[LarryS]

My wife has given me a little project...she has about 300 cassettes and wants to move them onto CD. Audio quality is not much of an issue since most of the cassettes are spoken language and already not in great shape. But I would not want to worsen the audio any more than it is already.

Do I need anything other than a CD R/W drive on the PC for this little project? I will be buying a new CD R/W for this project since I don't have one yet. (any recommendations here?) (I suppose it would be too much to hope for that there is some kind of fast dubbing cassette to CD machine)

Is there any type of software that would be especially helpful in recording & editing the WAV file (I'm guessing here) from the cassette, and then burning it onto the CD.

Thanks for any pointers!

Larry

 

[gloco]

for editing, i suggest cd wave, its very easy to use, unlike some other programs.

 

[fiddler]

I use CoolEdit 2000 and I love it.

 

[grinch]

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~abcomp/lp-cdr.htm

that is a pretty good little howto on recording lps to cds.. i would give that a try.

also, i think if i were going to have to do 300 (!) cassettes.. i would kiss off using the pc and just buy a standalone cd-recorder. just plug from audio out of the tape player to audio in on the cd-recorder. press play, press record. come back an hour later.

seems like the easiest way to go, if i were you. you could then sell it afterward on audiogon or to a friend or whatever..

 

[zowie]

A component CD recorder deck would sure be faster and easier, but you couldn't edit or do noise reduction and it sound like you want to.

You should get a good cassette deck that won't exacerbate the quality problems. One choice is lower end Naks from the mid 80' (still Japanese made), should be under $100.

Also make sure you have a good sound card or external audio device. This has been discussed elsewhere. I use Roland USB products.

I'm a big fan of Diamondcut audio restoration products. See www. diamondcut.com.
They offer "prosumer" products at reasonable prices that give you many more options and fine tuning ability than the more common off-the-rack programs, if you're up for spending the time to do the best job you can on the project without spending a fortune.

Don't forget to buy good quality CD-Rs. Cheap ones have much shorter lives.

Save a set as wav files. You'll not only have a backup, but a raw file to reprocess in the future when the software has (likely) imroved.

 

[andrzejpw]

if you want to do this for a net cost of 0 dollars, just use a simple 1/8 to 1/8 cable from the headphone/lineout in the cassete to the line in on your soundcard. I'm sure you have one laying around. . .

Do you want to do this as cheaply as possible? I mean, buying a standalone cd recorder seems a bit excessive to me. . .

 

[grinch]

Quote:

Originally posted by andrzejpw if you want to do this for a net cost of 0 dollars. . .

if your time equates to zero dollars, then by all means..

Quote:

Do you want to do this as cheaply as possible? I mean, buying a standalone cd recorder seems a bit excessive to me. . .

300 cassettes is a whoooooole lot. if the cassettes are only sixty minutes each, that's like 300 hours just for the playback! (and that's being conservative, the tapes could be 110 minutes each!) then you have to spend time "editing" and "noise fixing" on them? i'd just buy the cd-recorder and see how that goes. by the time you've invested that much time and frustration into it.. i'd just try the cd-recorder.

also, working with 60 minute-size 44khz wave files can really really exhaust a simple computer's resources. you're going to be waiting half an hour just to do a save if your machine isn't very fast. i wouldn't do any of that unless i had scsi drives or an ide raid and *at least* 512mb of ram if not a gig. then the fact that this is going to frag the hell out of your system.. and of course if your sound card sucks, the quality will suffer.

oh and if you do go the cd-burner route, before you "backup a copy of the wav" you should use a lossless compressor on them like http://www.monkeysaudio.com/ or something, at least that way you can put at least two hours of files on one cd-r (in data format, not audio).

and in my experience, noise recovery doesn't really do too much for the sound. if the sound is crappy going in, running some filter over it isn't going to make it into an sacd (NOT WORTH IT!).. just my opinion.

 

[zowie]

Quote:

Originally posted by grinch and in my experience, noise recovery doesn't really do too much for the sound. if the sound is crappy going in, running some filter over it isn't going to make it into an sacd (NOT WORTH IT!).. just my opinion.

I have to respectfully disagree with, or maybe expand upon, that opinion (I assume you meant "noise reduction" not "recovery.") Just running some filter that came bundled with your CD burner often will do more harm than good. Carefully and lightly using a variety of professional quality filters and enhancers can make clear improvements. It takes a lot of time, practice, and more than a $39 software package to accomplish that.

Why do you think that the newly remastered CD's sound better that the CDs versions of 10 years ago? Okay, there are several reasons. But the CD is still 16 bits, and much of the analogue playback equipment will often be identical. A big factor is the digital filtering, eq. and dynamic enhancements (among other things). Much can be accomplished on a desktop PC today.

That said, whether Larry S cares enough about the project to put in the time is another question. But cassettes of speech tend to be particularly good candidates for some noise reduction, and digital restoration is a fun hobby.

 

[andrzejpw]

I guess it's just my penny-pinching psyche coming out. Personally, I try to save on EVERYTHING. If you have the $$$, by all means, go with a standalone cd recorder. But hey, where's the fun?

I do a lot of video/audioediting on my computer. I find that my computer is just fine. 1.266 t-bird, 256 megs of cl2 pc133 ram.

Its just fine. Just defrag often.

But, personally, 300 tapes. Wow.

 

[ai0tron]

Thats like 3 months of work. Maybe there is some kind of deck with highspeed dubbing and a record to cd function. I don't know if it's possible to do a highspeed dub to a cd, it should be, theres probably some professional stuff out there that would help you.

 

[Trawlerman]

I have done a fair bit of recording old media from LP / Tape / Reel etc onto CD.

For my own purposes I have a Sony JA30ES Minidisc recorder (editing to 6ms) and a stand-alone Pioneer PDR-04 Consumer CD-Recorder (tweaked to take pro discs).


My methods.

When working with analog recordings, I usually record everything to minidisc in the first instance. From there I can edit to my hearts content. Remove any crackling from between the tracks, insert clean track breaks, fade in/out (the Sony has both LOG and SIN and user-definable fades), and shuffle tracks into whatever order I prefer.

Once i'm happy with the finished result, from there I run digital out through my SCMS stripper to the Pioneer PDR-04 and lay the thing down onto CD.



What about the loss / sound quality?

I know that many of you will be thinking but why go to Mindisc? Sure it's lossy (1:5 if i remember rightly) but it does give you the chance to edit as much as you want. Personally, i've been using this method for a while and haven't found it to be greatly detrimental to the sound quality. FWIW, Barry Fox of HFN&RR recommends this method.



If I dont want to do that then I have a Guillemot ISIS (semi-pro) soundcard with offboard DAC etc. and an Athlon 750 / 256MB / 60GB HDD / Dual monitors that I can use to record with.

Software wise, I tend to prefer using Soundforg 4.5 to anything else. With the CD-R Burning plug-in it's quite a powerful tool.

Easy-CD creator has the spin-doctor software incorporated in, that has been designed to take an audio-stream from external sources and clean it up then burn to CD. Personally, i've never used it but I've heard it works quite well.




Sound As Ever
Listening to First We Take Manhattan - by Jennifer Warnes from Famous Blue Raincoat
on Krell MD10/Studio >-- Audiolab 8000q >-- 2 X Rotel RB970s in mono >-- Spendor SP3/1s 'BBC Style monitors'

 

[Audio Redneck]

I am looking at doing the same thing. Here is what I have found so far

Lowest total cost (not factoring in re-selling equipment): Use Andrzej's method.
* Est. cost $80-120 for a burner for your PC and Data CDs (usually half the price of Audio CDs.)
* You'll have it for back up and other PC uses.
* You'll have easier and more flexible editing capabilities.
* Experimentation may show you that MP3 quality is good enough, allowing you to get more tapes onto a disk. (OK, so you’ll need an MP3 player.)

Downside:
* Probably not good enough to use as a transport/player with your stereo.

- I currently use this method as I have access to several CDRWs, a decent sound card, and can do part of it at work during lulls.


Higher cost but longer term audio rewards Get a component CDRW for your system. For playback, many are said to sound as good as comparably priced players.
* Est. cost $250-$$$$$
* You can also pick up an EQ at a pawnshop of off of eBay for around $50
* For straight dubbing, you can set it and walk away if you know the total time.
* You may be able to get a model with sync recording with your tape deck.

Down side
* Will require you to edit as you go (setting tracks) with most recorders – I’ve had several people tell me that the auto track feature on most brands doesn’t work so great when copying from LPs and tape.
* Will require you to use Audio CDs unless you get a pro model ($$$$) or mod it.

Other thoughts......

*With either method, expect the first 10 or so to take the longest to record. By that time I imagine you will have your settings and technique figured out and will be able to set the recorder and player and leave.
*Start with the EQ software in an inverted V pattern as this is all voice and bring up the levels until you’ve got the voices clear enough and still have the hiss and hum dropped.
* With either method, an auto-reversing tape deck will help with the set it and forget it part as long as the tapes are less than 75 minutes total.
* Clean the heads every few tapes - remember that this playback is forever.

 

[LarryS]

My task is looking to be less time consuming than I thought...my wife let me know that she is planning to select maybe 100 out of her 300 cassettes...still...100 is quite a bit.

Minidiscs & MP3's are not an option. She wants to play the CD's in the car and in her portable CD player. Though she has hinted in the future she may want a Minidisc player, so I may get to repeat this exercise is limited form

The bulk of her tapes are 90 mininutes, so I will have to double up on the CD's and create 2 45 minute CD's for each tape, unless there is a lot of quiet space.

Thanks for the advice on the noise reduction. I hadn't thought of that. Some of her tapes are quite hissy & could benefit from some judicious "remastering".

Thanks for all the advice given, plus any additional comments