Cassette to digital to CD.

version2

version2

New member
Its funny how the easy things seem to give the most trouble.

I feel kind of moronic. I work in a studio and I have a pretty nice home setup as well. But I am actually having a lot of trouble moving cassette music to my computer for remastering and burning to cd.

Here is the problem. I have a Pioneer Dual cassette deck and I have it running to my line in on my Yamaha card. I tried moving to Quiet Riot over and everything went fairly well. I went from there to Ozzy Osbournes 'Bark at the Moon' and I am getting a lot of distortion. The levels are peaking bad. I thought this was supposed to be LINE LEVEL?! Well, I have my line in level down to 0 and the results are still bad. I am kind of stumped on what to try next.

Any suggestions?
 
Track Rat said:
Try the windows mixer. Its metered and adjustable.
Click to expand...
'

What do you mean, Rat? I adjusted the record levels using the windows mixer and have them set at 0 but Ozzy is still clipping.
 
hmmmm.....what software are you recording in? If it has meters, is it clipping there? How are you patching your cassette to the card? You are using the line input on the card and not a mic input correct?
 
Using Cool Edit Pro 2 to record with.

I first tried using my laptop, but came to find that the only input is mic. (Dumb) And what I found there was a solid block being recorded and nothing but distorted garbage coming in. Even when I set the windows mixer to as low as possible it was still overloaded. Anyway, that was obviously the mic line.

So, I put the deck into one of my wifes computers (my studio is down being remodeled) into the line input. There are no labels but I assumed this was the line level since the same tape and machine was recorded very well. Good levels, etc.

Then I stuck Ozzy in and he blasting above 0 and clipping on the level meter in CEP2.
 
Track Rat said:
The problem must be with Ozzie.:D
Click to expand...

LOL. Probably. Like I said, the QR tape seem to transfer correctly. But, this seems very odd. Are cassette deck outputs not line level or are they amplified in some way?
 
I am about at my wits end. I dont want to spend money on the wrong item.

I have been looking at basic sound cards for this task and it looks like I am in at about $50 to $100. Which is fine. COuld it be that the soundcard I am using is just junk and it is trashing the record level from the line input?

OR

Is it the tape deck that is the culprit? I dont know which to replace at this point.
 
Some sound cards allow you to toggle between -10 and +4 line levels. The -10 is typical of consumer hard ware like your cassette deck. The +4 is used in things like pro & semi pro mixers. If there were some mis-matched voltages that could cause a problem, which is I think what Track Rat was refering to.
 
So, basically. Im SOL on knowing which piece of equipment is messing up the process.

I guess I am going to purchase an SB Live 5.1 for this at CompUSA and see where that gets me. I have been reading all day on the net and it seems to be a standard for this type of thing. *shrugs*

Im very frustrated because I have never had this type of problem before. I would expect a line level on a soundcard to be at a consumer grade level. After all, its not pro. I dunno.
 
All the consumer Plain Jane soundcards I've ever seen were consumer level. If you're patched from the standard line output of the cassette deck to the line input of the soundcard and the tape you're playing back is a good, clean recording and you have a decent software recorder, I can'y imagine what the problem could be. Just recently I took an old AMD 400MHz machine with a 5400RPM drive and put Soundforge5 on it and recorded from a cassette deck into a $25 Vortex crap card and it worked like a champ.
 
Went out and bought a live. Installed it. Now the computer wont boot up.

Oh what a perfect start to a weekend.
 
If you just added the second card, maybe you have an IRQ issue, both cards are fighting for the same IRQ. Go into BIOS and check up on that.
 
alonso said:
If you just added the second card, maybe you have an IRQ issue, both cards are fighting for the same IRQ. Go into BIOS and check up on that.
Click to expand...

I went ahead and wiped. This machine was due for it anyway.

Well, SB Live is giving me good input! So, it turns out to be the soundcard after all. HOWEVER, now Im getting clicks and pops while recording.

I just cant win.
 
Clicks and Pops? That seems to be happening a lot around here. What OS do you have? Some hints:

Update BIOS or Flash that sucker, if it is outdated that is.
Disable any services you are not needing from the OS.
Check the IRQ sharing, the card should be alone. Try moving it to PCI slot number 2 or 3 if everything above failed. Get updated drivers for everything in your system.
 
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