digitizing old cassette recordings

[cliddell]

I have a stack of old (c.20 yrs) casettes of some great old music I made as a teenager and I want to save some of it for my kids but after trying a low end Phillips CD burner to do this I gave up in frustration. I need some help in meandering through the many options available in the semi-pro and Pro end of the market.

Should I grab a digital studio and line in some filters and maximizers to clean up the noisy tapes and drop it onto CD. Or go with a D/A card and software. Or just buy a better CD burner?

If anyone has had experience with this problem any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Grizzly]

The best way that I have found is to put the recorded material straight to CD. I use a Tascam CDRW5000. That is a stand alone unit connected through my mixer to the cassette deck. Then I rip the CD in the computer and do the fades and noise redution. Then burn it to another CD for a final copy. GoldWave is a good program to use for ripping and editing. It's a free download that's fully functional. But it has a time limit.
http://www.goldwave.com

Note: The Tascam burners are very easy to use. You haven't expierenced a pain in the ass until you try to record with a computer.

 

[The Green Hornet]

Yo Cliddell:

I also had some good tapes left over from my Tascam 488 and I coverted them to CD.

I ran the tape into my Yam 2816 and just tinkered a bit with some of the songs. But, since they were all balanced and reverbed to begin with, I didn't need to do much.

The result was pretty good. I even did this to a tape I made on Adak, Alaska with a drummer and just keys. We also had a vocal in there and once it was in 16 bit, there was a BIG difference. That tape was made in 1956 and survives today on a CD in my car.

If you run your tape directly into a CD burner, I don't think you can tweak very much. My CD burner is built in the 2816 so I'm actually copying the tape, making a stereo track, tweaking a bit and getting a good result most of the time.

Hope this gives you a new way to try the conversion.

Green Hornet

 

[SPINSTERWUN]

IMHO, the best way to transfer from cassette to CD is.........

...... to connect your tape deck to your computer (by using a male Right and Left RCA to a male stereo 1/8" cable),then record the songs directly into an editng program, such as Sound Forge or Wavelab.

That will enable you seperate the songs on your new CD's, rearrange the order of your songs on the new CD's, as well as being able to apply any type of mastering FX on the songs for your new CD's.



Peace....

spin

 

[The Green Hornet]

Yo Spinner:

Happy Spring.

I can also separate the songs on the 2816 -- just have to put them into the unit one at a time and burn a stereo track for each one. But, your program sounds like it might be faster.

Alas, I'm using the 2816 and have to go slow or fast.

Time to clean up my golf sticks.

Green Hornet

 

[cliddell]

Cassette recovery ward

Hey spinnner, grizzly and Hornet...Thanks much for the input. I guess the take home is KISS and keep the path from old to new as short as possible. ...

The tapes I have were actively mixed and so have great S/N ratio and still sound good, but there is the inevitable tape hiss etc have any of you tried an NR system to help clean up the transfer?

Thanks Again!

cliddell

 

[Nilbog]

Sometimes I dig the NR, sometimes not -depends on whats being played. I would do a burn onto your pioneer deck and then put it on the computer for mastering and burn a final CD like grizzly suggested. It's a little more time consuming - but you'll probably be happier with results.

If you have lots of money - there are places that will professionally do transfers between media types for you.