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Copying Cassettes onto CD
Alan Paterson
May 18, 2006, 3:13 p.m. (Message 45309)
I still have about 40 MCs of SCD music which never really gets an airing since I always just take my CD collection to classes (I haven't managed to make the jump to laptop-stored MP3 yet). I would very much like to be able to copy the contents of these tapes onto CD. I do have a computer which is able to burn CDs so what I understand that I need to be able to do is to play the tapes into the computer and isolate the tracks. Has anyone out there done anything like this? If so, are there any hints about either of these tasks? In paricular is there any (cheap!) software to manipulate the individual tracks before burning them? Replies can be made directly (xxxx@xxxxxxxx.xx) or to the List. Up to you. Alan
Alan Paterson wrote: > I still have about 40 MCs of SCD music... > I would very much like to be able to copy onto CD. Been reading my thoughts , Alan? > In paricular is there any (cheap!) software > to manipulate the individual tracks before burning them? Audacity, free download from Soundforge. > Replies can be made ... to the List. please !!! Martin
I certainly endorse Martin's recommendation for Audacity. I have used it for this purpose - and for creating 3x through versions for demos etc. It allows me to do all the editing I want - picking out or putting in chords, amplifying the signal, even changing the speed without altering pitch. I use it under Linux (Mandiva) but it is also available for Windows and Mac. I would also endorse Loretta's comment that this all takes time so if you can find a CD (or MP3) version of your cassette, I suggest you buy it. Regards Bob Oxfordshire, England
Alan asked-- > I would very much like to be able to copy the contents of these tapes > onto CD. Alan-- I've transferred a lot of music from tape to CD. It is a time intensive job so if you can buy the CD for the same music then buy it. If not, then you need a program like Sound Forge. The music must be played on a cassette player hooked into the computer to create one file per side of the cassette (you can play the tunes indiviidually and make separate files but I found it easier just to let the whole cassette play one side). After you have the file of multiple tunes, you need to go in Sound Forge and break it apart into separate tunes, fix as required, name and store the file (format you select). Then you can make CDs out of these files. If you want more detail, ask questions. Loretta Loretta Holz Warren, NJ USA
Alan: I have been using Total Recorder, Standard Edition, from www.highcriteria.com, for a number of years now. It costs $17.95 (U.S.) and this includes future updates to the program. I have transferred some LPs and quite a few tapes to CD, although I now have the separate tracks on my laptop for use in class. The program is easy to use. You will need a cable to hook up the earphone jack of your cassette player to the input jack on the sound card of your computer. Start the computer program and the cassette player and make sure that the volume level is not too high or you may get distortion. When you have copied a side (of the tape or LP) it is easy to save each dance selection separately, either as .wav files (recommended if you are going to transfer to CD) or .mp3 files (which are not as high quality, but take up much less space on your hard disk). Note that you will have to give each selection a name -- if you want them in the same order as on the tape, then "1", "2", "3" etc. would be fine. To transfer the tracks to CD, I use Windows Media Player (free), although there are lots of other programs available. Insert a CD-R into your CD writer, choose the program you want to do the copying, point to the directory with the selections in it, highlight the selections, and copy. It sounds complicated, but it's actually quite straightforward. Eric
G'Day, All, I have transferred a lot of my cassettes (usually copies of LPs) onto CD. The programme I have used is CoolEdit, which was shareware, but has not been bought out by Adobe and sold on as Audition (at a much increased price!). I have also tried Audacity, which has the benefit of being free and is just as capable as CoolEdit. To do the job completely requires a significant amount of time. Cassettes generally have background hum and other noises and it is preferable to remove this noise from the tracks. The technique is to sample a part of the 'silent' area (between tracks) to establish the background noise profile, then apply that profile to the whole side. After noise reduction, the tracks should be normalised so that all tracks have the same sound setting. Splitting the tracks is easy. Highlight one track and copy the highlighted area to the clipboard. Open a new file and copy the clipboard into the new file. Save the file with the name of the dance. You can save as a wave file or MP3, WMA or whatever you prefer. Brian Charlton, Sydney, Australia
I assumped Alan's problem was the same as mine, ie: how to get the music into the computer. Mine has no input socket to plug the recorder into. It has all sorts of odd-shaped holes around the edges, but nothing that will take a jack -- except for output to loudspeakers (Mac ibook). Actually, iI have managed to find a socket labeled microphone on my older windows laptop. Unfortunately, the CD player on that model stopped working a few days after the guarantee expired! Martin
Martin Sheffield wrote:
> Actually, iI have managed to find a socket labeled microphone on my
> older windows laptop.
> Unfortunately, the CD player on that model stopped working a few days
> after the guarantee expired!
You can't drive a microphone input from a tape recorder output -- the
microphone input is designed to pick up signals that are far weaker than what
the tape recorder produces (which is called »line level«) and would be
terribly overdriven if not damaged.
The sound cards for stationary PCs usually feature line inputs, but on a
notebook, you're pretty much out of luck. Your best bet if you're really into
this would be to try and obtain an external sound module based on, e.g., USB
or (more likely, on a Mac) FireWire (IEEE 1394). These are available at
prices ranging from the not exactly cheap to the utterly astronomical (for
professionals' use). Their advantage is that, at least for the somewhat
better ones, the quality they produce is usually way beyond that of anything
built directly into a PC, as the inside of a PC is not a particularly
suitable environment for converting analogue signals to digital without
picking up all kinds of distortion. (Although, if your original input comes
from cassette tapes, this may not really matter -- owing to the way tapes
work, their quality isn't usually that great to begin with.)
Anselm
--
Anselm Lingnau, Frankfurt, Germany ..................... xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx
There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
-- Henry Adams
G'Day, Martin may be right, Wintel computer motherboards usually have a sound capability built-in, with a line-in socket as well as microphone and line-out. These are usually hidden rounfd the back of the box. The sockets are 3mm jack plug and are colour-coded - Line-in is blue, mic is red and line-out green. The connection is the headphones out of a cassette player into the line-in on the computer box. The recording software used should be able to find it without trouble, but you may have to set Sounds and Audio Devices in Control Panel to accept line-in recording. I hope this helps, Brian Charlton, Sydney, Australia
Martin, Probably the least expensive solution for getting sound into an iBook is the Griffin iMic (http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imic2/index.php ). It has a place to plug in a standard audio jack, converts to USB, whereupon (I assume) drivers that you install make it into something the audio software can deal with. US$ 40. It also includes software, Finyl Vinyl, for doing the recording, and (I would guess) splitting into tracks. -Don At 8:51 AM +0200 5/19/06, Martin Sheffield wrote: >I assumped Alan's problem was the same as mine, ie: how to get the music >into the computer. >Mine has no input socket to plug the recorder into. It has all sorts of >odd-shaped holes around the edges, but nothing that will take a jack -- >except for output to loudspeakers (Mac ibook). > >Actually, iI have managed to find a socket labeled microphone on my >older windows laptop. >Unfortunately, the CD player on that model stopped working a few days >after the guarantee expired! > >Martin -- ------------------------- Don MacQueen xxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx California, USA -------------------------
Don MacQueen wrote, >Probably the least expensive solution for getting sound into an >iBook is the Griffin iMic >(http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imic2/index.php ). It has >a place to plug in a standard audio jack, converts to USB, whereupon >(I assume) drivers that you install make it into something the audio >software can deal with. US$ 40. It also includes software, Finyl >Vinyl, for doing the recording, and (I would guess) splitting into >tracks. My daughter uses the iMic. I have one, but haven't tried it. Here's what she told me about how to do it - for what it's worth. I have an iMac, not PC, so don't know if the process is even remotely similar. It may help someone, though. Jan Tappan - directions below: For this kind of thing, brian and I use Audio Hijack http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/ and an iMic. http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imic/ Set up Audio Hijack so it's recording the sound from your USB port, plug the iMic into the headphone jack of a cassette player using a double-male minijack cable, plug the iMic into the USB port and play the cassette into the computer. You'll have to do the track separations either as you record in real time, recording a separate file for each track and stopping in between, or by editing the larger file after you're done recording using MP3 trimmer. http://www.deepniner.net/mp3trimmer/ (you'll have to convert the Audio Hijack file into MP3 before you do that, and iTunes can do that handily.)
Hi Alan, I have a friend who's doing our club's tape to CD transfers. He uses DC Live, which is a professional programme (the slightly more advanced version of which is used by the FBI). He achieves wonders with old and noisy tapes. He also recommends Audition (which is freeware) and Cool Edit (which has now been taken over by another company, so may now have another name). Regards, Terry Lynne Harris Pretoria South Africa
This discussion has been quite interesting If you are already established, why not invest in new music on CD as you go along, and then donate the tapes to new dance groups etc who could do with a helping hand in the beginning until they have a better foothold. Just an idea Pia -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.6.0/341 - Release Date: 16/05/2006
> If you are already established, why not invest in new music on CD as you go > along, and then donate the tapes to new dance groups etc who could do with a > helping hand in the beginning until they have a better foothold. > > Just an idea > > Pia I think many of us are loth to discard some of the superb tracks of the past music masters. Also there are any older dances for which there is no new music. Now we get back to 'any suitable ... '
Well I was thinking more in the style of reissued music now on CD - and somebody also kindly let me know that if people copied onto CD, and gave their tapes away, there may be a copyright issue. So perhaps I just opened my mouth to let my belly rumble :>) I still think that we should help new groups though. Pia
Hi. Further to Anselm's comments about notebooks, if you have a PCMCIA slot then Creative now have an Audigy 2 ZS Notebook card that you can use to input/output sound (Advertised at NZ$215.00) which will add all the connections you need. The notebook could then be used to transcribe from tape to CD but the desktop is easier to use. However for playback, if you have good music files and speakers you can provide excellent sound using the 2ZS. Gordon
Thanks for the correction, Brian. I only saw your earlier email after I'd pressed Send om mine. Sorry I got my names muddled. Terry Lynne Harris Pretoria South Africa >>> xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx 20-05-06 03:30 >>> G'Day, As I stated in my earlier email, the freeware is Audacity. CoolEdit was bought out by Adobe and re-issued as Audition. Brian Charlton