What is Digg?38 Comments
- mixrecords, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11To encode an LP, you may need some additional equipment. Phonographs usually output a lower signal level than tape decks, so sometimes you need a phono preamplifier to get the signal up to line level. If you have a stereo receiver with a phono input, you can use the line level output from the receiver to get a good signal. Or, purchase a stand alone phono preamp.
- notfred, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Phonograph records have RIAA equalization ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization ) applied, and you have to reverse that to get a good sounding record. A digital RIAA audio filter (on a mic level in) or a phono preamp will do the job, otherwise your recordings will sound thin and reedy - they cut the bass to fit more onto a record and boost the highs to reduce hiss on playback.
- LiquidPenguin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Just follow the directions you see at the page, but substitute "tape deck" for "record player." Not that hard.
- LiquidPenguin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4See the post by baka_neko on why this is something that a person might want to do. For instance it annoys the hell out of me that the KLF album The White Room that you find on the net is _not_ the same audio that's found on the audio cassette. For instance, Church of the KLF has a way different intro than what you can find on any P2P. Also, Justified and Ancient was redone and is also not the same as what you can find online. As near as I can tell, the CD and tape were both different for at least one song and the other was re-released.
I also have some audio tapes that simply were never available on CD... ever. And others that probably were, but good luck finding them. The most immediate that comes to mind is Paula Abdul's Scat Cat album. Last time I tried to look for it it was nearly impossible to find in any format anywhere except for a few readily available tracks on her website.
The same holds true for LP's and a variety of other audio formats. Not every album ever made made an appearance as a CD. - LiquidPenguin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Just to point out a couple of things. Audacity has a number of algorithms that specifically help with processing audio tapes. I've only recorded a few audio tapes with my set up so I haven't played with them much. Explore around a bit and you should spot them. The most interesting is the ability to remove silent sections and to slice up the audio track based on those silent sections. It's a royal pain in the ass to set that up since it seems each tape needs to be carefully tweaked. And you have to run it through a couple of algorithms and hoops to get through it.
The problem with Audacity is that it does a lot of things, but none of it is easy. For instance, if I want to remix a stereo track into mono and reduce the bitrate so it can be sent to a cellphone as a ringtone, you have to split the track channels, manually set each track as mono, remerge the two tracks and at some point during the process you have to remember to set the bitrate and smooth the audio out. A comparable program might simply let a person specify the track as mono (which would automatically merge the channels), set the bitrate, then smooth everything out.
Other than that, Audacity is an excellent program and I have it installed as part of a standard package on every PC I own.
You also want to be very careful with the headphone jack on walkmans and stereos. Whenever possible, it's better to use the lineout jacks. Failing that, turn the volume down, then gradually turn the volume up until it gets to a satisfactory level. Most modern PC audio cards line-in jacks can take all sorts of input, but you still don't want to risk popping something. - duhblow7, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Just DL it.
I have CD's that I will download instead of rip. It's quicker. - texx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Or just take the lazy way out...
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/drives/7a8d/ - rajid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If you're doing this on a MacOS X system, check out "Amadeus II". It allows you to simply set a marker between each of the songs and then, with one command, it will automatically create a directory and split each song out into a separate file there. You can then sort in time order, drag and drop into iTunes, and you're ready to go! I used it to digitize about 25 tapes a while back and it went really quickly!
- dhughes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3 I should do this to old cassettes I have, they're not music they're recordings my Dad sent back home when he was stationed in the Arctic (for a year!) when working for the Canadian Coast Guard.
I'm sure many other recordings of a similar nature exist in attics, they won't last forever. - foolishge0rge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I have an LP I need to encode.
- GuyHitByTruck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If the AVI file is encoded at a high enough bit-rate, it WILL take an obsessive movie fan to notice the difference, if they notice at all!
- nepawoods, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yeah, there are some decent films out there on videocassette that were never released on DVD.
- ishmal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I love in the Blues Brothers, John Lee Hooker has a table on the sidewalk, selling music. The signs say something like "Blues tapes," "Soul tapes," and "Cassette tapes."
- LiquidPenguin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@Iandefor
Nice! I work at the State Archives and we've been doing something similar with some of our most commonly requested recordings. Unfortunately, it's really difficult to convince our budget department to justify purchasing specific equipment or media for archival purposes. They went and ordered scads of DVD-R for transfering some of our VHS collection. And they keep insisting the Sony Piece of Crap is perfect for copying DVD's when half the media burned with it can't be used in half the players we try them on. My Dell laptop burns far more compatible copies, even using the crappy DVD-R media. But I digress....
We have Dictabelts, BETA, and some R2R's we can't play because no one thought to archive the playback hardware with us.
Oh well. Good luck on your projects. - maehem, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There used to be a plugin for sound editing called BBE Sonic Maximizer ( http://www.bbesound.com/products/maxim/maxim.asp ). This plugin will figure out how to add missing harmonics to audio tracks. The result is brighter sounding audio. Don't confuse this with an equalizer. This tool is adding new information to the sound. There are lots of free plugins that do a similar thing. There's also lots of websites with the theory for how these "Aural Exciters" work.
Anyway, A friend and I pulled an old cassette tape we made in the 80s. We cleaned it up with some of the filters in Sound Forge and then added the Sonic Maximizer step. Although not perfect, our old recordings sounded much, much better than the cassette and also way better than any of the other monkeying we could do with standard studio tools. - JeyNyce, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I took the lazy way out a few years ago because I don't have a walkman anymore. The only cassette player I have is in my car.
- apache2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2exactly my thoughts. why would you waste your time converting when you can find better quality digital copies on the internet. If you already own the songs, I don't see anything wrong with this.
- jake57, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Anyone know of an easy method to do this for video? (any platform)
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You'd need a video capture card like an ATI all in wonder. Your video capture card should come with software.
- qbix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What about records? There are a lot of drum n' bass and trance records, for instance, which never come out on CD unless some DJ includes it in a mix recording. If I'm not mistaken, an riaa preamp is all I need. Has anyone done it? Any suggestions in terms of equipment?
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It'd be nice to see a review comparing the plusdeck to the walkman+sound card method.
I'd imagine the plusdeck would be far easier to use, and result in higher quality audio, but it might not. - Iandefor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's remarkable how well this works. I work at the American Museum of Radio and Electricity and they do the same thing for records when they want to play them on the radio.
If you get the audio levels right, it takes a serious audiophile to be able to hear the difference. - Iandefor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"It does? That's pretty much the same as saying it takes an obsessive movie fan to notice the difference between and AVI file and a DVD. The difference between MC/Vinyl and Digital audio is fundamental. Neither of the two (MC/Vinyl) have a 'bitrate', they are recorded at a constant, not as a multitude of samples. The difference, if done well, is minimal, but not as great as you would imagine (unless the original recordings are pretty poor)."
Keep in mind that AMRE gets LP's in all kinds of conditions which usually tend to have degraded over a good number of playings; in many cases, all it takes to make a copy of it that sounds as good as the original to about 98% of listeners is mp3 at 320 KB/s. Also keep in mind I'm not at all an audiophile and I'm mostly speaking from having seen people's responses to the encoding job compared to their audiophility.
And I'd be interested to hear how it's "pretty much the same as saying it takes an obsessive movie fan to notice the difference between and AVI file and a DVD."; The DVD format is just an optical disc containing, guess what, some mpeg audio/video streams. An AVI is a file containing, guess what, a variety of streams, *including* mpeg audio and video. The only way it would be similar to an LP and an MP3 is if LP's contained their audio in mpeg2 audio streams. - GuyHitByTruck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Preferences > Audio I/O tab > Channels: 1 (mono)
Now press Record. - surfing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thanks for the tip notfred, I'm going to help my dad convert his old record collection for X-mas. Some are pre-1954, so we will have to see how those turn out...
- beers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1this article wasn't exactly a revelation.
- surfing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1MiniDisc to PC:
http://www.nogoogle.textamerica.com/?r=5333891 - LiquidPenguin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@GuyHitByTruck
That would work if I was actually recording the track in question. If I already have an existing track, that option wouldn't apply. - perfectsquare, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Your best bet is a high end VHS to DVD converter all in one combo
Or a VERY high end DVD recorder and a VERY high end VHS player that has is new.
I've been dealing with this because I need to put some tapes onto DVD for my family. - DRTED, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2FINALLY all my ENYA tapes can be put on my computer and be BROUGHT TO LIFE with WINAMP visualization mode.
- GuyHitByTruck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Am I the only one who thought somebody found some ingenious way to put date onto a cassette tape?
- baka_neko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0woah~ thanks a ton for this guide! perfect timing too. I just acquired a rare cassette from an auction for $130, now I'll be able to share it with people
- djsc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0wanted to do this for ages, great tip.
- RyanPurcell, on 11/25/2008, -0/+0There are some great articles about transferring both cassettes and LP to digital format at
http://www.reclaimmedia.com/article-library.html
The article is about the differences between doing it your self and having someone do it for you - RyanPurcell, on 11/25/2008, -0/+0If you want to digitize your LPs there are plenty of systems for doing it at home but there are a lot of problems with a DIY solution to this problem. There are some good articles about it at
http://www.reclaimmedia.com/article-library.html - carlcoryell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hey, if you are too lazy to do this yourself, there are companies out there who can do it for you. I'm partial to the one that I work for: http://www.cassettes2cds.com We've made a big investment in automation (we're running a 7 computer linux cluster to manage the transfer process) but there are others out there.
- DontSayFanboy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Yes, but what would be preferred would be having ONE person with high quality equipment and a pristine copy of the original to digitize and distribute their copy.
The article is fine, but it literally encourages you to pull out your old walkman with the worn out heads, connect the HEADPHONE OUT (not a line output) to the line-in on your sound card and use that to digitize that old box stored in your basement. That's fine for your personal use, but I don't want to see 20 different copies of a rare album that 20 people dubbed from their junky old tape deck with poor levels on P2P.
What's worse is the person making it will probably encode the mp3 at 320kbps despite the poor transfer. - Cymrubeats, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1"it takes a serious audiophile to be able to hear the difference."
It does? That's pretty much the same as saying it takes an obsessive movie fan to notice the difference between and AVI file and a DVD. The difference between MC/Vinyl and Digital audio is fundamental. Neither of the two (MC/Vinyl) have a 'bitrate', they are recorded at a constant, not as a multitude of samples. The difference, if done well, is minimal, but not as great as you would imagine (unless the original recordings are pretty poor).
Browsing Digg on your phone just got easier with our enhancements to the 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is