[Adrian]

On Jun 11, 2:09 pm, Flasherly wrote:
On Jun 11, 2:53 wrote:





On Jun 11, 1:51 am, "Serge Auckland"
wrote:

"Adrian" wrote in message

roups.com...

Can someone advise me please? I plan to copy some very old (38 years)
openreeltapes to CD. I have an aging Sony TC366 OpenReelRecorder
and a DellLatitudeD810 Notebook.

Somehow I thought this would be easy!! :-) However, at present the
notebook does not recognize an analogue signal at the line in.
Moreover, the only piece of software that seems to have an audio
record option is Windows Sound Recorder with a time limit of 60
seconds. I need to record several hours!

So, what hardware do I need? and, what software? Audio quality is
moderately important, given that the source material is not perfect.

Many thanks

Adrian

Don't forget to clean and demagnetise the heads and tape guides of the R-R
recorder. You don't want to damage these tapes, so a bit of maintenance of
the player would be a very good idea.

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The tape dcorder was overhaued very recently. It is pretty old, but I
think it will survive to copy the few tapes with which I need to
deal.

Adrian

I did a lot of tape work at one point - conversions. Two three-head
decks, middle of the line quality decks. I've built computers since
day one, so decided to go at by adding a better (middle-of-line) sound
recording board - a Santa Cruz with 24bit input sampling. Seemed fair
treatment for time I put into making most of them off vinyl.

I wouldn't call the results by any means outstanding - mediocre for
some of it, those with aberrations in the encoding due to difficulty
with musical composition, but better for the most part. Flat WAV
reference capture is block one, in my case with an edge that
soundboard provided. Then I encoded to 192K MP3. Big mistake. Should
have been all the way up, max, 320K.

MP3 gets chopped up by software for silence breaks between the tracks:
MP3 Direct Cut (freeware).

Bulk normalized strategies for discrete, set limit, or entirety of
passages (MP3Gain freeware).

Trim normalized for lead -in and -out: MP3 Trim (freeware).

Tagged: MP3 Studio (lots of freeware taggers).

CoolEdit Pro for a whole slew of added processing effects and filters,
but it's out of the biz (Adobe bought them for reselling).

Once set up - I'd consider doing sample takes, side-by-sides for
listening closely to what that laptop mb audio chipset delivers -
whether it's acceptable quality.- Hide quoted text -

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For this project I am using a very old Sony TC166. It has been
thoroughly overhauled. That said I doubt it has many years life left
in it. The tape are mono. and not great quility. By nature I am a
perfectionist in these things. I know on this project perfection is
unachievable.

For the future I am intersted in pursuing the use of computers as an
audio recording device. The potential for quality is way beyond my
expections as a young audio buff in the 1970s.

However, I like to use CD as my output medium. I know it wil work on
all of my audio systems. It will work in 'in car' systems. I can
pass CDs to friends in the knowledge that they probably have equipment
that will play them.

As regards softwa I will read the website "blurb" on those
suggested. Then I will download the ones most likely to fit my
purpose, and do some comparrisons. I will try to find a package with
which to settle. I do have a concern about downloading malware. That
is not hard to do.

Adrian