Digitizing Analog

[treasures]

I have about 1,500 cassette tapes from the 1970's and 1980's. They are talks that we want to preserve for posterity. Is a program like Audacity sufficient for capturing all the data? Or should I go with something like Adobe Audition? Or is Adobe Audition overkill? I am not looking at mastering or editing - just purely capturing all audio.

[waxcylinder]

Audacity will do the job very well (and you can't argue with the price as it's free). But it will be a long job, a very long job - regardless of what software you choose.

WC

[treasures]

Thank you for the quick response. Yes, I am planning that this will take a few years to complete. So basically, do you think that there is no difference with using Audacity versus a program such as Adobe Audition for digitizing? We do want to preserve them in the best possible way. I have been reading from different sources that 96Khz with 24bit is the best insurance on capturing all the sound information. The final format we will save to is .wav files. Do you think that by using Audacity we will be compromising or risking losing any audio information?

[kozikowski]

Given you posted in the Windows forum, you're far more likely to experience damage just getting a good clear show into the computer than you are worrying about bit rates and sample frequencies.

Windows machines actively campaign against success. They're business computers and if you have a modern laptop, they can default to conferencing mode where they try to actively manage the sound channels. This drives people trying to make a simple recording, without putting too fine a point on it, nuts.

I need to drop out...

Koz

[kozikowski]

This is where I get into trouble since I'm not a Windows elf.

Windows laptops can have three problems.

-- Many of them have no Stereo Audio In -- Line-In. They have provision for connecting a mono microphone, but that's the ball game. You can solve that with one of the fine USB sound devices we reviewed here...

http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=9477

You are urged to go this route even if you have a deskside Windows PC with Stereo Line-In on the sound card. They can cause damage on their own.

-- Many of them can be configured to record Internet Audio. That's not a good thing because that can interfere with straight, plain sound recording. You have to know how to turn that off.

Windows Control Panel
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... trol_Panel

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Recor ... e_computer

-- Then after you survive all that, you have to turn off conferencing management. That's the one that causes the volume of the show to go up and down on its own. I have no clue how to do that. I've never met a computer that had it, but we've certainly heard about them here on the forum.

Koz

[treasures]

Thank you so much, Koz, for all the great information. I will thoroughly look into all they sound cards recommended and get some help from a tech support friend. I'll write again if I have more questions.

[whomper]

I have about 1,500 cassette tapes from the 1970's and 1980's. They are talks that we want to preserve for posterity. Is a program like Audacity sufficient for capturing all the data? Or should I go with something like Adobe Audition? Or is Adobe Audition overkill? I am not looking at mastering or editing - just purely capturing all audio.

i used audacity for cassettes
worked great

i do not recommend audition -- that is just my preference

you could get **marginally** better results -- if the tapes were really good to start with -- by using higher sample rates and bit depths
but that is a hardware function not audacity limited

i copied at -24dBFS from average level to ensure headroom
trimmed excess noise and leader from start and stop of recording
silenced gaps
inserted labels
amplified
no need to compress - the cassettes already were
exported multiple
burned cd

the hardest part was finding a decent tape player
and a pc with a working sound card
(back up was to use an external card if pc #2 sound card died also)
my teac deck died in the middle so
used a drugstore boombox with a cassette playback
and plugged into the phone out and sent to line in on sound card
worked plenty good enough for govt work and my ears

[waxcylinder]

Treasures,

I wrote one of the reviews in the soundcard link that Koz provided you with above.

I have been using the Edirol UA-1EX on my two Windows machines (XP-HE and XP-PRO) for a couple of years now to transcribe my LP and tape collection - with very good results - my objective is listening not archiving, so I have not used the more extreme settings you are using.

I started out using the Edirol in its Standard mode with the Windows default drivers - in the last few months (occasioned by some Beta and Alpha testing) I reconfigured the Edirol to run in Advanced mode with the latest Edirol driver that I downloaded - and this is now working fine too.

The Edirol will support the 96kHz that you require - but note that in 96k mode it is a one-way device only - i.e. it can be set to either record or play but not both - but that should be fine for your needs (you can target your PCs sound output onto its own internal soundcard for software monitoring with Audacity.

The problem you may have is with 24 bit. The Edirol will support 24-bit in its Advanced mode - but my understanding (from the manual) is that to do so it requires ASIO support. The underlying problem here is that Audacity cannot ship ASIO support due to licensing restrictions - however you can build your own Audacity with ASIO support for "personal" use only, some of our users and developers have successfully done that. But note that this is a non-trivial task, not to be undertaken by the faint-hearted (I haven't done it ).

Note also that since I purchased this device Roland Corp. (the manufactures of the device) have superseded it with the Edirol UA-1G. I have spoken with the Edirol tech support team and thay assure me They tell me that the UA-1G has broadly the same functionality as the older UA-1EX but with some increased functionaliy.

WC

[waxcylinder]

Treasures,

some further thoughts: I'm sure that as you are an archivist I may not need to make some odf these points, ignore those you are familair with, other readers may benefit in the future.

1) Before recording the tapes, I would recommend a full wind to the end of the tape and then back again - you may need to be careful as you approach the end as with time the fixings at the ends of the tape can become insecure. My Nakamichi has a self-braking mech. as the end approaches to deal with this.

2) Make sure that the tape drive mechanism is clean and dust free - the capstan and the pinch roller etc.

3) Ensure that the tape heads are correctly set for Azimuth and alignment

4) Do you know if Dolby was applied in the recording of the tapes - and if so was it Dolby-B or Dolby-C? You will need the correct settings for accurate playback

5) It is usually thought better if you can do the payback on the deck on which the original recording was made, if possible.

6) If you are going to do any processing of the recordings (noise/hiss removal) I would strongly recommend that you save WAV file copies of the capture masters as backups (and at least two separate backup copies are require - and ideally offsite backups too, disks are relatively cheap these days).

I had my Nakamichi professionally serviced (by Bowers&Wilkins - the Nak agents in the UK) prior to embarking on my own tape transcriptions - worth the money spent I think.

You may find this set of tutorials useful: http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... iscs_to_CD

WC

[waxcylinder]

Oh and one last thought - almost certainly redundant as you have posted in the 1.3 section of the forum.

Don't bother with 1.2.6 Audacity - go straight to the latest Beta 1.3.12. In spite of its Beta labelling it is now a very mature Beta and many of us think it is the best Audacity release yet. In fact 1.2 will not run properly on many modern platforms. I use 1.3.12 exclusively now for all my production work (only drifting to Alpha 1.3.13 to test the Timer Record bug-fix).

WC