trick to do the same thing, you no longer have the original image to work with. It's gone. The same applies here. If the next version of CD Spin Doctor has a great new enhancement, you will have to re-record your albums from scratch because you tossed your original .aiff files. Similarly, if you like doing this, you may want to purchase one of the professional level sound enhancers and re-do the albums. If you toss the original recordings, you have to record them again. You don't have to do this, but it's a thought.
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