Burning from tapes to cd's

[Midi maniac]

I have a very old (1990) anthology (8 cassettes) of classical music. The recording is so good, I searched amazon.com and there is no cd edition.
My question:
How can you burn from cassettes to cd's?
Taskam tape recorders?
Any advise?

[mhschmieder]

It's going to be real-time, whatever approach you take.

I recommend using your best two channels of AD conversion, and uploading to your computer. It's easy enough to connect the RCA outs from your tape deck, but you might benefit from a mild signal boost first via a good two-channel pre-amp. Sometimes the ideal audio quality of a tape deck is not with its output level set to max. Experiment and see what sounds best.

The next step, of course, is audio cleanup. But it sounds like you're talking about commercial classical cassette releases vs. home-grown and/or live performances. This means the audio quality isn't very good to start with (even those from Philips and DG, which I bought a few of back in the day, are of lesser quality than vinyl or CD), as they are almost all duplicated at about 4x real-time playback speed and thus lose detail as well as high-end frequencies.

You could start with the cheap BIAS SoundSoap entry-level audio restoration software, which is probably on sale right now along with most of their products. Well under $100, and pretty good overall, with a fairly simple all-in-one interface for hum, noise, etc.

Once you have a cleaned-up WAVE file you can load it into your iTunes library and/or blast them all to CD's using Red Book format. If the original audio is of good enough quality, you might want to use 24-bits and a higher sample rate coming into the computer, then dither and SRC to CD format (44.1k and 16-bits).

There are currently some cassette decks made that have USB interfaces that do the audio uploading for you, and maybe they even come with software that automates the task of making track boundaries and creating individual files and maybe even some rudimentary cleanup, while you bake dinner or something.

One thing to keep in mind with classical material -- especially opera -- is that there might not be clean breaks where you can easily or automatically have an audio file end and a new file begin. Compound this with certain limitations on audio file size (in some programs or contexts). It wouldn't be an issue for a Lieder recital or probably even a symphony or concerto.

Finally, as classical music tends to have extreme dynamics, you'll probably have to audition a few sections of material to determine best input levels. But as classical records are lightly produced, there isn't huge variation on how they correspond to real-world levels, so you might just stick with one input level for everything, making sure your loudest peaks are covered by whatever headroom you leave. The downside to this approach is that a delicate impressionist solo piece that is mostly quiet, might end up with poor signal/noise ratio on the transfer.

[Midi maniac]

thank you so much for this extremly informative post and for your time...

[mhschmieder]

You're welcome, and I hope it works out.

I keep putting off my own tape upload project, and my tape deck needs repairs so I'd better take it to the shop soon before the shop goes out of business or parts become unavailable.

It's the best (not the most expensive though) tape deck ever made, as I learned the hard way a few years ago when I tried to future-proof myself by buying today's best tape deck (the highest-end rack-mount Tascam unit). An Onkyo Integra TA-2800. It has a few features that improve noise without the artefacts of dbx or the vendor specific implementations of dolbyC (e.g. Nakamichi's incompatible approach), such as HX-PRO.

If you find you need to look into tape decks for this project, let me know, and I'll dig up my on-line references for the dedicated website that is equivalent to the head-fi website for headphones.

[Midi maniac]

Thank you again so much.
I am really interested in those tape decks that you mentioned that do the uploading and maybe cleaning up for you.
Actually I don't know if I will use these tape decks more than one time...(just for this matter only...maybe) so I am not thinking of something expensive...

Take your time, it is not in a hurry...you can also give me some websites in the meantime so I can start looking and save your time...
Great help!
Thanks

[mhschmieder]

I didn't save the info, and the announcements were quite recent. A likely candidate is Tascam, who tends to go after the needs of studios who are on the clock so to speak. It sounds like something Alesis/Akai might do as well.

This is one of the ones I remember reading about recently:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/di ... sion/9778/

Otherwise, just Google "USB cassette" or "USB cassette deck" and something might pop up besides those awful $59 DIY kits that include obviously-horrible cassette-sized players and two-channel audio interfaces.

[Rott3nHippi3]

Or go the old fashioned route... find a torrent and start downloading. Yeah, I know its stealing (blah, blah, blah)... but it sure saves a lot of WAV file editing!!!

[stephentayler]

Excuse me?

[Tritonemusic]

Or go the old fashioned route... find a torrent and start downloading. Yeah, I know its stealing (blah, blah, blah)...

[James Steele]

... find a torrent and start downloading. Yeah, I know its stealing (blah, blah, blah)...

blah, blah, blah, Buh-bye!

[mhschmieder]

They didn't even get off to a good start with their on-screen username.

[mhschmieder]

BIAS has just released a dual-platform all-in-one solution to converting vinyl and tape to digital files. They even include the cables!:

http://www.harmonycentral.com/blogs/New ... soundsaver" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.bias-inc.com/products/soundSaver/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

For $49, I'm sorely tempted, as a time-saver on non-critical material.

I have hundreds of tapes of otherwise-unavailable material, and almost a hundred 12" and 7" vinyl recordings that are not available on CD. I can't imagine ever having the time to do a manual conversion of all of them.

[mikehalloran]

Once you start critical listening, you are going to find all sorts of things to clean up. A number of good tools exist for this from BIAS, IZOTOPE and others. The basic rule of thumb: Apply processing until you hear it - then back off by half. You will not achieve perfection but you will make some nice CDs.

Tascam still makes pro level cassette decks but, if you know what you are looking for, prices on great used gear are surprisingly low. A high end, low milage Akai or Onkyo is certainly a good choice.

I am a big fan of Sony 7506 headphones for this work. Every time Sony tries to "improve" or discontinue them, people like me keep screaming to bring'm back - and they do. I can usually tell you how many bassists are in the orchestra with a pair of these (OK, I used to be a symphonic bassist but you know what I mean). Not bad for a 25 year old design costing around $100.