I am trying to convert some old audio books on cassette tapes to digital. I have a very old Panasonic SA-AK27 cassette player that was fairly high quality in its time. I bought this USB audio capture device to deliver the input to Audacity on the WIn 10 PC.
I plugged its small 3.5 aux cable into the cassette player headset jack and the USB plug into the USB port on the PC. I then hit record on Audacity and play on the player. After a minute or so, I stopped it and listened. The recording seems pretty good.
Each side of each cassette is about 45-60 minutes. The player has auto reverse, so once I start it, it should run for 1.5 to 2.0 hours. After the player has played both sides it will stop. But Audacity keeps recording. I did a little experimenting. Selecting “Enable” under the Sound Activated Recording option gets Audacity to stop recording if I manually stop the cassette player, so I’m guessing it will stop when the player has played both sides and stops.
Is this the right way to do this?
It was initially set at -50 bB. That would get it to stop if I stopped the player, but it still recorded 20-30 seconds of dead space at the start of the cassette. I then reset it to -40 bB and that got it to skip the initial dead space. But it then stopped in the middle of the tape and did not resume.
Is this the right setting or can it cause the recording to miss something if it’s very soft. These are audio tapes of books, so someone is reading. And they do raise and lower their voice.
If this is a problem, I can set it back up and then edit out the dead space later.
Audacity was running while I was writing the post above. When I hot-keyed over to Audacity, it had stopped with an error message saying something like it did not have enough compute power to continue and telling me that I need to have fewer other apps running. Do I need to have Audacity be pretty much the only thing running?
This is a fairly new Surface Book with the fastest processor and the maximum RAM that was available.
That will let you set unambiguous start and stop times.
Depending on content is fraught with problems as you found. Cassette tapes are noisy and there has to be a hole in the presentation as the tape reverses. Audacity is likely to see that as a cue point to stop.
I need to have fewer other apps running.
I don’t recognize that error. Which Audacity do you have and did you get it from here?
It’s possible writing a note to Audacity wasn’t the only thing you had running.
Do you use Skype, Zoom, or other chat program? Those are famous for taking over your computer’s sound system.
Do you have a setup where you record internet music or other content? That process uses special software connections that force a cross between Recording and Playback. Audacity may not have been able to figure out what to do.
Also, Audacity tends to use only the base of your computer’s abilities. People complain that their computer has a double hand-full of powerful processors and yet Audacity gets confused easily. Audacity only uses the first of those processors. Not the whole pile. I think that’s still true.
Under some conditions, your virus software may interfere with Audacity.
There’s an evil possibility. When you’re on-line, you’re not the only user on your machine.
We shouldn’t ignore the obvious. How much drive space do you have? Is it a Solid-State Drive (SSD)? If it’s spinning metal (older), optimizing might be a good idea. Optimizing isn’t a good idea for SSDs. They have their own internal management system.
I hot-keyed over to Audacity, it had stopped with an error message
Audacity is not like other computer programs in that it doesn’t have stop and wait. It’s not a spreadsheet or text editor which can take a breather while the computer does other tasks. Recording sound is an Always-On application and maybe it didn’t much like running in the background like a second-class citizen.
Overdubbing people run into a cousin of this. When you sing or perform to a backing track or music bed, the computer has to play the backing track absolutely perfectly at the exact same time it perfectly records your voice. Underpowered computers can fall over when asked to do everything at the same time.
Set up to record when you go to bed. That should work now that you have the Timer Record tool.
That depends on the capabilities of the computer that it is running on, and the demands of the other apps that are running.
It is certainly safest to avoid running other apps during recording, though lightweight apps such as text editors can usually be run at the same time.
I stumbled across this video the other day. It has some good tips for optimising a Surface Book for running audio apps: https://youtu.be/ajV2c9NjZqE
What I usually do is to stop the recording manually after both sides are recorded, and then delete unwanted silence from the end of the recording.
If I’m not going to be present when the recording has finished, I’ll use “Timer Record” and allow a bit of extra recording time so as to be sure that the recording doesn’t stop too early. See: Timer Record - Audacity Manual
Again I will manually delete any trailing silence after the recording has stopped.
Thanks for pointing that out. It also has an option to automatically export the recording. Nice.
Depending on content is fraught with problems as you found. Cassette tapes are noisy and there has to be a hole in the presentation as the tape reverses. Audacity is likely to see that as a cue point to stop.
I just did a little test. I started the recording about a minute before the end of side 1 with the player set to automatically reverse. Audacity recorded 10-15 seconds of almost nothing, then stopped when the tape stopped, then started back up when the player started on the reverse side.
But just because this one little test worked, doesn’t mean it will on every tape. I’ll use the timed recording option as you suggest.
I need to have fewer other apps running.
I don’t recognize that error.
If it happens again, I’ll grab a screen capture.
Which Audacity do you have and did you get it from here?
I just upgraded to 3.0.2 and I did get it from here.
It’s possible writing a note to Audacity wasn’t the only thing you had running.
I did have a couple of other apps open, but not running. But when I do this again, I’ll do it when I’m going to be away from the PC and I’ll shut everything else down.
Windows usually has a lot of things running in the background (without telling you).
“Windows Update” can be a killer if it starts up while you are recording - that’s one to watch out for.
That video link I posted covers most of the common “things running in the background” problems.