Last spring, I wrote about Ion Audio’s LP Dock, a nifty turntable that connects by USB to any computer and allows users to convert their LPs into digital files. The LP Dock’s price has dropped from $250 to about $170 since then, but if you don’t need its built-in iPod dock – a clunky interface that really isn’t needed anyway – there’s a much cheaper option.

Newegg (via Dealnews) has the basic version  of the turntable without the iPod gimmick for only $75 shipped. It even comes with the high-powered Audacity recording software (a free program, but still conveniently included on the installation disc) and cables. You should be good to go out of the box.

Just be sure to spend some time figuring things out. One Newegg commenter — with a claimed “high” tech level – said, “… Quality is still very low grade. It is just the average 128 kbps that you get using iTunes.” He’s wrong. The turntable just streams the analog audio to the computer. Audacity is what determines the quality, and he apparently has his set up for MP3 at the meager 128kbps. You can save the audio files in a lossless format such as WAV, if you want. In fact, that’s what I would recommend for archiving before converting to MP3s for a portable player. Oh, and Audacity also has filters that can eliminate or lessen surface noise, too — another concern of the same commenter. You just need to change the settings in the program to do all of that. Take the time to learn the program’s ins and outs, and then you will truly be high tech with your old LPs.

If you were intrigued by my blog entry last week about buying MP3s from non-U.S. sources — or, at least, trying to buy them — be sure to check out the print version of the column that ran today.

The whole issue made me curious, so I contacted an executive from the Minneapolis-based label Rhymesayers to get the inside scoop on why the music industry won’t let fans legally download songs that aren’t available in the United States from an import source such as Amazon UK, yet you can buy the import CD. Skye Rossi, who oversees new media for the hip-hop label, explained that the quirk is basically the result of a clash between the new way of doing things and the old way of doing things. Not surprisingly, Rhymesayers does things the new way, and Rossi expressed frustration with many labels’ stance on digital downloads.

After today’s column, one commenter suggested that users should buy the MP3s off the artists’ websites: “That way they might make a buck.” That’s rarely an option. Most artists don’t have such control over their music. In my example, Sharleen Spiteri actually does offer one download of a song from her album — and it’s free, in return for registering for an email list – but it’s of low quality, only 128kbps. And that’s just an enticement to get people to buy the album, which is how this whole predicament started.

I don’t see this issue changing anytime soon, but it is ironic, given that the music industry is continually complaining about illegal downloads yet is contributing to such file-sharing by unnecessarily limiting legal downloads.

So much for buying “import” MP3s.

While watching a recent episode of the British TV program The Graham Norton Show on BBC America, I discovered a Scottish singer named Sharleen Spiteri, formerly of the rock group Texas. I liked the retro cool-’60s sound of her single “All the Times I Cried,” so I thought I’d check out her album. I bopped over to the Amazon MP3 store, which I’m loving, but found that her album wasn’t listed. It was available in Amazon’s CD store, I was told, but only as an import disc selling for $22 (and it was out of stock).

OK, so she hasn’t hit stateside yet. “Not a problem,” I thought. “I’ll head over to the recently launched Amazon UK MP3 store.” Sure enough, there was her album, Melody, in all its MP3 glory. So I went through the motions to buy it, essentially doing the 21st-century equivalent of buying the import CD. In fact, I already had an Amazon UK account from having ordered such discs in past years. But when I went to check out, I was told I couldn’t do it. The reason, as explained in the site’s FAQ under “Territorial Restrictions”: “As required by our Digital Content providers, Digital Content will, unless otherwise designated, be available only to customers located in the United Kingdom.”

Well, dang. That doesn’t make any sense. The album is not available in the United States. So if I want it, I can order an import CD. But I can’t do the same for an MP3?

I’m not the first person to note this discrepancy. BBC News columnist Bill Thompson wrote about it in 2007, but he was complaining about it from the opposite shore of the Atlantic, as a Brit who couldn’t buy from the U.S.-based Amazon MP3 store. This is a new problem for Americans, because Amazon UK launched its MP3 operation only in December. Also, Thompson pegs the issue as the price to pay for the fact that Amazon’s files are DRM-free, unlike iTunes (at the time; iTunes is in the process of changing that). But a check shows that Spiteri’s album is not available through iTunes, either. Melody simply was not released in the U.S.

Why would any record company prevent Amazon from legally selling its products, no matter where the buyer is? It can’t be due to copyright issues or other problems, because I can still buy the CD if I wanted. I guess I’ll just buy a used copy of the CD for about the price I would have paid for a download and rip it myself. Ironically, the record company won’t get any money as a result of that transaction. How bizarre.

As Thompson rightly concludes: “If anyone can take the record companies and the current online music retailers and show them how it should be done then it is Amazon. But if the record companies continue to push their old-world business practices, insisting on territorial limits and other restrictions, then even Amazon will find it impossible to save the music industry from the implosion which lies ahead.”

Minnesota Public Radio has moved its old Morning Show to the Internet and HD Radio (as Radio Heartland), but you can continue to tune it in on your regular stereo. Reader David Peter recently wrote to ask how he could stream MPR’s Internet audio from the computer in his home office wirelessly to stereos in other rooms of his house. Here are three ideas for him and others in the same situation:

1) If you want something elegant and good quality — plus something that can be used for all kinds of wireless audio applications — the Squeezebox Duet has earned raves and is lower in price than comparable systems (such as Sonos). You can read more about it at CNET. It’s more of a whole-house system, and prices start below $400.

2) If you want something cheap, quick and dirty, you could always try connecting an FM transmitter to the audio output of your computer and then tuning in the signal using an open frequency on your FM receiver. Arkon makes such a device for only $15.

3) An AV transmitter — such as this $40 model from the reliable Monoprice – is a variation on the latter. It has two devices that connect to your computer on one end and your receiver on the other (using an audio input), and then the audio signal is sent wirelessly between them. This device also transmits video and is commonly used for security cameras — but it will do the trick for a radio show.

Any other suggestions?

I feel like a teacher correcting schoolwork lately. In my ongoing quest to wrangle my extensive music collection — having recently converted 2,000 CDs to MP3s – I’ve been spending most of my time fixing other people’s mistakes.

I’m talking about the tags attached to each music file, which iTunes uses to display information such as title, artist and album on an iPod. When you rip a CD, this information is frequently culled from an online database such as freedb. But that information is only as good as the users who took the time to enter it, and frequently, to put it bluntly, it’s just plain wrong. The biggest problems occur off the beaten maintream-music path. For example, a few Jerry Goldsmith orchestral film scores were tagged as being New Age. Composer information is often missing on classical works, even though there’s a field for it, or included in the track title. Often, a conductor is listed as the “artist” for a classical recording while the composer — more important when hunting a track on an iPod — goes unlisted. And then there were several discs whose information was all in Japanese. After some rooting around at translated pages of Amazon Japan and pasting track titles into the Babel Fish translator, I was able to sort them out.

Now, this isn’t a big problem with tracks downloaded from online stores such as the iTunes Store and Amazon, but it’s a huge deal when dealing with ripped discs, especially when 30,000+ files are involved.

So I’ve been going through the tracks and albums to fix all of the errors. The goals: consistency, accurate displays, easy searching. The free PC program TagScanner has been invaluable in this regard. It’s a powerful editor that simplifies the process of renaming and fixing tags. I couldn’t imagine doing this using iTunes’ limited renaming features and see no better option for purchase.

The only downside is that I’ve been spending so much time tidying up tags — which has been fun in that it has helped reacquaint me with forgotten recordings — that I haven’t taken the time to enjoy all of my more-easily-accessible music. I finally did something about that this morning by grabbing a few thousand rock/pop tracks, fixed tags or not, and transferring them to the iPod to listen to in the car on the way to work. It was a good ride.

Some people were surprised when I converted my 2,000 CDs to MP3 files. Reader Dave Camp of Oak Grove did the same thing — except he had more than 15,000 CDs, which took him “well over a year” to rip himself, he says. Because Dave has a few years’ experience managing such a huge MP3 collection, he kindly shared these tips for others who are in the same situation or considering making the MP3 leap:

“First of all, having the Id3 tags messed up on my MP3s drives me nuts. I guess that was one good thing about ripping my own: I was in complete control of the naming process. A great program that will help you is called Tag & Rename (well worth the price whatever it is now [Editor’s note: It’s $30.]) It lets you edit the Id3 tags, rename files or folders, check the album against an online database or against Amazon.com. A few clicks in Tag & Rename will have your collection much more manageable. A properly tagged mp3 in my collection will include band name, album name, year, genre, track number, track name & comments from the All Music Guide.

“My MP3 file and folder names are just as crucial to me. The word ‘the’ is removed from the name of the group (ie: Rolling Stones, not The Rolling Stones). Each band or artist has their own folder on the root of a 2-terabyte drive on a server. Under group name will be album year and date, so it would look something like this expanded:

Root
Rolling Stones Â
       1968 – Beggars Banquet
                01 - Sympathy for the Devil.mp3
                02 – No Expectations.mp3
                Etc.

       1969 – Let it Bleed
                01 – Gimme Shelter.mp3
                02 – Love in Vain.mp3
                Etc.

Rush
       1976 – 2112
                01 – 2112 Overture.mp3
                02 – A Passage to Bangkok.mp3              Â
                Etc.

“I also downloaded all the album art and insets, liner notes, etc. and copy it into the folder with the music. Most MP3 players will display the album art and the Id3 tags.

“My collection has risen to over 25,000 albums. With everything organized under strict guidelines, I am never caught searching for an album. I have seven stereos in my home, each with a direct connection to the MP3 server via the Squeezebox Duet, a very sweet piece of hardware.

“Smart move encoding to 320kbps; drive space is super cheap now days. A couple of other cool programs I use are MAC (MPEG Audio Collection) – a great freeware utility designed to organize your audio file collection. It is fast and easy to use, scans selected drives for supported audio files and lists them in an Explorer-style tree-view interface. You can retrieve all information about your audio collection, and you can play files as well. It also scans your MP3 library and allows you to export a report in Excel. This is a handy way of double checking your tags, as well as a nice reference to keep track of albums you already own. Audio Catalyst is a nice MP3 editor/encoder, and Tunebite is a universal converter (including iTunes!).”

Dave concludes with tremendous understatement: “I am very passionate about my music collection.” 

I’m happy to report that I’ve already glommed onto the first two points Dave made, based on research I did before I converted my collection. The freeware PC program I use, TagScanner, does exactly what he suggested with Tag & Rename, but it also tracks and organizes, too, like MAC. I also am in the process of cleaning up the folder names and organization, as he noted.

Thanks for the great advice, Dave.