WE have a computer question - Audio Cassettes to CD's? Multiple questions for the Super Geniuses!

Delta-Boudreaux, SamAdam76,tang-soo | 1-9-2002 | Delta-Boudreaux, SamAdam76,tang-soo

[Delta-Boudreaux]

WE have a computer question -  How Do We Transfer Audio Cassettes onto CDs?

This question evolved from another thread "I have a Computer Question.... How can I Transfer my VCR tapes to DVD?"

----- Post #100 from previous thread----
Excellent suggestions in this thread. As always, Freepers come through with some great advice. If you don't mind, I'd like to expand the scope of this thread to include the transfer of audiotapes to CD-R.

I have a very large base of tape cassettes (over 1400 hours) that I taped off the radio. For example, I have taped many Christmas shows over the years and much special programming off the radio.

I have experimented converting these tapes with mixed results. Basically I run a portable cassette player through the sound card. But the sound is kind of crappy. The original tapes sound better. There must be a better way.

My biggest problem is getting a "pause" made between tracks so that the CD will have track numbers. Yet many times, the songs flow uninterrupted on the original tape. I can manually pause the input between tracks but it's sort of a clunky way to do it. I'd like to get the entire tape on my hard drive as one large .wav file and then have the ability to separate them into smaller .wav files for track separation. Also, I can delete the commercials this way. If I cut the commercials, I should be able to fit most of my 90-minute tapes onto a 74 minute CD. Also there is DJ chatter in between the tracks but I'd like to keep it as they are discussing the music and that was part of the appeal of making all these tapes in the first place.

SamAdams76

----- Post #69 from previous thread ----
I have a similar question. I have been using creative labs to record tapes of my pastor's sermons and making cd's for friends. Its a great service but I would like to be more efficient. The size of the audio files are about 10 times as large as other audio files I download from the net. Am I doing something wrong? I've look through the software for such things as compression level settings ... etc to no avail. Any suggestions would be welcome. By the way, the resulting file would still need to be able to be played in a standard audio cd device. Ideally, I would like to be able to fit 3 or 4 sermons on a single cd.

Also, I would like recommendations for a tool that would let me edit the audio file into different tracks. (something like 10 minutes each). For now, I get one track (40 minutes long) that makes it rather inconvenient when its desired to start in the middle of the sermon. I don't need a real sophisticated studio environment too, just something with some minor utility.

Thanks.
tang-soo

--------- New Question --------
I also have a tape library (500 cassettes) that I would like to be able to download to cd.
I would like to be able to put multiple tapes on each cd, as much as possible.
I do not have to be able to play mine on a CD player, so I guess MP3 files would be the best for my application.
How do I capture the audio cassettes into the computer.

Delta-Boudreaux


 

[Delta-Boudreaux]

PING.....

[Senator Pardek]

There's a great deal of pro and semi-pro software out there that will let you do just that - while saving each song as its seperate track (if you edit it so) so it can be burned onto a CD.

Here's the rub - the average soundcard that comes with a computer is not designed to make HIFI recordings. However, with the software, one can remove tape-hiss, and soundcard noise, plus EQ it like crazy so it sounds better than the original.

Remember, the recording will only be as good as the weakest link allows, so if the souncard does not faithfully pass along 13 kHz to your HD, you may be in trouble.

[Delta-Boudreaux]

PING...

[wooly_mammoth]

Just get a Creative Audigy Platinum soundcard. Around $200 retail. It comes with creative recorder which is what you're looking for.

[Leroy S. Mort]

CDRFAQ.ORG has extensive answers to this and other CD Recording questions. A great site to bookmark.

[GalvestonBeachcomber]

GoldWave. Not expensive; does good job. http://www.goldwave.com/

[monkeyshine]

You beat me to it. I recently installed an Audigy XP sound card and it has software that can handle this.. In fact it has a lot of software with it.

There is probably some shareware that can handle this, too. Check the Steinberg Audio website (search for the URL) they may have some demos.

[wooly_mammoth]

http://www.soundblaster.com/products/audigyplatinumex/

I just have an audigy gamer ($70 mail-order) and a pair of sennheiser HD600 headphones ($500 retail, $280 on e-bay) and am very pleased. Wouldn't mind a decent headphone amplifier :) but they're too expensive :(

[ken21]

on a similar note, i have a question:

i have a brand new canon rebel 2000 camera with 28-80 mm lens and warranty.

how much should i advertise it for in the newspaper?

[monkeyshine]

In Philadelphia it's worth fifty bucks.

[aruanan]

How do I capture the audio cassettes into the computer.

Go to www.harmonycentral.com and click on software for your computer platform and see what's available. There is much that is free and works quite nicely.

[Delta-Boudreaux]

What's wrong ken? No one smiling when you say "CHEESE!"

[hc87]

If you have a stereo system, you may want to purchase an audio component CD burner. My wife bought me a TEAC RW-CD22 at COSTCO for less than $200 this Christmas. The TEAC has a function for automatically cutting tracks while it is recording the CD, but it doesn't work as well as I would like, largely because it is difficult to adjust the sensitivity of the CD burner as to when it "hears" silence and adds a cut. This forces me to sometimes manually add cuts during the recording process. Obviously that can be tedious.

The advantage to a component CD burner is that your stereo system is built to allow you to record from one format to another; the end result, soundwise, is pretty good.

The disadvantages are, as described above, the need to sometimes manually cut tracks while recording and the fact that Audio CD-Rs (as distinct from Data CD-Rs used with computers) seem to cost about a dollar per CD, while data CD-Rs are about half of that. Perhaps there are newer models that can use data CD-Rs instead of audio CD-Rs. I don't know.

[Jolly Green]

Lots of great ideas on this thread. I should have consulted the FR Brain Trust a few months ago when I needed to convert a bunch of 8mm old movies to digital format. After messing with this for quite awhile and spending lots of money on new toys (Sony DVR, Adobe Premiere and Firewire card), I didn't achieve the desired quality. I eventually farmed it out to a commercial house with a Telecine unit to have them converted to DVD.

If any of you have any tricks for this particular problem, I would love to hear them as I still have more to do.

[ken21]

more or less, someplace else?

[Mid-MI Student]

My biggest problem is getting a "pause" made between tracks so that the CD will have track numbers.

The best solution here is a software music editing program. I would look for some sort of shareware with an evaluation period so you can test how well the editing/ making new files works before you buy.

[SamAdams76]

Thanks for starting this thread and importing my question from the other thread over here. Already some good info has been posted.

I've seen in Circuit City some CD-recorders as stereo components. That is, they plug into your stereo (not your computer) and record CDs from any audio source on your stereo. My take on them is that they weren't ready for prime-time. For example, it didn't look like you would have much control over the process. Does anybody have one and if so, how do you like it?

[agitator]

I edit audio digitally almost every day. You can use the Goldwave, it will do what you want to do. If you have the money and are technically inclined, get Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge and their Noise Reduction add-in. One of the reasons audio files on disk tend to be so much larger than what you download from the internet is the data rate that they're recorded at. Full CD quality stereo is recorded at a 44.1 khz, 16bit sampling rate or higher. You probably could get away with 22.050  @ 16bit from cassettes because unless they're really good cassettes (that lets out the cassettes that commercial music comes on...) AND you have a really good deck, the fidelity of the source material is going to suck anyway.

Even a $40 sound card will do a good job with audio cassettes as the noise from the cassette is much higher than the noise floor of a recent but cheapo sound card. Use a good quality cassette deck for the source, and keep an eye on the levels into your sound card. Make sure your hard drive is defragmented and that you have lots o room on it. Do a 60 sec recording of nothing and note the disk space it uses. Figure out how much run time you have on your hard drive from that and then leave at least half the drive space available for editing. Pump those cassettes in and out leaving a gap where the tapes start and stop until you run out of half of your drive space. At that point, go through the tunes one by one copying the particular track and then pasting it into a new file that you save.

If you have problems with an older sound card introducing noise, make sure that you don't have any drive cables rubbing on the sound card or that the video card isn't sitting right next to the video card.