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What's the best method to get all my old audio cassette music into the digital domain? What do you guys use?

"audacity" might be a free/reasonable way to approach it?

NY Chief wrote:What's the best method to get all my old audio cassette music into the digital domain? What do you guys use?

I've been doing this with my vinyl for years. (Addicted to the stuff.)

Cassette deck into receiver (integrated amp).

Record out of receiver goes into stand-alone CD recorder in monitor mode (using it's higher quality analog to digital converter).

Digital output signal via optical or coaxial goes into computer sound card (Creative Labs Audigy EX (capable of 24bit/96kHz) resolution). Using an external analog to digital converter eliminates noise from the PC's inner works (fans, power supply, processor, etc.) seeping into the audio signal.

Recorded into the PC as a 16bit/44.1kHz Broadcast Wave (.wav) file. (I use Sound Editor; however, there are other programs that do a very good job to great job as well. At this point, I'm just getting the "raw data" in the PC.)

Gold Wave is used to make sure the channel balance is as close as it can be & fix any overt EQ issues. (At this point I can boost the overall volume if necessary - not normalize - as this usually creates the kind of annoyingly loud CD's that are so prevelant today.)

CD Wave is then used to split up the tracks. It's visual display makes quick work of spotting silence, adding breaks and naming tracks.

Roxio Easy CD Creator (or Nero, Toast, etc.) can be used to burn CD-Text CD's or you can shrink it down to .mp3's.

A stand-alone ADC can be substituted for the stand-alone CD recorder.

A mic/line level DAW interface that most use to record live music to PC can be substituted for the stand-alone CD burner and soundcard/unit.

A good mixer with a stereo input can be substituted for the receiver, since a phone preamp is not necessary, if careful attention is paid to not limiting the gain on input or pumping the gain on output.

Instead of using a few smaller programs, I could just use Sonar or similiar DAW software; however, it's over kill IMHO and requires a lot of the PC's resources. Since I want the PC to process the large amount of data in a .wav file as quick as possible, the smaller programs allow me to keep the overhead on the system low.

Of course, you can just plug stuff right up to the internal sound card and use whatever generic program that came with the PC; but, usually that winds up sounding like crap. For the quick and dirty, that will work.

Hope some of that helps.

Ahhh, vinyl! That's next on the list!

In that case I guess I could run it through Pro Tools.

Thanks, guys!

If you're really into vinyl, check out http://www.theanalogdept.com Some of those guys are as far out about vinyl as we are about tube amps. Really cool galleries over there.

LONG LIVE VINYL!

Using a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum EX soundcard. That is kinda old tech, but it works for me. I run a Nakamichi CR-1A deck through an Audio Source 10-Band EQ to clean it up pre-production. Used several types of software over the years to convert to digital. Can't remember the last one I used LOL! They are all pretty good though.

- WOT