Audacity Forum

waxcylinder wrote:...

1) Before recording the tapes, I would recommend a full wind

better to play them through slowly not use ff and rewind

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

true but good luck finding equipment to do that these days
unless you are in the biz . new decks i see do not have all the features the older ones did.

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.

depends on how much the material is worth, what condition it is in, and your budget. if the tapes are not that good to start with all this may be overkill.

<<<you could get **marginally** better results -- if the tapes were really good to start with -- by using higher sample rates and bit depths>>>

Although sound quality would be a bit better, that's not the main reason to use high quality sound standards. The higher bitrates and depths survive special effects a lot better. If you determine, after very careful capturing with a good deck, that you need "cleaning" or other effects, then the possibility of damage goes way down with the higher standards.

The Music CD standard, 16-bit, 44100, Stereo, was chosen to be the worst they could do and still not have most people catch them at it. Some people can hear CD damage. That's why there still are Vinyl-Only music listeners.

Space on a Music CD is at a premium and there is no elbow room for high music standards most people will never hear. The problem is when people try to do production and effects in that standard. Damage appears very quickly because damage was never very far away in the first place.

And that's just in the "perfect" uncompressed formats. We get postings all the time from people trying to do production in highly compressed and restricted MP3 and wondering why their show is unlistenable trash.

Koz

whomper wrote:

waxcylinder wrote:...

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.

depends on how much the material is worth, what condition it is in, and your budget. if the tapes are not that good to start with all this may be overkill.

Try reading the original posting in this thread whomper. The poster is proposing to run a serious archive project - I assume therefore that the material has some considerable value to him/her. And hence my more detailed than usual responses.

WC

i did read the post
my point was that most cassette quality is pretty low
even/especially commercial ones
certainly lower already than cd quality

and home made spoken audio is usually worse
so the expense of buying a deck with dolby etc may not be worth the expense.

i am sure teh OP knows his budget and needs and will make an informed decision that fits his situation

Waxcylinder and Whomper,

Your information has been so helpful! I greatly appreciate it. I am confident in moving forward with this project now and will write again if anything comes up.
Treasures

Forgot to mention Koz - thank you too! You've all provided some great info!

<<<Forgot to mention Koz>>>

Thank you. Doing a credit roll is always an exercise in trying to remember who did what.

It's not trivial. On large productions there is a human whose task it is to keep track of this stuff. I always wondered what that person put on their résumé/CV.

Koz