Need Help From The Cassette Deck Experts . . . .

[RickyLee]

Using a program such as:
Sony Sound Forge.
This allows converting formats and bit rates, to achieve a better mastering / copying result.
(use the 124 bit, and you will be happier later on...)
Quite a bit better than using consumer software...this is true studio grade.

Is Sony Sound Forge something you have to buy? If so, can I find the software in a particular store or have to buy it online?

Then on to another subject: CD-R media quality. I just opened the last spindle of blanks CD's only to find this spindle is not even packaged in an enclosed plastic container. These are Sony brand. Seems like I have had best results and durability with TDK of the recent stuff.

I found stored away in my room, quite a few boxes of the old blue label Pioneer CD-R that each come in their own plastic jewel cases. I purchased these well over 10 years ago and they were the best you could buy back then. They are still sealed new. Better than the current production stuff?

 

[Dogs of Doom]

Soundforge is a DAW. You can (& should) use whatever DAW you use to do the digital transfer. Record it direct to the computer in a higher resolution. I generally record in 96khz/24bit. That's generally more frequency & dynamic range than a cassette has & will allow you to push things or edit w/o much damage to the sound. CD is 44.1khz/16bit. It's a limited sample. Good enough for most applications, but I prefer the higher resolution, until the last stage, for release/production...

Still, the quality of your D/A-A/D converter is equally important. I was reading a study on that, from a company that I bought my modified Fostex recorder from, where they showed that the A/D converter was not capable of utilizing the higher resolutions that the recorder claimed to reproduce...

Here's a primer that Doug has now:

https://oade.com/Tapers_Section/faq-general.html#C4

 

[ampmadscientist]

Is Sony Sound Forge something you have to buy? If so, can I find the software in a particular store or have to buy it online?

Then on to another subject: CD-R media quality. I just opened the last spindle of blanks CD's only to find this spindle is not even packaged in an enclosed plastic container. These are Sony brand. Seems like I have had best results and durability with TDK of the recent stuff.

I found stored away in my room, quite a few boxes of the old blue label Pioneer CD-R that each come in their own plastic jewel cases. I purchased these well over 10 years ago and they were the best you could buy back then. They are still sealed new. Better than the current production stuff?

Yes you buy it.
This is a valuable tool that you will use all the time.
It also has editing capabilities...(get the audio version, you don't need video editing).

 

[GuitarMutant]

Audacity is free and will do the trick just fine. Unless you're looking to also use the software as DAW, purchasing software is overkill just to convert some files.

 

[RickyLee]

Soundforge is a DAW. You can (& should) use whatever DAW you use to do the digital transfer. Record it direct to the computer in a higher resolution. I generally record in 96khz/24bit. That's generally more frequency & dynamic range than a cassette has & will allow you to push things or edit w/o much damage to the sound. CD is 44.1khz/16bit. It's a limited sample. Good enough for most applications, but I prefer the higher resolution, until the last stage, for release/production...

Still, the quality of your D/A-A/D converter is equally important. I was reading a study on that, from a company that I bought my modified Fostex recorder from, where they showed that the A/D converter was not capable of utilizing the higher resolutions that the recorder claimed to reproduce...

Here's a primer that Doug has now:

https://oade.com/Tapers_Section/faq-general.html#C4

As of late last night/early this morning, I have transferred over 9 CD's worth of songs. At the very end I pulled out an unmarked cassette that ended up being from 1992. It had the second meeting with my old singer Donny, mainly us just jamming out riff and song ideas off the top of our brains. It started off with me playing guitar and singing an old song I pretty much forgot about as a quick demonstration. Then Donny running through a couple of his original songs. Tape continued into the following days with my song and riff ideas, a couple of them actually blew me away as to why I did not go back and finish them. So as I am laying here listening in the dark and tape is almost to end of side 1 . . . . tape breaks. LOL So I will have to repair that one later on.

Back on topic. I am not transferring directly to computer for this process. I am doing it by linking my tape deck directly to my Tascam CD-RW2000. So for now they are being stored on CD. I have ripped a few to my computer, but just as MP3 for listening purposes. That is why I asked about the ripping process, as I am going to rip to WAV file later on and plan on storing on my computer as well as a backup to my new external hard drive.

But back to your info. I am basically already limited to CD specs with my process. So then is it going to make a difference ripping from my CD's to computer by using the basic Windows Media Player or if I were to use Audacity or Sound Forge?

I was considering trying this process going more along your advice by running my tape deck into my computer via my M-Audio 2 channel MobilePre USB interface. I think I already have the free version of Audacity and I also have the free version of WavePad which is a program I really like and have used for editing sound files. I am thinking my process will be much easier going this latter route. That is, as long as I can still control recording levels during transfer and the bigger one, be able to control individual LEFT/RIGHT channel levels. This has been very easy so far using my Tascam CD recorder, but the bad thing with that is if a track is bad or something happens, those tracks are permanent on the CD. With the computer method I am figuring I can delete the file and start over. Actually, I can delete the last recorded track only on that Tascam IF I am writing to a re-writable CD-RW, which I am not.

So then my other question would be regarding that cheap interface I have that I bought used last year and is quite a few years old. Is it worthy of the task?

 

[Dogs of Doom]

The philosophy here is, that if you record the highest quality available, you can always reduce quality to CD spec. Once a file is CD spec, it can not be undone. There is no upsample. You can tweak things sonically, but the lower quality you have to start, the more artifacts/distortion you will add.

 

[RickyLee]

Well, regarding my tape that broke last night, I am wanting to repair it and get that transferred here this evening. My question to you experts is if you have used good old Scotch tape for this procedure? I know there is special splicing tape which I do not have. So any concerns before I give this a go? As long as it holds up to make the tape travel one time each direction, I am fine with it.

 

[Dogs of Doom]

I used to do that. Just make sure to trim everything so that it tuns through smooth when it gets to that point. Of course, when I used to do it, Scotch tape was probably 100 x's better than it is today, but who knows?

 

[RickyLee]

I used to do that. Just make sure to trim everything so that it tuns through smooth when it gets to that point. Of course, when I used to do it, Scotch tape was probably 100 x's better than it is today, but who knows?

Well, I had a good initiation to splicing Wednesday night. Fixed that initial break with Scotch tape. The tape seemd to be OK. So I put the tape in and recoded it on to CD up to the break point in both directions/sides. Then put it in to record after the break point and it broke again just a ways down after the first break.

So then I took the tape out to fix it again and this time started pulling all the tape out by hand very slowly on that side reel. It ended up being basically stuck to itself on the wrap several times. I must have done close to 10 splices when it was done.

Something else I noticed was the thickness and quality of the tape. It was just a cheap tape, a Maxell UR90. Obviously the 90 minute length did not help. But it seemed much thinner than my TDK SA, MA 90 and 100 minute tapes.

The tape ended up being from October 1993. The second meeting with my old singer/song writing partner Donny. It was actually the first time we had played music together. Us having some beers, nervously showing/playing our original songs to each other. Then a bit later into the night it was us already creating, me coming up with some great riffs and chord changes and Donny throwing out lyrics. Then the other side of the tape was filled up with me putting down all my song ideas over the next one to two weeks. Incredible ideas that were showing the spark I had from meeting this incredible singer who had endless vocal range. What is even more amazing is that I never revisited this tape and used any of the material LOL.