An Old-Time Music Workaround I’m calling LP3

The clock radio’s out of the script, but music’s still going in. In a piece about memory and attempting to connect with the past in a self-aware way, I want to use old-time music, my square-dancing-every-saturday, stack-of-78’s-on-the-shelf, singin-cowboy, a-one-and-a-two kind of music (clearances pending, of course). And I want it to sound old.
It seems I’m not alone. Randy Lewis just wrote for the LA Times about artists adding vinyl effects to create “a frame of reference that suddenly orients you toward another time.” Hey, that’s my idea: music that sounds like my grandparents’ hi-fi or the AM country station in their old Buick.
But a couple of the tracks I want aren’t readily available on CD (some aren’t readily available at all, especially in the Big City), and I don’t have pro audio software, so for the moment (i.e., the submission deadline, remember?), I’m left with mp3. If logic, not Google prevailed, an LP-sounding mp3, then, should be an LP3: Here’s how to make them, then get them ready to use in Final Cut:

  • Use Izotope’s Vinyl Plugin for Winamp, which rocks. (You’ll notice, if you switch, that winamp doesn’t follow you.)
  • Output at CD-quality using Nullsoft Diskwriter, which generates a big WAV file, complete with vinyl effects.
  • Rip mp3’s from the WAV’s to ftp them to the Powerbook (I guess if I knew more about my wireless router, I could just network the two laptops and transfer them as WAV’s… update: Yes, Australia, I could’ve used an iPod, but I don’t have a Windows adapter for it.)
  • Use Quicktime Pro to convert the lp3.mp3’s back into 44.1khz etc MOV files for use in Final Cut (this is needed to eliminate the popping and squelches mp3 introduces. I’m not evoking the Napster era here.)
    Friday night is now officially Audio Editing Dork Night. TGIAEDN!