Today the whole world faces and recognises the enormous force of information streaming via TV/cable, Internet, MP3, IPOD, radio, books, magazines, newspapers, smart cell phones, and handheld devices. People live in society of access to everything via the access to web pages and information searches such as google.
So how do we combat Information Overload? The answer is we change the way the message is delivered! How do we change the message delivery system? By Chunking - that is grouping larger bodies of information into smaller, meaningful segments which has certain advantages.
This article describes flash cards in terms of transferring content to pocket-sized cards as well as access to cards by mobile phone along with making own personal mobile flash card system.
Flash cards for learning
By definition Flash Cards are fast reading, pocket sized deck of cards that enable individuals, public and private enterprises to quickly tap into the best minds on business, professional development, communications, sales and marketing and host of other important content topics in work, occupation, organisation and or business. Flash Cards change the way the message and medium is traditionally delivered to one using innovative technological mobility tools in the communication age. It provides persons or enterprises to have ready access to information or serve as a learning tool for capacity building to raise their level of competence to perform tasks.
By chunking these flash cards can provide a learning platform for content dissemination that meets the needs of institutions – individual and companies alike.
Flash card application for bringing solution to learning
Flash Cards assist knowledge workers and learners to grasp main concepts without exhausting them with extraneous details.
Key ideas and important insights are extracted from CONTENT (published books, information material etc) and placed onto pocket-sized cards with benefits of saving learning time and helping learner grasp main concepts without exhausting them with extraneous details. Flash Card application enhances the skills and capabilities of organisations to access knowledge and information easily.
Best selling books (professional, business, wealth, sales, and personal development) with approval of authors and publishers are transferred onto physical reading cards and accessed them by mobile phone/PDA platform or by computer desktop/laptop delivery with user testing capabilities.
Flash cards make it practical that content needs to be learned, retained and delivered with real time access.
Flash card specifications
Flash cards fast reading pocket sized cards are presented with font colors and on the backside of each card there are motivations and quotations, and inspiring messages.
It's packed with the actual methods, strategies and techniques needed at the workplace or study environment. It allows the users to easily pull out a different card each day to read as daily business building subject matter.
The innovative applications for Flash cards:
1. Pocket size cards printed and delivered with the capability of mobile access using PDA, desktop, laptop and mobile smart phones
2. Twenty tools for individual and/or in groups for training situation exercises within the programme
3. Library of titles (250) available depending on number 25, 100, or 250 titles.
Access to professional books enables one to quickly tap into the best minds on business, management, professional development, and communication, sales and marketing and host of other topics important in the workforce or organisation.
Each title deck contains key ideas and important insights extracted from existing book or pre set content. There is a library of over 250 books available in flash card format that can be used by trainers; incorporated into corporate and government training activities, and as an individual training tool. Each plastic card is black, red and yellow colors with face card telling the reader an important component of the book with around 28+ cards per deck.
Experts hired to develop 20 ways and exercises on how to use flash cards. Each exercise has a unique way of learning content from a book, used individually or used in organisation by grounds or instruction.
The key features and benefits of mobile applications for Flash cards
1. Portability - The ability for learners to carry flash cards with/or mobile device within a learning environment or to different learning environments with ease.
"Over 50% of all employees spend up to half of their time outside the office." Statistics from Empowering Technologies Incorporated cited by Keegan (2003)
2. Social Interactivity - Sharing and collaboration between learners.
"The role of trainer changes from transferring knowledge to individual learners to a facilitator helping learners work together in the construction of their own knowledge." (Harasim, 1990)
3. Context Sensitivity - The ability of learners to gather and respond to real or simulated data unique to the current location, environment, and time using flash card content.
"Engages learners in the learning process and provides for immediate reflection of the effect of their actions on the system as a whole." (Harasim, 1992)
4. Connectivity - Learners are always connected to a shared mobile network for the purposes of data submission, data retrieval, and communication.
Author books are now available on mobile platform with ready access on smart phones, PDA, desktop/laptop or iPOD and can be saved onto personal hard drive.
Examples of Flash card applications including mobile access
1. Education Learning - access to professional books where each deck of cards contains key ideas and important insights extracted from a best selling book that will enhance training of government and enterprise staff and trainer resources
2. Human Resource Management – mobile delivered books and content can be displayed along with types of study aides such as Checklists, Reference Tools and Self Assessments, Tests and Quizzes, Refresher Tools, In Class Pre Test Preparation, and Best Practices.
3. Communications and Training – using mobile media audio, and video with superimposing instructors on top of power point slides, documents or graphics, real live training can be reproduced and integrated into Flash cards.
4. Making own mobile flash cards
StudyCell, a company dedicated to making educational software for cell phones operates mobile flash card system which offers pre-made mobile flash card decks for studying a variety of subjects (languages, math, history, etc.), in addition to its patent pending system for creating individualised flash cards on the StudyCell Web site for download to students' cell phones. Once created, these individualised "make your own" flash cards can be shared with other students and teachers.
Flash cards can serve as a advertising or marketing tool that can be used as quick reference, reminder and reinforcement learning and operating tool or buy them for the office, co-workers – trainers and educators, and they also can be used in trade shows/exhibitions or provide clients as an important product tool as a custom message that the institution wants to deliver.
http://www.digitallearning.in/articles/article-details.asp?articleid=962&typ=Regular%20Features
Thursday, May 31, 2007
The iPod's receptionist
Well the iPod is popular and every company wants to hook up with the pod, so you have options ranging from the itrip to a DJ console which synchronises with the iPod. But as they say in advertising "wait there's more". Meet the Mavizen MobiBlu. What's so special about it you ask? It looks like a regular iPod radio remote you say. Well I agree it is all that, but it's a lot more too.
In fact, the MobiBlu is what I would call the receptionist of the iPod. It takes calls from your bluetooth 2.0 enabled cellphone and forwards it through bluetooth to your iPod, so you can listen to music and switch to a meaningless conversation with just the touch of a button. Alright, here's the skinny on the MobiBlu. The package sports a clip-on remote control, a 24 inch cord that attaches to the iPod's (4G and above) and a USB adaptor for firmware updates.
All you have to do is connect the MyBlu to your iPod, pair the two by pressing the play pause and bluetooth buttons, turn on the bluetooth option on your cellphone, enter the pass code 0000 and voila...want voice dialling and you've got it. Want a Last Number Redial Option and you've got that too. Want Pamela Anderson's cellphone number, well we don't have that yet but some other features of the myblu do merit a stare, for instance a callback option through the pod for up to 9 received calls and ofcourse instant switching from the jarring music on your iPod to the more haemmoraged variety available on FM stations.
Before we scare you with the details, let's quickly round up the good points shall we. First up, the call quality on this thing is clear. The radio doesn't disappoint with its tuneful performance either, the redial option and the voice dial option work for me, since I don't have to take my mobile out again and again.
The setup is simple and requires you to have the IQ of roughly an anthropoid to operate it. And speaking of plus sizes, this piece has got some big problems on its hand. It is not battery powered, it does suck battery from the iPod though. It's FM functions are fool-proof. It doesn't display the name of the stations. It's perfect if you Pod But the price of Rs 4,490 makes it flawed.
So, what's the verdict? Well, high marks for innovativeness and usability but not for price, especially when it's available in the US for USD 90 (Rs 3,690).
http://news.moneycontrol.com/mccode/news/article/news_article.php?autono=279638
In fact, the MobiBlu is what I would call the receptionist of the iPod. It takes calls from your bluetooth 2.0 enabled cellphone and forwards it through bluetooth to your iPod, so you can listen to music and switch to a meaningless conversation with just the touch of a button. Alright, here's the skinny on the MobiBlu. The package sports a clip-on remote control, a 24 inch cord that attaches to the iPod's (4G and above) and a USB adaptor for firmware updates.
All you have to do is connect the MyBlu to your iPod, pair the two by pressing the play pause and bluetooth buttons, turn on the bluetooth option on your cellphone, enter the pass code 0000 and voila...want voice dialling and you've got it. Want a Last Number Redial Option and you've got that too. Want Pamela Anderson's cellphone number, well we don't have that yet but some other features of the myblu do merit a stare, for instance a callback option through the pod for up to 9 received calls and ofcourse instant switching from the jarring music on your iPod to the more haemmoraged variety available on FM stations.
Before we scare you with the details, let's quickly round up the good points shall we. First up, the call quality on this thing is clear. The radio doesn't disappoint with its tuneful performance either, the redial option and the voice dial option work for me, since I don't have to take my mobile out again and again.
The setup is simple and requires you to have the IQ of roughly an anthropoid to operate it. And speaking of plus sizes, this piece has got some big problems on its hand. It is not battery powered, it does suck battery from the iPod though. It's FM functions are fool-proof. It doesn't display the name of the stations. It's perfect if you Pod But the price of Rs 4,490 makes it flawed.
So, what's the verdict? Well, high marks for innovativeness and usability but not for price, especially when it's available in the US for USD 90 (Rs 3,690).
http://news.moneycontrol.com/mccode/news/article/news_article.php?autono=279638
The Ultimate Guide to Video iPod by Ian Richardson
Well, let’s see. There are so many options squeezed into one slim, 2.5” LCD screen media center that it’s going to take a lot of time going over each one of them. So let’s do take it one at a time, shall we? This guide is going to take over all the options you’ve got and how to convert absolutely anything and everything – DVDs, TiVo video, messy AVIs, muxed MPEGs and more to iPod compatible video – all within OS X. And along the way, we’ll teach you a couple of iPod tips and tricks, too!
Handling Those Nasty Scratches
When you take your iPod out of the box, your first order of business should be to protect your investment. You don’t want any of those nasty scratches from appearing on your precious media box, do you? It’s a complete eye soar and one you can completely avoid.
The good thing about this new iPod is that its design is slightly different from that of the nano, which according to most users scratch easily. The new iPod has better chassis and doubled-layered, probably to protect the LCD monitor. But if you want to make sure that your iPod doesn’t show any scratches, most users recommend plastic cases, such as The Invisible Shield. If not, you can always get the white model, instead of the black one.
What Videos Can You Play?
Let us briefly go over the kinds of videos that your new iPod can support. According to Apple’s website, the video specifications of the new iPod are the following:
• H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec, Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats.
• MPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480 x 480, 30 frames per sec, Simple Profile with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats.
For the newbies, this might all sound a little too confusing. What’s with all the numbers? Don’t worry because chances are you only need to remember a few of those for you to get the most out of your new iPod.
First, let’s start with H.264 video. The highest video bitrate with the H.264 codec is 768 kilobits per second. The biggest picture size for your H.264 movie is 320 pixels wide by 240 pixels high, which is incidentally the exact dimension of your iPod’s screen. Your iPod can play H.364 video at framerates up to 30 frames per second. Every one of the applications that we’ll be using encodes with the Baseline Profile. Your audio needs to be encoded as AAC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48 KHz, and it can be in either stereo or mono. As long as you follow all the guidelines, your movie can even be a QuickTime movie or an MPEG-4 movie file.
The other option you have is the MPEG-4 video, which supports a much higher bitrate than H.264 video – 2500 kilobits per second. Using higher bitrates will also create larger files, which means that you’ll have less space for additional songs and movies, but more segments of your favorite movie. The biggest picture size for your MPEG-4 video is 480 pixels wide by 480 pixels high – three times as many pixels than your iPod’s screen in capable of displaying. Your iPod will shrink the picture proportionally so that everything fits on the screen. Again, the iPod can play videos up to 30 frames per second and your audio and file format options are the same as H.264 video.
So Which One is Better – H.264 or MPEG-4?
Well, that’s a tough question really as each format has their ups and downs. Arguably, H.264 is preferable considering how it offers high quality and a file size that is much smaller compared to MPEG-4. When it comes to picture quality, however, both formats are comparable, especially when encoded at the higher supported video settings.
As for speed of encoding, most people agree that H.264 video takes longer than standard MPEG-4. Take for example a two-hour movie. When you convert that to iPod using H.264 codec, the process could take considerably longer (especially with QuickTime Pro’s pokey Export: Movie to iPod video option).
Where to Download Videos for Your iPod
If you’re tired ripping movies from your DVD collection or you’ve used up all your movie files in your computer, then it’s probably time for you to look for other sources of iPod compatible videos. Below are some good sites that offer iPod video files that are both free and legal!
• ChannelFrederator.com – If you like to watch short animations while taking a breather, this is the place to look in.
• PodGuide.tv – It’s not called “PodGuide” for nothing.
• Channel 101 and Channel 102 – Brilliant downloadable shows are up on offer.
• The iTunes Music Store’s podcast section – One of the best things about the new iPod is that Apple has bundled it with their updates on iTunes. Now, you can download loads of free videos from the store for your daily dose of iPod-casting.
• Apple iTunes – Sometimes you just have to go to the source of the source to find what you’re looking for.
• Archive.org – This site is great for old videos and movies.
Watch iPod Videos on Your TV
Say what?! Yep, it’s true. And for some users who prefer widescreen as opposed to pocket-TV, this is the best thing about the new iPod. Now, outputting your iPod videos to any TV is easy. Just use a special video cable (and it doesn’t even be the one sold by Apple), output it through your iPod’s headphone jack, and voila! You’re a couch potato, baby!
If you’re more interested in watching videos on your TV, you may want to go with the MPEG-4 format since it can support the bigger 480 x 480 picture size. When you encode widescreen movies and output them to a TV, the pixel limit is usually 230,400 pixels. So when these larger images are displayed on your TV, you’ll get to see all those extra pixels.
Okay So You Can Watch Videos on TV, Big Deal…What About My Other Videos?
When you download video files from the web or file sharing networks, some of these files may not be marked as iPod compatible. Does that mean you can’t play them on your iPod? Well, the good news is that it’s easy enough to find out.
Tip #1 – Open iTunes
The easiest and less time-consuming way to determine whether a video is iPod-supported or not is to simply open iTunes with your iPod connected. Afterwards, drop the video file directly into your iPod’s library. If the video is copied into your iPod, it means it’s compatible. If it’s not, then your iPod won’t be able to play it.
To copy the video to your iPod, just select Manually manage songs and playlists in the iPod tab of your iTunes preferences.
Tip #2 – Add Video to the iTunes Library
The other way of finding out if your video files are iPod compatible is to add your video to your iTunes library. Just right lick the video and select Convert Selection to iPod. You will receive an alert from iTunes on your screen, telling you if your video is already compatible. If it’s not, your movie will be converted to a compatible H.264 video for you.
We should probably mention that you don’t really need to add videos to your iTunes Library in order to add them to your iPod. Just drag and drop videos from the Finder straight onto your iPod in iTunes. Again, make sure you’ve enabled the manually manage option.
You can also add songs and videos to your iPod’s library from any computer that has iTunes. Just make sure that you’ve enabled the manually manage option in iTunes. If your iPod was originally formatted on a PC, you can add files from both PCs and Macs. However, if you have a Mac-formatted iPod, you’ll only be able to add files from other Macs.
Tip #3 – Open the file in QuickTime
Alternatively, you can also find out if your video is iPod compatible if you open the file in QuickTime. Next, Select Window: Show Movie Info. In most cases, your video should be iPod-ready if the format is H.264 or MPEG-4, the audio is ACC, and the size of your video is 320 x 240 (or smaller) for H.264 or 480 x 480 (or smaller) for MPEG-4. Also, look at the data rate and make sure it’s not over 900 kbits/sec for H.264 or 2600 kbits/sec for MPEG-4.
In most cases, the bitrate reported by QuickTime would include the video stream and the audio stream (normally 128 kbits/sec) so don’t wonder if the video is shown to have a higher bitrate.
I have a lot more information available at me website, be sure to click by and have a look.
Thanks for reading and I hope you find this information useful.
http://articles.sakshay.in/Article/14629.html
Handling Those Nasty Scratches
When you take your iPod out of the box, your first order of business should be to protect your investment. You don’t want any of those nasty scratches from appearing on your precious media box, do you? It’s a complete eye soar and one you can completely avoid.
The good thing about this new iPod is that its design is slightly different from that of the nano, which according to most users scratch easily. The new iPod has better chassis and doubled-layered, probably to protect the LCD monitor. But if you want to make sure that your iPod doesn’t show any scratches, most users recommend plastic cases, such as The Invisible Shield. If not, you can always get the white model, instead of the black one.
What Videos Can You Play?
Let us briefly go over the kinds of videos that your new iPod can support. According to Apple’s website, the video specifications of the new iPod are the following:
• H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec, Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats.
• MPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480 x 480, 30 frames per sec, Simple Profile with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats.
For the newbies, this might all sound a little too confusing. What’s with all the numbers? Don’t worry because chances are you only need to remember a few of those for you to get the most out of your new iPod.
First, let’s start with H.264 video. The highest video bitrate with the H.264 codec is 768 kilobits per second. The biggest picture size for your H.264 movie is 320 pixels wide by 240 pixels high, which is incidentally the exact dimension of your iPod’s screen. Your iPod can play H.364 video at framerates up to 30 frames per second. Every one of the applications that we’ll be using encodes with the Baseline Profile. Your audio needs to be encoded as AAC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48 KHz, and it can be in either stereo or mono. As long as you follow all the guidelines, your movie can even be a QuickTime movie or an MPEG-4 movie file.
The other option you have is the MPEG-4 video, which supports a much higher bitrate than H.264 video – 2500 kilobits per second. Using higher bitrates will also create larger files, which means that you’ll have less space for additional songs and movies, but more segments of your favorite movie. The biggest picture size for your MPEG-4 video is 480 pixels wide by 480 pixels high – three times as many pixels than your iPod’s screen in capable of displaying. Your iPod will shrink the picture proportionally so that everything fits on the screen. Again, the iPod can play videos up to 30 frames per second and your audio and file format options are the same as H.264 video.
So Which One is Better – H.264 or MPEG-4?
Well, that’s a tough question really as each format has their ups and downs. Arguably, H.264 is preferable considering how it offers high quality and a file size that is much smaller compared to MPEG-4. When it comes to picture quality, however, both formats are comparable, especially when encoded at the higher supported video settings.
As for speed of encoding, most people agree that H.264 video takes longer than standard MPEG-4. Take for example a two-hour movie. When you convert that to iPod using H.264 codec, the process could take considerably longer (especially with QuickTime Pro’s pokey Export: Movie to iPod video option).
Where to Download Videos for Your iPod
If you’re tired ripping movies from your DVD collection or you’ve used up all your movie files in your computer, then it’s probably time for you to look for other sources of iPod compatible videos. Below are some good sites that offer iPod video files that are both free and legal!
• ChannelFrederator.com – If you like to watch short animations while taking a breather, this is the place to look in.
• PodGuide.tv – It’s not called “PodGuide” for nothing.
• Channel 101 and Channel 102 – Brilliant downloadable shows are up on offer.
• The iTunes Music Store’s podcast section – One of the best things about the new iPod is that Apple has bundled it with their updates on iTunes. Now, you can download loads of free videos from the store for your daily dose of iPod-casting.
• Apple iTunes – Sometimes you just have to go to the source of the source to find what you’re looking for.
• Archive.org – This site is great for old videos and movies.
Watch iPod Videos on Your TV
Say what?! Yep, it’s true. And for some users who prefer widescreen as opposed to pocket-TV, this is the best thing about the new iPod. Now, outputting your iPod videos to any TV is easy. Just use a special video cable (and it doesn’t even be the one sold by Apple), output it through your iPod’s headphone jack, and voila! You’re a couch potato, baby!
If you’re more interested in watching videos on your TV, you may want to go with the MPEG-4 format since it can support the bigger 480 x 480 picture size. When you encode widescreen movies and output them to a TV, the pixel limit is usually 230,400 pixels. So when these larger images are displayed on your TV, you’ll get to see all those extra pixels.
Okay So You Can Watch Videos on TV, Big Deal…What About My Other Videos?
When you download video files from the web or file sharing networks, some of these files may not be marked as iPod compatible. Does that mean you can’t play them on your iPod? Well, the good news is that it’s easy enough to find out.
Tip #1 – Open iTunes
The easiest and less time-consuming way to determine whether a video is iPod-supported or not is to simply open iTunes with your iPod connected. Afterwards, drop the video file directly into your iPod’s library. If the video is copied into your iPod, it means it’s compatible. If it’s not, then your iPod won’t be able to play it.
To copy the video to your iPod, just select Manually manage songs and playlists in the iPod tab of your iTunes preferences.
Tip #2 – Add Video to the iTunes Library
The other way of finding out if your video files are iPod compatible is to add your video to your iTunes library. Just right lick the video and select Convert Selection to iPod. You will receive an alert from iTunes on your screen, telling you if your video is already compatible. If it’s not, your movie will be converted to a compatible H.264 video for you.
We should probably mention that you don’t really need to add videos to your iTunes Library in order to add them to your iPod. Just drag and drop videos from the Finder straight onto your iPod in iTunes. Again, make sure you’ve enabled the manually manage option.
You can also add songs and videos to your iPod’s library from any computer that has iTunes. Just make sure that you’ve enabled the manually manage option in iTunes. If your iPod was originally formatted on a PC, you can add files from both PCs and Macs. However, if you have a Mac-formatted iPod, you’ll only be able to add files from other Macs.
Tip #3 – Open the file in QuickTime
Alternatively, you can also find out if your video is iPod compatible if you open the file in QuickTime. Next, Select Window: Show Movie Info. In most cases, your video should be iPod-ready if the format is H.264 or MPEG-4, the audio is ACC, and the size of your video is 320 x 240 (or smaller) for H.264 or 480 x 480 (or smaller) for MPEG-4. Also, look at the data rate and make sure it’s not over 900 kbits/sec for H.264 or 2600 kbits/sec for MPEG-4.
In most cases, the bitrate reported by QuickTime would include the video stream and the audio stream (normally 128 kbits/sec) so don’t wonder if the video is shown to have a higher bitrate.
I have a lot more information available at me website, be sure to click by and have a look.
Thanks for reading and I hope you find this information useful.
http://articles.sakshay.in/Article/14629.html
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
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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