Thanks, guys, but I was serious about the reel-to-reel tapes!
I know - I’m hopelessly stuck-in-the-60’s technology.
I don’t even know what a ‘Blue-Ray’ is. I thought it was one of those big beetle-like things that people stick in their ears.
Most of my albums (those 12” Diameter vinyl discs) have only been played once, to record on tape, and I can get them on CDs OK. The tapes are still a problem, though.
Thanks for listening ............... FRegards
You can digitize those tapes, and use some audio processing software to clean them up. It’s amazing to see a giant pile of tape reels reduced to an iPod.
You originally said — “I need help converting my old 7” reel-to-reel tapes over to those plastic CD thingys.”
And then — “Thanks, guys, but I was serious about the reel-to-reel tapes!”
—
Well, you need an analog to digital converter, which may be your sound card in your computer. I don’t know if you need something additional, if the sound card is not sufficient or up to the task. I don’t use a PC, I use a Mac, but “in principal” it’s all the same.
You take the line out of your tape deck to line in to your Analog-to-Digital converter and run it through some sound program on your computer (you’ll have to hunt around for that; don’t know what you need).
I don’t know if you’ll need to run the line through some amp or not, to boost the signal. Can’t tell you. I know on my LP records, I’ve got to run it through a pre-amp or it just won’t work. Whether it’s a turntable or a tape deck, the principal is the same.
Continuing... the sound program may be able to do some other things to the sound that is coming in (either as it comes in or after it’s saved on the computer). It could clean up some noise if that’s on there). I would imagine that you want the highest quality of sound, but I don’t know exactly what that would be, as far as the highest quality from your tapes. You’re not going to want to keep the computer files in uncompressed form, I don’t imagine (they’ll take up way too much room, unless you’re really serious about not compressing the sound files). I know that the Mac can have “lossless compression” to about 1/4 of uncompressed (it’s either 1/4 or 1/2; can’t quite remember now...).
If these tapes were serious recording and of the highest quality, then perhaps I would keep the originals in lossless compression. And then I would have my everyday use of them with some higher compression like MP3 or AAC.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/aac/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding
AAC is not proprietary to Apple, but iTunes uses AAC. So, it’s used on a lot of iPods. So, I think the AAC compression is a lot better than MP3 and AAC is getting more popular all the time. And what did I just hear about MP3? Did someone claim a patent on it??!! Or what?
You say that you can get your LPs to CD okay, but that you have a problem with the tapes. I’m not sure why... Everything else should be the same, except instead of a turntable, you’ve got a tape deck. Have you tried it and it didn’t work?
Okay, I just grabbed a couple of links that are related to either LP or tapes. They should contain enough information to help you hunt further...
http://www.cyberwalker.com/columns/feb02/150202.html
http://www.dak.com/reviews/Tutorial_LP.cfm
There are probably better links, but I didn’t spend a whole lot of time looking... :-)
Don’t know if that helps or not.