Ripping a cassette to computer

[Shakey_Jake33]

My dad has tons of material from when he played in a punk band in the early 80s. This includes live performances of various bands, unreleased material, interviews etc. We want to rip this stuff to computer while the tapes still work (since we've seen some tapes with unreplacable material become unplayable), and he's booked a week off work so we can get it all done.

We want to do this on a budget, since it's purely for personal use (else we'd send it to be done properly at a mastering place). My plan was borrow a decent quality tape player, connect to the PC sound card using line-in and simply record the playback. Is it worth buying a dedicated sound card for this job? I suspect my dad's machine has some kind of onboard Realtek. As I say, we don't want to go overboard on this, he is no audiophile.

Can anyone suggest an application (preferably freeware or open souce) that can rip straight to FLAC? I am trying to avoid breaking rule 12 here; I'm not asking which is best, just to be pointed in the right direction. If different people recommend different applications, I can decide for myself which is most suitable.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[smok3]

check http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ (it comes with flac support, 'file, export, select flac' and you are done).

[Ghitulescu]

Software is nothing if the hardware is not good.

Try find a good player first (Akai, Revox/Studer, Fostex) then find a used pro card on eBay. Good and cheap (if used) cards are Echo, terratec (do a google to help identifying the pro from normal ones), RME (little bit expensive even used), MOTU, M-audio, digidesign. You may be able to get one of these off eBay for say 100-150€. A 600MHz PIII with 256MB RAM would suffice.

Avoid Creative at any costs, their last good card was AWE64 (ISA bus).

The profi cards use ASIO which is a driver that bypasses the dreaded Microsoft kmixer, provides low latencies, less CPU load, and keeps the signal 1:1 (no obligatory resampling to 48kHz if you do 44.1kHz = CD-Audio).

You may need to "work" the WAVE files a bit, at least for denoise (audacity, free) and/or treble management. So I suggest capturing first into WAVE, do the filtering, then convert to FLAC if you want or burn the CDs directly from WAVs.

However, if your tapes are really good, you may copy them directly to a CD-Recorder (maybe through an equaliser and/or dynamic expander and/or noise reducer - all 3 may add further 300-400€ to your budget off ebay, or you can rent them).

It's entirely up to you if the collection is worth these money (you can sell them back ;)).

[setarip_old]

@Ghitulescu

Hi!

Your hardware suggestions, while likely technically correct, certainly appear to be going overboard, based on the O.P.'s statements, as follows:We want to do this on a budget, since it's purely for personal use (else we'd send it to be done properly at a mastering place).andI suspect my dad's machine has some kind of onboard Realtek. As I say, we don't want to go overboard on this, he is no audiophile.

[Ghitulescu]

@Ghitulescu

Hi!

Your hardware suggestions, while likely technically correct, certainly appear to be going overboard, based on the O.P.'s statements, as follows:and

Do you happen to know how much charge the guys at mastering facilities? Multiplied by the amount of audio they have? I've heard myself for about 3€/min, plus-minus the restoration fees.

200€ is not much as an investment in hardware, I mean, yes it depends. If lucky enough, one could have 1 really good sound board + 1-2 hardware sound processors, they don't have to be Apogee or dbx. An akai gx runs in ebay.de for about 30-50€, an equaliser for the same (I've got my profi one for 40), an expander might be up to 100€ and a decent sound card up to 100€ (I've got mine, RME, for about 50). You can keep them for other uses or sell them afterwards, as used they'll keep the value almost intact.

Doing this in hardware (real time) one could avoid the loss of processing time in software (yes, it's better but it's also time consuming) and the result is almost as good, except for the denoising part, which I tend to do it in software.

I would have not suggest this for 3 cassettes, but for 300 it will make a difference.

PS: the major cause of tapes/cassettes damages (excluding the TV ;)) is the mechanics of the player. That's my suggestion of a good player.

PS1: Realtek is not a bad chip, especially in the digital part. However, like all MB-integrated chips, it has to fulfil the requirements of AC97 and up, that means mandatory 48kHz. Plus the audio circuits are relatively sensible to noise (to be clear, I mean here not hiss but noise gathered from internal sources, like CD/DVD, HDD, fans etc., in quiet passages you may actually hear the spin-on of the DVD ;), also the channel separation is quite bad - you may hear very faint the other sound sources in the background).

PS2: the equaliser is needed to adjust the tonality of your source - you can do this in software, helps repairing the loss of treble

PS3: the expander is needed to regain the dynamic lost during the recording. For concerts it may be badly needed, but avoid it for voice (interviews) - you may also do this in software

PS4: a denoiser masks the noise of the source - you better leave this to software, as the hardware ones are rather limited (you know, there is no much noise in a recording studio ;), they are used mainly in TV/radio to filter out the surrounding noise during an interview).

[Weirdo]

Nice info Ghitulescu, thanks. Shakey_Jake33 you should definitively avoid using the internal soundcard for this.

[Shakey_Jake33]

Thanks for the replies.

If this was for myself, I'd have less of an issue investing in better hardware/software and doing it properly. As it is, this is for my father, so I'm reluctant to ask him to spend money on hardware when he is unlikey to perceive a difference. That said, I'll be taking all advice into account.

We're really just going to be storing this as FLAC somewhere, so he can put them in his Mp3 player, or onto some CDs, when he wants them. The more valuable stuff is going to go to a mastering place anyway for other reasons.

[Shakey_Jake33]

Thanks for the help with this - we've started recording some stuff today. My dad borrowed a decent Denon tape player from the university he works at, and I dug out a few higher-quality audio cables I had. We decided to record using the onboard sound, but the results have been pleasing (especially given the low quality of the source material - some of these are phone interviews with a microphone next to the handset).

The next issue is the best way to store this stuff. Obviously there's no such thing as a truely permenent storage medium - hard drives fail, as do memory sticks, and certainly DVDRs do. My plan was to buy some Taiyo Yuden DVDRs, make 3 or 4 copies of everything and give them to relatives to look after, while keeping a copy on the hard drive and USB stick. I guess there's not much else that can be done, right?

[Weirdo]

Glad the project is going fine. I wouldn't trust important stuff on cd/dvd media. Just make sure to always store valuable files on 2 separate HD's.

[Ghitulescu]

HDDs are more sensitive that DVDRs. There are few HDDs that survive the 10 years barrier, while some CDs do. CDs/DVDs are quite insensitive to shocks ;)
The most praised medium is MO (PD is to small), followed by DVD-RAM (which is very similar). I keep a copy also on DATs, people say it's unreliable, but Library of Congress (USA) said it's Ok for 10 years. Fair enough!

[AVIL]

Hi

For my backups I use two DVD copies (stored in different places) and also use DVDdisaster and store two copies of the correction file in two different hdd.

Find DVDdisaster in:

http://dvdisaster.net/en/index.php

Good luck

[Shakey_Jake33]

^That DVDisaster looks interesting, I assume there's no downside to using it (other than occupying space on the disc)? No issues in terms of compatibility?