Well, my first crop of LPs -> CDs are coasters, unless anyone really wants to listen to mono recordings.
My problem with the soundcard was all to do with it defaulting to the mic input for recording, and mic is, of course, mono. Feh. So after some discussion on the freebsd-questions list, I found that mixer(8) can be told what port to listen to.
To change the recording device you use one of:
^rec toggles rdev of possible recording devices
+rec adds rdev to possible recording devices
-rec removes rdev from possible recording devices
=rec sets the recording device to rdev
so I set the mixer to use line as the rdev (mixer =rec line).
Then of course, I found that the signal from the receiver was overpowering: the needle in the leadin track was in the red. Hmm. So I took the receiver out of the circuit again, and plugged it straight into the card. Levels are low but the sound is OK. I have to assume the turntable has a pre-amp or it wouldn’t work from all I’ve read about it.
The output of ‘mixer’ looks like this:
[/usr/home/paul]:: mixer
Mixer vol is currently set to 100:100
Mixer pcm is currently set to 100:100
Mixer speaker is currently set to 100:100
Mixer line is currently set to 50:50
Mixer mic is currently set to 0:0
Mixer cd is currently set to 0:0
Mixer rec is currently set to 50:50
Mixer line1 is currently set to 0:0
Mixer phin is currently set to 0:0
Mixer phout is currently set to 0:0
Mixer video is currently set to 0:0
this command is key: if I had run it first, I could have saved myself a lot of aggravation.
[/usr/home/paul/cdimages]:: mixer recsrc
Recording source: line
So that’s all well and good now. After using gramofile to split and process the files (audacity is also useful for inspecting the gaps between tracks and other hygeine issues), I just run this script (wav2toc.sh) and it makes a cdrdao-compliant table of contents file and reminds me how to invoke cdrdao
#!/bin/sh
# usage: $0 directory
DIR=$1
TOCFILE=`basename $1`.toc
echo CD_DA > ${TOCFILE}
echo >> ${TOCFILE}
for i in ${DIR}/*.wav
do echo TRACK AUDIO >> ${TOCFILE}
echo PREGAP 0:1:0 >> ${TOCFILE}
echo FILE “$i” 0 >> ${TOCFILE}
echo >> ${TOCFILE}
done
echo File ${TOCFILE} written
echo To burn a cd:
echo sudo cdrdao write –eject –device 0,1,0 –driver teac-cdr55 ${TOCFILE}