(Ancient) Audio Cassette Tape to MP3 ISSUE...

[acmk]

I am at my wits end in trying to find an easier way of doing the following:

My step-father has stockpiled 3-4 HUNDRED audio cassettes over the last 15 years. I have FINALLY persuaded him to allow me to convert them all to a digital format (mp3) to allow transfering to a cd or dvd. My problem lies in the sheer number of tapes.

I have already tried the 'ole' cassette player to sound card in method. Yes it works, but using a standard speed cassette player (radio shack), it will take me literally months to get through them all.

Does anyone know of a hardware solution or any other idea for me to save time? I just need a faster way to get the media from the cassette to my computer.

Thanks

[EddyH]

Well, it's not *much* of a speed boost, but... two questions

1. are they stereo or mono?

2. what's the frequency response like? dull treble or decent full range?


If you have a two-tape deck with a fairly reliable high speed dub setting and a spare blank that can be endlessly recorded on.... and the tapes aren't that good quality headroom-wise (13.2khz spectrum or less, similar to an average 96k mp3) then you can use that in the obvious manner. Just rec a track of known length to the blank first and play it back at high speed to measure the difference (most manual decks can be fooled into going into rec-pause if you dont have a 2nd blank - open the door, hit pause, push in the little play and rec tabs, and push the buttons... voila). It's not necessarily bang-on double speed. My own came out to giving the equivalent of 26khz-and-some-change sample rate (or was it 25? anyways around a 12 to 13khz upper treble response) when recording to 44.1khz with hi-speed. Could probably get a bit higher, maybe 14 point something response now that most sound cards can handle 48-50khz sample rates..

(the only problem is the later resampling, you need a quick PC for it to be worthwhile... though you can leave that to go overnight, which can't be said for tapes. in the case outlined above, it was a 90 minute tape of a rare gig that i had to return to its normal owner in less than an hour, and didn't have any spare blanks )

If the tapes are mono then you can do even better, if you can get two decks (both high speed, one high and one normal, whatever) and a splitter cable. Output of one tape to the left channel, output of the other to the right.. work of a moment to save each channel to a different file later on.

Of course, even with any speedups, 400 tapes are going to take you a LONG time... 400 CDs would be a chore even with a 16x ripping speed, just on the moving them in & out, saving, naming and encoding alone.

I'm going to be doing this with my own sets of tapes that don't have CD equivalents soon, reserving it for a quiet unemployed period (which there's bound to be a couple after graduation) or maybe just leaving it til there's the cash to go buy the CDs (or time to go hunt them all on Kazaa of course) Those are also routes you might want to explore. Or get them professionally done even.

Because, even after recording and resampling, if you don't want them to sound like ass (particularly if turned into mp3s, mp3s hate hiss noise) then you'll want to filter out the tape hiss and the considerable background noise that comes from the actual deck equipment. Which also takes the best half of forever.

Maybe set up a SETI type project. Contact a lot of people who'd be willing to record them for you and send them 10 tapes each

PS If they're all C90s, filled up, you're looking at about 360 gigs of uncompressed storage...

[EddyH]

....

One of those hi-fis with a built in 2x CD burner may also help, as i think they can record from tape.

2x tape play to 2x CD.. if it'll take RWs, then each side goes onto a RW, or each tape for C60s..

get a team thing going, someone to supply the machine with CDs, another with tapes, one or the other doing (temp) labelling, and a third ripping the wavs direct to mp3 at 5x or more.

nightmare task..

[steptoe]

As for the software, MY personal opinion, and testing/useage came out for :

Cool Edit Pro v2.0, as it also supports DirectX audio and VST plugins (using a VST to DirectX adaptor). Its quick, there are 2 or 3 very good DirectX audio plugins to try and boost those poor or faded analogue recordings

Or, one that has been around since the Amiga days, is HiSoft SoundProbe 2, which is less than £50 to buy, and has very, very good built-in filters that can easily boost poor/faded recordings

That is MY 2nd/1st choice, depending on my mood


But, you have a long job on your hands there, especially if you intend to convert them all

I'm still trying to get around to converting all my vinly onto CD, and I only have about 200 albums, and about 150 singles. I've been starting that project for at least 4-5 years now




Have you considered the cost of letting somebody else do the job for you ??

That way, you don't need to worry about time spent doing it, and you could always do it in batches, if its that expensive, plus you will get a better final sound quality than you could achive (no offense intended), and they will (hopefully) have the equipment to deal with large numbers of recordings and have the eqipment to speed the process up considerably

On 2nd thoughts, looking at the prices, per CD, maybe you better get started ! Average price seems to be $18 to $25 PER CD, or 18 tracks or upto 63 minutes... scary

[EddyH]

The question that isnt getting answered here of course is how many of them could be more easily replaced with the original source recordings (bargain bin / mega-sale CDs, etc... 5 for $30..) rather than faffing with recording the tapes and filtering for something that's going to sound awful in comparison??

Or are they all highly unique, bootlegs, radio captures, live gigs, deleted discs, local bands, so on and so forth?