[rauer]

Cavendish,

just out of curiosity, what is on the cassettes that makes you willing to go through the process of digitizing? Is is some rare music or stuff not available in more modern formats?

 

[swiego]

Well, there's nothing terribly old-school about cassette tapes (old school = reels! ha!) but it does feel like it sometimes.

I'm close to the end of the grand project. My journey led me to a Sony KA3ES, then a Nakamichi DR1, then a Nakamichi Dragon and a Nakamichi CR-7A, as well as a Sony WM-D6C portable. I think I have more state-of-the-art cassette equipment than anyone in this part of metro Detroit

I ended up settling on standard 96/24 stereo PCM for my encoding format. It's expensive on disk space, but at this point disk space is becoming pretty cheap. I also found that it's possible to burn 96/24 PCM to DVD-R and playback at full resolution on some players. So, I feel I have some semi-future-proof physical storage format at least for a few years, although I'm keeping this stuff on a pair of separate hard drives just for safety's sake.

I enabled NR where I had strong suspicions that the original tape was recorded with it. I chose to do this due to the phenomenal NR job that the dragon does - it removed the hiss and maintained the signal better than *any* plug-in I tried. (And I tried many.) It's possible that the tables will turn in a few years, but for now, no regrets.

The Nakamichi Dragon is everything it's said to be, and more. The sound quality meets or beats anything else I've heard, and while the CR-7 had some slick[er] moves, the Dragon simply feels like the better playback device. On a couple of occasions, I play CDs made from digitized tapes and nobody notices. I fully recommend it if you can get your hands on a model that works well, and I got very lucky in this regard. I realize there's some risk here. By the way, the DR1 is a very good substitute.. you still get that playback azimuth adjustment.

The 1212m is a recording sound card to match the Dragon, however it's a royal pain for day-to-day use. I can't wait to wrap this up so that I can sell it and go back to on-board toslink to my receiver

As an aside, I ended up doing pretty hi-rez scans (3200dpi optical!) of the tapes and inserts (where there was something on them) and store them along with the .wav files for each side.

I'm gambling that in five years, managing about 300GB of digitized audio will be easy as pie, so I'm grabbing what I can now, and not bothering to do any noise reduction or clean-up. I'll save that for the audio tools and compute power of the future.

 

[bigshot]

Did anyone ever answer the original poster's question about whether 24 bit would help?

The answer is no. 24 bit only improves resolution in the extremely quiet passages, not the stuff recorded up near peak. A prerecorded audio cassette has a noise floor so high, 24 bit would make no difference at all. In fact, with a prerecorded cassette that was bulk dubbed at high speed, it probably sounds just as good with the cheapo Technics as it is going to sound in the top of the line Nak. Unless it was recorded on a high end cassette deck, playing it back on one is overkill.

See ya

 

[bigshot]

I'm not sure about Akai cassette decks, but I know the reel to reels with the glass/ferrite heads are the ones to get because the heads never wear out. The only problem with Akais are the solonoids, which have a tendency to fail in unique ways. My Akai R2R will only play forward, not backwards as it was designed to. The cost of replacing the solonoids exceeds the value of the decks themselves, so you either live with it or get another one.

See ya
Steve

 

[bigshot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by swiego I'm beginning to think that the cable probably doesn't make a difference

You can say that again!

If only all audiophiles were as logical and diligent as you.

See ya
Steve

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by swiego On a couple of occasions, I play CDs made from digitized tapes and nobody notices...

Cool. You should post up some of your digitised mix tapes somewhere on the web. I would love to check out all that old skool detroit spinning....

I read a review of the Dragon in an old UK Hi-Fi mag recently from the 90's, the last few years it was made, at which point it cost over 2500 UKP. They were auditioning it up against the then newly competeing recording formats of Mini-Disc, DCC and CD-R and concluded that it outperformed all of them...

 

[swiego]

Quote:

Originally Posted by memepool Cool. You should post up some of your digitised mix tapes somewhere on the web. I would love to check out all that old skool detroit spinning.... I read a review of the Dragon in an old UK Hi-Fi mag recently from the 90's, the last few years it was made, at which point it cost over 2500 UKP. They were auditioning it up against the then newly competeing recording formats of Mini-Disc, DCC and CD-R and concluded that it outperformed all of them...

As I mentioned earlier, at one point I did an experiment, I played a CD through a Benchmark DAC1 and recorded to the Nakamichi, then digitized that same recording back to the computer and did some quickie A/B tests through the DAC1. I could not hear a difference except for the slightest sense of a noise floor during silent stretches. It was pretty amazing. I tried a bunch of programs to subtract one .wav from another to see what the difference actually was but I was unable to match the phase properly. (Honestly I did not care enough to give it much effort.)

As for posting stuff, believe me, there's nothing old skool Detroit about me. I was born in Milwaukee