[John Williamson]

On 05/04/2017 03:06, Scott Dorsey wrote:
John Williamson wrote:
Depending on how fussy she is about quality, there are portable cassette
units with a built in ADC, working over USB on both Mac and Windows
platforms. There are also one or two full size units which have better
tape handling for when the cassettes are not in prime condition.

How easy is it to set azimuth? If you have to ride it, can you? That is
really the key to getting acceptable cassette transcriptions.

On the unit I have, drill a small hole and use a jeweller's screwdriver
to twiddle the adjustment screw.

Reading the original post, it's not likely that the user will want to
bother riding azimuth, and to do it automatically is likely to cost a
lot more than she is willing to spend. The reason I suggest them is
because they are a single unit with one lead to connect and so are very
easy to use once plugged into a computer.

While the gold standard is a Nakamichi Dragon plugged into a 24 bit
converter, and a computer running Capstan to get rid of the wow and
flutter, it is a lot of hard work and expense to set up to save a few
home recordings which will likely only ever be listened to a couple of
times each.

Most of them have Dolby, which will save having to use a software
decoder.

It's academic since the internal Dolby decoder won't track properly anyway
because the original tape levels won't be right, because they never are.

You can use an external decoder or a machine that allows you to adjust the
decode levels for minimum pumping. It's a pain in the neck but it's a lot
better than listening to the constant whooshing in and out.

All true, but if the intended audience are listening on cheap earbuds on
a phone, then the built in unit may be good enough.

None of the software decoders are Dolby-licensed and I don't know how accurate
any of them really are, but given how bletcherous the rest of the chain is,
that may not be an issue. It's likely they are better than the hardware
decoder with fixed levels.

Assuming the OP is willing and able to set the levels correctly, bearing
in mind they will be different for every tape. The program I use is
free, and will let me adjust levels and relative phases between the
channels. It also works as a plugin for earlier versions of Winamp,
which was discontinued a while ago.

The ones I've seen come with Audacity, which is more than
powerful enough to record, top and tail the tracks direct to HD, and
maybe even enhance them a bit. If using the H4 or even the H2, which are
also good choices at this price level, the tracks will then have to be
imported into a DAW to tidy them up and split the cassette sides into
tracks or chapters for easier playback. Some specialist free software
and plugins for Audacity or other DAW programs can even be used to
automatically split tracks by detecting the silence in the gaps.

This is true, but it would seem a better choice just to use a good quality
USB audio interface for the job. This would also allow you to see the phase
meter on the software as you're playing back which may make riding azimuth
easier.

Of course, once you get the azimuth issues and the Dolby tracking issues
dealt with, you still have the flutter issues. But that's just the nature
of the format.

Apart from the issues with the mechanics of the transport, the sound
quality will be as good as the original ever sounded on a portable deck
when recorded using Audacity and a track splitter. After that, the sky
is the limit on cost and inconvenience. This isn't a job recreating the
best possible sound to commercially release the result, it's just a way
of keeping a reasonable quality copy for listening to in future, once
the tape deck or the cassette wears out.

Of course, if these are commercial recordings, there is a very good
chance there is already a decent copy available online or on CD, which
saves all the faff.


--
Tciao for Now!

John.