4 Track tapes and a DAT to CD

[Baz]

About 2 years ago I was in a band and we recorded our original songs on a Yamaha MT50 4 track and some others in a Digital studio onto DAT tape. I recently got a computer w/ Sound Forge XP, Cakewalk Gold Express, and a CD burner, amongst other things and I want to take those songs and put them on a CD. I thought this would be an easy task, but I am having some problems.

First, I am dumping each individual track of the four track tapes onto seperate wav files. I thought this would be good because I could manipulate each track seperately. However, the problem is I can't get the tracks to synch up after I turn them into wav files. I can get them started at the same place, but during playback the further along into the song I get, the timing amongst the tracks falls more and more off. Could this be a problem with the four track not playing back at exactly the same speed each time I dump a new track? Also, should I just mix the four tracks down to one wav file to remedy this or try to get four different wav files?

Secondly, I don't have a DAT machine, just a DAT tape w/ about 30 minutes worth of songs on it. I've called a few places in town and the lowest price I found for someone to put the songs on CD so I can convert them to wav files is $40. It seems like a fairly easy thing to do and being a college student, I don't want to spend any unnecessary cash because I have so little of it after all, beer is getting expensive these days. I was thinking $40 is pretty steep, but maybe not. Can anyone think of any alternatives to paying the $40 or do you think this is a fair price for this service? Thanks for the help.

[Emeric]

You could try 2 tracks at a time, just to see if it will sync up any easier. Or buy a sound card with more than one stereo input. If none of these are practical, mixing down to a 2-track stereo wave may be your best bet.

Emeric



[This message has been edited by Emeric (edited 09-17-1999).]

[drstawl]

If there's some space at the beginning or end of the tape, add a sync signal. This can just be a short pop in sync across the 4 tracks.
Then when you import them separately, you have a point of reference. But you're still stuck with the playback speed accuracy of the tape deck in determining the overall sync accuracy.
$40 doesn't seem that bad if you're going to get a digital copy of your DAT tape, mixed to your specifications on a CDR. The DAT plays back at normal speed, so to get 4 tracks, you're going to need the proper card to understand DAT multitrack format which will create the 4 .wav files or do them two at a time. Then there's the time it will take to mix this down to 2 tracks on the HD, then the time to burn a CDR. How much do you think this service is worth to you per hour?

[Baz]

I appreciate the info. I have a sync signal at the beginning of the wav files, but the longer the wav's play, the more out of sync they get. This is because even after syncing (is this a verb?)the files, they have about a 1/2 second difference over the 4-minute track, which is not huge, but very much noticeable. I tried using time compress/expand and that didn't seem to work. I am now going to try cleaning the 4-track tape head just to do it, but I doubt that will help because I think I just cleaned them. Any other ideas would be very much appreciated. Thanks for the help. BTW, this page is an awesome resource for learning to record/mix/master. Keep up the good work!!

[This message has been edited by Baz (edited 09-20-1999).]