How Do I Record From Audio Cassette To HDD

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Beitrag

Amp_Nut
Inventar

#1 erstellt: 13. Apr 2007, 11:49

I have been looking for songs by a female singer Dalia Lavi, for Years !

Was familiar with them, when I started college....

Anyways, a friend of mine has an entire 90 minute cassete with these songs, that I would like to record on a HDD.

How do I do this ?

Can I simply play back on a cassete deck and feed the output to the sound card line-in, and use Windows Media Player ? ( I run XP with Win Media Player 9 )

Will Win Media Player allow me to set the mp-3 or wma sample rate ( and hence quality of recording ? )

Any better options / recording programs ?

Any first hand experience ?

Advice Much appreciated.

Thanks

Nagaraj
Ist häufiger hier

#2 erstellt: 13. Apr 2007, 13:28

Hello,

Amp_Nut schrieb:

Can I simply play back on a cassete deck and feed the output to the sound card line-in, and use Windows Media Player ? ( I run XP with Win Media Player 9 )

Will Win Media Player allow me to set the mp-3 or wma sample rate ( and hence quality of recording ? )

Any better options / recording programs ?
Any first hand experience ?
Advice Much appreciated.

Thanks

Yes, you can do what you have suggested except that Windows Media player is not the software to use. I have earlier used software called CoolEdit - this is now Adobe Audition after Adobe acquired it. You could try downloading the evaluation version from adobe.com and check if it allows you to record data to your HDD. It would definitely support setting of the sampling rate and so on. The quality of the recording will also depend on your sound card so check if you can get a good one like M-Audio.

Another piece of software would be Audacity [http://audacity.sourceforge.net/] but I've never used this. This should also get the job done.

Regards,
- Nagaraj

Kamal
Stammgast

#3 erstellt: 13. Apr 2007, 21:30

You could try using Musicmatch Jukebox-this software will allow you to select MP3/WMA bitrate/samplerate & convert the input from the Cassette deck to the desired format on - the-fly.And yes, using the line-in of the soundcard will suffice.
If you so desire, MMJB will also allow you to save the input to the HDD in the uncompressed .wav format.
I have used this with pretty good results.
You can D/L a trial version for the job.

Amp_Nut
Inventar

#4 erstellt: 14. Apr 2007, 13:50

Thanks, Kamal & Nagaraj for your ibnformative posts.

I do have audacity. While browsing my HDD I found Analog Recorder ... part of Microsoft Plus !

Its straightforward and offers options for mp-3, wma and coosing bit rates.

Now get dust my cassette deck, check the azimuth and go !

ani
Stammgast

#5 erstellt: 14. Apr 2007, 15:47

Dear Ampnut,

if you have access to a good quality DV camcorder you can feed in the audio from CC and get good A/D conversion. It is better than most of the PC soundcards.

I have used my sony VX2000 in two ways, one recorded to MiniDV and then transferred to PC using Pinnacle other method is making use of the on the fly conversion and recorded straight to PC, but that did bring in SMPS high freq motorboating.

Regards

Anil

ani
Stammgast

#6 erstellt: 14. Apr 2007, 15:54

Sorry for got to mention an important setup.

PLease select 16bit audio in the camcorder setup else you will get only 12 bit conversion that is used for the 3rd overdub audio channel

Regards
Anil

Amp_Nut
Inventar

#7 erstellt: 15. Apr 2007, 06:18

Hi Ani,

VERY interesting .... NEVER thought of that !

Unfortunately, I do not own a DV camcorder, but its very interesting info anyways, to file in the back of my mind.

Thanks

Neutral
Stammgast

#8 erstellt: 15. Apr 2007, 11:19

Amp_Nut schrieb:

Anyways, a friend of mine has an entire 90 minute cassete with these songs, that I would like to record on a HDD.

How do I do this ?

Can I simply play back on a cassete deck and feed the output to the sound card line-in, and use Windows Media Player ?

My Chennai friend was faced with the same issue.
His solution: Use Sound Forge to capture analog output of a Sony cassette player.
Two points to note:
1. Cassette player must be of high quality
2. Use noise reduction in the capturing software to lower tape hiss. All pro softwares: Adobe Audition, Sound Forge, Nero, and even free Audacity should have this.

reignofchaos
Stammgast

#9 erstellt: 15. Apr 2007, 22:59

ani schrieb:

Absolutely no chance whatsoever if you are using a 100$ soundcard like an EMU or M-Audio... If you are talking about onboard motherboard audio or cheap 1000 rupee cards, then well there's some chance of your hypothesis to be true but any camcorder will be absolutely slaughtered in audio recording quality by even a cheap SB Live 24bit (~2000 rupees). If I do a loopback recording test on my creative XFi (a not so good recording card), I get an SNR of roughly around 102dB at 24bit and 95dB at 16bit. There's no way a camcorder with its noisy internals can match those figures.

[Beitrag von reignofchaos am 15. Apr 2007, 23:02 bearbeitet]

ani
Stammgast

#10 erstellt: 16. Apr 2007, 07:34

Dear Reignofchaos,
I have NEVER used a costly sound card like the ones you have mentioned.

I had compared the camcorder to Creative AW64 gold, a vintage ISA card and did notice that my camcorder was better. May be my comparison is not fair, a $50 soundcard v/s $3000 camcorder.

I have not intention to be little Modern PC sound cards all I wanted was to share my experience.

Hope this will make my intention clear

Regards
Anil

Neutral
Stammgast

#11 erstellt: 16. Apr 2007, 21:02

reignofchaos schrieb:

ani schrieb:

In the latest PCs, on-board audio is pretty good. Technology has really improved over the years. 7-ch sound is becoming standard on new integrated on-chip sound cards. On the PC I am using, Realtek HD Audio is installed and it sounds decent enough. No problems with any recordings. As I said, the background hiss on tapes and LPs is the most significant problem that needs to be tackled.