Transferring vintage reel to reel tapes to digital for archive… advice?

[the_newb]

Hi everyone, I’m new to the forum, this is my first post. I’ve been a reel to reel analog tape enthusiast since the early sixties. I still have my first reel to reel tape machine I purchased new in 1966, a Sony TC-777 w/wired remote, as well as the original owners and service manuals. The triple 7 still works as good as it did when I brought it home. I also own a Teac A-6300 10.5” machine and a Tascam 122MKII cassette machine, both also work fine.

I’m totally “the_newb” when it comes to transferring reel to reel to digital. I have a fairly large collection of old “keepsake” analog reel to reel tapes that I’d like to transfer to digital, then archive to CD or DVD.

I’m almost afraid to play some of those old tapes for fear that I may destroy them in the process. Some of them have not been played in 20/30 years. My tape decks are in good shape, so hopefully I won’t damage them. I’d like to be able to edit the audio to decrease or eliminate flaws things like pops, clicks, hum and etc. before sending it to digital. Its kinda like taking your old 35mm slides and scanning them to the computer where they can be cropped, edited, color corrected and etc..

I have a good computer, Intel core two quad @ 2.8ghz, 4gb memory, Creative SB X-fi pci sound card, which outputs to a mixer (right now a Mackie DFX-12), then on to (my recently purchased Mackie MR5mkII) active monitor speakers and a pair of Sony MDR-7506 monitor head phones. I just won a Tascam M-208 mixer on e-bay, (I want to stick with period analog equipment up to the point where the audio signal goes to the analog to digital conversion)… the M-208 should be here tomorrow.

So far so good, as far as equipment up to this point… however, I’ve been told by a musician friend of mine who is experienced in digital recording. He says that my Creative sound card will probably not be up to snuff for what I’m trying to do. He suggests a dedicated I/O card or device that is designed for just that purpose.

What additional equipment and software do I need to finish the project? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I’m also looking at Audio Spectrum Analyzer software, just from a curiosity standpoint, so I could actually see the bandwidth of these old recordings before they are digitized. Any comments on True Audio RTA software?

Thanks,

Jerry

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Get a better audio interface. No sense running your tapes through cheap hardware. Unless you are mixing multi-track tapes to 2-track you will get the best results with nothing between the tape deck and the interface. Period hardware (M-208) or cheap modern gear (DFX-12) will just add noise or otherwise degrade the signal without adding anything you need. Digital processing is way better sounding than budget analog hardware so get it into the computer cleanly and fix stuff there.

Don't get all wrapped up in analysis software. It's handy but only after you've identified an actual sonic problem.

If your tapes were recorded on different machines or at widely separate times it may be worth adjusting head azimuth for each tape. I have a way of doing this by ear that works pretty well. It will improve HF response relative to the tape noise.

Record the audio using a 24 bit format. If possible record in a high sampling rate, but even at 44.1kHz you should get good results. Set your levels conservatively leaving plenty of headroom. Levels around -18dBFS average with peaks around -12dBFS is probably reasonable depending on the hardware involved.

Audacity is a freeware audio recording/editing program that will suffice. Be careful because it is a destructive editor that makes changes to the original file. Make backups of your files before working on them.