hello
i am in the process of transferring all my old cassette tapes to digital with audacity.
all of my tapes in question are dialog from movies and TV shows and contain nothing musical.
will i be better off recording in mono for this?
thanks
I would recommend recording in stereo.
Sometimes with cassette recording, there can be a bad bit in one channel, or one channel may be too quiet or too loud. If you record both channels, then you have the option to use one, or the other, or both channels, depending on what sounds best. If you record in mono, then you get what you get and no channel options without re-recording.
all original recordings were from a stereo tape deck linked to the tv/vcr and recorded with levels being set independently for each channel.
im thinking if that were the case i should stick to stereo for my digitizing as you stated?
just curious
assuming if during original recording of the cassette one of the two channels was a bit lower than the other how will that extrapolate if choosing mono in audacity during the digitizing process now.
assuming if during original recording of the cassette one of the two channels was a bit lower than the other how will that extrapolate if choosing mono in audacity during the digitizing process now.
There is a little drop-down arrow to the left of the waveform where you can choose Split to Mono. That will give you two separately-editable mono tracks. And, there will now be a little “X” so you delete one of them. Or, you can amplify separately, etc.
If you leave them both they will be mixed (summed) together when you export. If you mix, reduce the volume by -6dB (or to -6dB peaks) to prevent clipping (distortion) when you mix.
You can try it both ways to see which way is better. If both channels are good you should end-up with slightly-less noise when mixed to mono.