Low Vision Guide

I have found the Blind Handyman group to be a useful resource for dealing with common home maintenance issues as a visually impaired person.  Check it out on Yahoo Groups or listen to the show.

1. Introduction
2. Download and Install
3. Hardware Setup
4. Software Setup
5. First Recording
6. Getting Help
7. Summary
 
 

Twenty years in storage.  Cracking open the cardboard boxes full of records was a nostalgic return to the 70s and 80s.  Looking through the now giant-seeming album covers brought back many great memories.  I had always held out hope that someday I would transfer those old records to CDs but I was always put off by the complexity of the process.  Enter Acoustica Spin It Again.  As a happy user of Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker, I was excited to see Spin it Again, an easy to use dedicated application for converting records and tapes to CD or MP3.
 
 

The download and install were fast and simple.  I downloaded the installation software for Spin It Again version 1.1 b30 and ran it from the Internet Explorer download dialog.  The installation was typical and easy.  I clicked “Next” until it was done.  Spin It Again was started automatically.  One suggestion for improvement would be to offer an express install that used all default values since most people don’t need to change them.
 
 

My computer is a Dell Dimension 3000 Desktop running Windows XP.  It has built-in audio that could be used but I am using an external Tascam US-122 USB soundcard for connecting the turntable.
I purchased a Sony PSLX250H Turntable from Etronics through Amazon.com for about $85.  This is a nice basic turntable with good sound and a built-in preamp so no stereo amplifier/receiver is needed and I can put the turntable right next to my computer for easy access.
Connecting the turntable to the computer required an RCA stereo plug adapter.  In my case it was to ¼” but for the computer’s built-in audio input jack it would be an RCA to stereo miniplug adapter.
 
 

The initial screen offers a “Hookup Wizard” to help in getting the turntable hooked up to the computer properly and getting things set for your first recording.
I ran the Hookup Wizard and selected to record a Vinyl LP.  Each screen of the wizard has a voice-over which makes it easy to understand what is happening at each step and what you need to do.  This greatly improves the ease of use, especially for visually impaired users.  The second question asked if my turntable was “already hooked up to my stereo”.  I wasn’t sure how to answer this since it was already hooked up to my computer and has a built in preamp but was not hooked up to my stereo. This question could be made more clear for this scenario.  I answered “Yes”.  When presented with information about stereo system connections, I thought I would try to go back and answer “No” but there seems to be no way to go back.  I had to click “Close” and start over.  It would be nice if the Hookup Wizard had “Back” buttons on each screen.  This seemed to be the right way to go since I was then presented with information about hooking up to my external USB sound device.  Everything seemed to be hooked up properly at this point.  I could hear the record playing in the headphones through the direct monitor on the Tascam soundcard.  It would be nice if there was a test screen at this point to check sound levels.  I clicked on “Exit” and went back to the main screen.
 
 

I selected “Record A Vinyl LP” on the main screen.  I was first presented with a dialog that asked if I needed assistance hooking up my record player.  Since I had not been able to check sound levels yet and thought this might be the place I selected “Yes” and was returned to the “Hookup Wizard”.  I exited the Hookup Wizard.  Next I was presented with the main recording screen and the software said I was ready to record.
At the bottom of this screen were some useful looking tips on recording that were cycling by too fast for me to read them.  It would be nice if the tips stayed on the screen longer.
I clicked “Record” and pushed the “Start” button on the turntable.  The recording started.  At this point I realized I needed to adjust the levels a little so I did so and then clicked “Stop” on the recording screen and on the turntable.  I was taken to the next screen but wanted to start over so I quit and restarted “Spin It Again”.
I clicked “Record A Vinyl LP”, clicked “Record” and pushed the “Start” button on the turntable and I was on my way back to 1981.
There is an “Auto Pause After (90) Minutes” feature on this screen for unattended recording.  A nice addition here would be to add the ability to “Auto Pause After (1) Minute of Silence”.
When the record finished playing side 1, I clicked on “Stop”.  I later realized that it would have been better to click “Pause” and record the second side of the record at the same time to avoid ending up with two sets of tracks both numbered 1 to 5.  The next screen was a “Preview and Edit” screen.  Spin It Again automatically previewed the beginning and end of each track.
This was nice and showed that it had done a pretty good job of automatically separating the tracks.  However, one of the tracks needed to be split.  It would be nice if the track numbers were a little bit larger in the editing window for easier reading but I found the track that seemed to be too long.  I selected the track.
I tried zooming in the track edit window to see if I could find the place to split the track.  A few things that would be helpful here are:

• Time markings along the bottom of the track
  
• Bolder track begin and end lines.
  
• Current time location line should be distinguishable from other lines perhaps by flaring out to a triangle at the top or bottom.
  
• A full set of playback controls with bigger buttons and including fast-forward, rewind, and play-fast buttons would be nice.
  
• Tooltip text when the mouse pointer is over a button does not seem to use the Windows settings for text size or font so it was too small for me to read easily.
  

I tried playing the track and stopping at the point that I wanted to split and then hitting the “Split” button but this did not seem to split the track at the current location.  I had to adjust the track end for track 3 and the track begin for track 4.
On the same screen is a selection box for cleaning the recording.  It was unclear if this was an immediate action and whether it affected only the current track or the entire recording.  I selected “Vinyl Light Cleaning” and clicked on the “Next” button.
It would be nice to separate the cleaning stage from the track separation stage and be more explicit about how the cleaning works.  Also, it would be interesting to have the option to be able to try different cleaning options and compare the results.
I filled in the track information on the next screen and then was given the option to burn a CD or create audio MP3 files or both.  I chose to create audio files.  I was presented with file “Format” and “Folder” options.  I left the Format at MP3.  The folder was defaulted to my music directory but it was unclear whether the files would be put directly there or under artist and album folders as Windows Media Player does.  I selected the “Choose” button to see if I could create the artist and album folders myself but there did not appear to be a way to do it.  I left it at the default and clicked “Next”.  Spin It Again began to convert the files.  The voice-over told me when the conversion was done which was a helpful feature since I was looking at another application while it was doing the conversion.
The MP3 files were put in a folder named for the artist and album, although in a different format than Windows Media Player.  After the conversion was done I was still on the “Burn A CD…” screen.  I selected “Next” and it took me back to creating audio files again which seemed odd.
I was done so I clicked on “Quit”.
The first recording session with Spin It Again was a success and now that I understand the process, it is much easier and faster to convert records to MP3.
 
 

Acoustica offers support through it’s website at
http://www.acoustica.com/support
There are also video tutorials available at
http://www.acoustica.com/spinitagain/tutorial/index.asp
As a visually impaired user these were not very helpful since they were visually oriented and used floating text boxes that appeared and disappeared fairly quickly to explain what was being done.  I tried stepping through the tutorial one screen at a time but this seemed to cause the floating text boxes not to appear at all.  The video tutorials would be far more useful if they had an explanatory voice-over.
 
 

Although there were a few points for potential improvement, overall I found Acoustica Spin It Again to be easy to use and generally very accessible as a visually impaired user.  The recording quality was very good.  The process of converting records to CD or MP3 is greatly eased by Spin It Again and I highly recommend it.  Best of all, now I can listen to the songs of my youth again.  Oh yeah, and I can check off #37 on my all-time to-do list – Record my old records onto CD and MP3!

Learn more about Spin It Again…

I have found Acoustica software to be very intuitive and easy to use. Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker is no exception to this. It is also generally very accessible as a visually impaired user. I have tried other CD labeling programs but have found Acoustica to be the easiest to use. It also supports a wide variety of label papers and doesn’t require complex setup or configuration to get good results.  Learn more about Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker