We found some cassette tapes of Eli, David, Linda, and Saul that we had made to send to Norm and Laura in California. The sound wasn't that great, and when I rewound tape one, I broke it.
Still, the interaction was great. Eli was singing and spelling (things he still does). So I decided to try to copy the tape to computer file and send it to him.
This involved fixing the tape. (Splicers are no longer for sale at Radio Shack.)
I needed to get some software to convert the tape to a file. Eli suggested Audacity for the Mac.
It took a while to find it, download the software, install it, and configure it to create a project. Saving the file to MP3 involves a LAME driver. I am not adept at Mac software, so after I downloaded the recommended driver install package, I couldn't figure out how to tell Audacity to use it. The file that I thought was the driver was greyed-out.
I could export to a WAV file, which was huge. I uploaded the WAV files to my zoo account at UVM. It took an hour and a half per tape, but I could work with PC software which is more familiar to me. I got dBpoweramp Music Converter to convert to MP3.
Then I sent the file to Eli for his birthday today. Listen - the first bit is just quiet: http://www.uvm.edu/~djacobow/images/music/eli_early_sessions.mp3
Happy Birthday, Eli.
That is soooo sweet!
ReplyDeleteAdorable!
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