dubbing audio tape/cassettes to CD - preferably MP3 format

[Steve Josephson]

I have a large collection of audio tapes, mostly music but with some spoken
word.. The quality is generally commercial audio cassette or lower. I would
like to consolodate this collection and transfer it to computer hard disks
and CDs.

I think I understand what to do after I have the materials on my hard disk
to burn CD's, but I don't understand how to make the analogue to digital;
tape to computer transfer.

As a secondary issue, I would like to convert each audio track to digital at
a "resolution" that is commensurate with the quality of the source being
recorded. It seems that for the spoken word stuff, I could get literally
"hundreds" of hours of material on a single CD. At the other end, would MP3
format be the optimum for high quality cassette tape music?

I'm very familar with computers (and audio gear) -- but in this area I'm a
real newbie.

Thanks,

Steve Josephson

[djforest]

"Steve Josephson" <sjose...@michbar.org> wrote in message
news:O20jdCW3AHA.2288@tkmsftngp02...

> I have a large collection of audio tapes, mostly music but with some
spoken
> word.. The quality is generally commercial audio cassette or lower. I
would
> like to consolodate this collection and transfer it to computer hard disks
> and CDs.
>
> I think I understand what to do after I have the materials on my hard disk
> to burn CD's, but I don't understand how to make the analogue to digital;
> tape to computer transfer.

Connect "line out" from the tape player to "line in" on the sound card, set
computer audio mixer to record "line in", then use an audio program that
records audio and experiment making the files as you want.
... even sndrec32.exe will work to record as wav files

The program you use to burn the CDs may require the files as wav fromat,
some newer ver of burning software will allow mp3 files & convert on the fly

>
> As a secondary issue, I would like to convert each audio track to digital
at
> a "resolution" that is commensurate with the quality of the source being
> recorded. It seems that for the spoken word stuff, I could get literally
> "hundreds" of hours of material on a single CD. At the other end, would
MP3
> format be the optimum for high quality cassette tape music?

Others can prolly answer that better, but mp3 will work & can be created at
var levels of quality. What actually goes on the cd disk depends on which
type of cd you create; an audio-cd which creates "audio tracks" (and can be
played on a car stereo or home cd player), or a "data-cd" which creates a
dos structure on the cd and lets you add any file type (but can only played
back on a computer cd drive ??)

[Stephen P. Goodman]

Hi Steve,

I do a lot of audio on the PC in a range of needs (see
http://www.earthlight.net/Studios for example). You seem to specify two
distinct types of sound you want to transpose onto CD: Spoken Word and
Music. Are the two combined, if only in some instances? The needs of your
recordings would vary in regards to the "what kind of file?" query. If it's
just a mono recording of spoken word, you can record that to a 22k 16-bit
mono WAV file, and do fine with no loss of quality during the CD burn.
However, if this is high-fidelity music that's included, or the music on its
own (as you put it, high quality cassette music), you will want to record it
to a 44.1k stereo WAV (32-bit is sizey, but 16-bit is sufficient to burn to
CD).

In addition, if the tape in question is Dolby-encoded, you will need to
somehow remove the inherent hiss, and save the audio dynamics altogether.

These considerations no doubt are on a tape-by-tape basis. But I would
recommend WAV files for this purpose. While they take up a load of space on
the ol' hard drive you can just delete them when finished, but after you've
made sure that the CD you've burned is exactly what you want.

MP3 is okay for sound but doesn't reproduce as CD-quality audio. While you
can certainly cram a lot of MP3 file time onto a CD, the time limit of an
audio CD (and not one just containing MP3s) is 70 minutes. I'd recommend
the spoken word stuff would do fine with MP3, but the music might really be
lacking if you've been used to a high-quality cassette. On a home stereo -
as opposed to earphones on the road, or a car stereo - you can hear the
difference.
--
Stephen Goodman
* http://www.earthlight.net/Studios
* 200th Loop Of The Week Contest ends May 19!

"Steve Josephson" <sjose...@michbar.org> wrote in message
news:O20jdCW3AHA.2288@tkmsftngp02...