When trying to aquire a new walkman or other player to replace the one you have or fit a new need to play your favourite music , first you need to address some issues by putting them on a list by priority only selecting the properties you need now and separately the properties you want on a longer time frame.

 

Suppose you have old cassettes, would you like to find a replacement (perhaps portable) cassette player to play your current tape selection or would you rather transfer the best of the tapes into a digital format which will be more useful depending on your usage pattern.

 

If you have no needs for any new format the choice is simple but selections will be few and the appearances and durability may not appeal in the long run.

Perhaps you will adopt digital formats for most listening and enjoy cassettes and records for now by sifting through old material and select which tapes and records to keep and which to transfer to digital.

 

When the topic of transfers come up people usually don't know what to do to get good analog sound become acceptable digital sound. There are several issues that come into play.

- The majority of transfers take place using no skills to mention and high expectancy for sound quality as really many people think that any deficiencies in the analog sound will be dealt with simply because after the transfer the sound is now digital and digital sound always is better than analog and should not have such defects. This is the wrong thinking. You do not have a guy paint racing stripes on your dads Volvo and suddenly you have an F1.

- The of sounds that people listen to that once were analog were transferred with skill, luck or professionally. In any combination. You could even have a friend do it who is more adept at doing it - and doesn't mind the workload. Pick a friend whos sounds you like and you're halfway there. A little trick is having him proove to you that your favourite analog music is good in digital format too. And his reward for the work done will be less demanding. especially useful it is when you are shown how he did it himself to his old tapes.

- The other sounds that once were analog but are now digital that people listen to are mostly not their own transfers, but transfers made by a recording company issuing old tracks on cds which were then bought by someone who missed a tune that either they never got around to buy on cd or which turned out sounding a 'bit off' when they tried themselves.

 

Now how is it that you might get to digitize your own collection of old cassettes, 8-tracks, vinyl or whatever you might have, without ending up with a whole lot of work and very little to show for it. Should you just go hunting for cds to replace your old radio favourites and be done with it?

 

Perhaps. Making a list of songs per tape you want to transfer may give you some insight and a way to handle th eproblem. You notice several things, perhaps the songs are few, and perhaps you can't remember all their correct title. But if you do and a casual search on the net reveals an inexpensive best of by the artist why not look for that  in a local shop or make a list of cds to get and go on the large online markets like Amazon and eBay to see if you can get digital versions of the best songs to save the trouble? It sure will shave a lot of time off your project. Look for Best of and Greatest Hits collections, as most often you're interested in the songs that were most often played.

An elusive title might reveal itself if you use Google og Yahoo and search for parts for the song text in quotes and also add words like "lyrics" and artist name if you know it, or perhaps the year in which the song was a big hit, you may find the song on a link to a band specific site or one of the many advertisement paid sites that contain song lyrics.

 

The left over songs are the ones you cannot find online, locally by asking the sales person or which you never could identify. Not even by asking friends with similar collections and music taste.

THOSE songs are the ones you need to focus on.

So devoting time to converting them to digital is worthwhile in order to arrive at good sound.

Most soundcards on computers will do. Most analog playback devices will work.

Most devices will offer an output. Which is typically a set of RCA sockets, or a 5pin DIN or 1/8'' jack sockets. And you will want a cable to have that type of connector at one end. The other end will go to the line-in on your soundcard on your computer. Your soundcard usually will have a line-in on the back on the computer, modern type computers even offer this on the front. And usually that socket is a jack type socket. 1/8'' or 3.5mm wide. So that type of connectors has to be on the other end of the cable.

Simply go to your local electronics store and ask to have a cable that have both ends factory fitted with connectors of the types needed. Usually cheap, though you should go for a cable that is longer than hanging in the air between the device and soundcard, and shorter than forming a long loop on the floor in between.

A turntable will need an RIAA amplification of the signal to be able to sound correct,  you need to find your old integrated amplifier and use the PHONO input to amplify the turntable signal correct. You tap the signal to the computer through the TAPE-OUT or sometimes labelled RECORD OUT on the back of the amp. Any recording selector must be set to PHONO. Or for some amplifiers set to SOURCE where the SOURCE selector is set to PHONO.

And tape decks usually have a line-out so labelled and will have a cable going from line-out to the line-in on the sound card.

Other devices usually have a line-out socket which you cable up in the same manner.

 

Choose a simple inexpensive editing program to sample sound and edit to trim the beginning and end and save in WAV format.

Audacity is a cross platform program that is both inexpensive, free for personal use and powerful to work with. Other programs are shareware and cost money to use beyond a trial period or to enable saving and extended capabilities. You can find more programs either free or shareware or buyware through online download points such as Download dot com, Tucows dot com and so on.

When sampling the sound

- make sure the signal is not distorted.

- make sure any hum in the setup is dealt with, usually its a faulty ground especially with turntables where the grounding issues are very noisy it can be hard to get it away. Strip as many links in the chain until the hum disappears and you found the device that causes the hum, make sure it is properly grounded and start again.

- also make sure that the devices are cleaned especially the tape decks playback head (all metal surfaces the tape touches must be really shiny), the capstan (rotating pin) and the pinch roller (rubber wheel), and any other parts the tape comes into contact with when played. Playback heads can be adjusted for correct positioning using a small screwdriver to angle the head so the brightest sound is achieved on playback. Dull tapes can be made to sound better this way. Also any noise reduction used when recording the tape should be enabled when playing it to enable as noise free a rendition as possible.

- Also clean medias before playing - especially records are typically getting dusty when they were used, and records played often will have a surfaces that are show and tell pictures of active duty. The more clean the media and devicesthe better the sound you will end up with.

With the best clean media in a cleaned playback device and with as hum free a setup you can muster you have the ability to use the sound card software mixer to set the highest level for recording without clipping the input signal. I once received 3 cds filled with hardshly compressed MP3 files of cassette tapes that all had too much background noise in the quiet passages, signals clipped as the recording signal was too loud and nothing done to clean the tone head. The guy had cabled the RCA connectors marked TAPE OUT to the jack on his sound card marked MIC IN. The Microphone input expecting a singal between 5 and 25 mV, and the LINE-IN  expecting 150-350mV. It has been 4 years and I never listened to his recordings again.

I usually save the raw sampled sound to a file with a telling name of the main artist and album or tape number or someting else intelligent and I switch tape sides and records to have the entire tape / record sampled before saving.

I usually trim any large silent parts - like if I took more than a minute to turn the cassette or indeed stop recording Side B. Each cassette and records gets a file of its own.

Later the file is loaded into the software again to select particular songs and save them to each their own file as artist+album+tracknumber+songtitle. (Because the concept of Side A and Side B only applies to older media - like tapes and records).

If I need to have the audio in uncompressed format for enjoying in my living room I make an audio CD at this point with all the different songs loaded as single tracks to make a cd.
Otherwise I might skip this and compress into mp3 for use with portable players or storing on my file and printer server in my closet. From there I can load up my portable players or play directly with a larger selection than my portable players can offer.

I often transfer rare records or entire old radio broadcasts and keep them as large files, and select individual songs for use on portable players. I am most fond of using a MiniDisc player with reusable discs, it is more compact than using cds on a portable CD player. And I have not spent the money on an iPod or the newer USB or network MiniDisc devices. I do have a 6GB harddrive based player by Creative for ocasional use but the battery life at that stage was not for long trips.

Using digital is to me a way to wear less on the stylus on my cartridges - some of which are expensive to replace - but also to keep from wearing the vinyl and older tapes that I pay dearly for on auction on eBay and other places.
When I really want to get down and really listen to details in the music I throw the original tape (open reel, cassette or even ElCaset) or the vinyl on a player and enjoy the analog sound without the harsh digital approximation. Or the sound of my computer in the background. Just the analog equipment so I can settle on my sofa with an imported beer and sink into the music.
Digital music is for me a good way to fill the background, change on its own due to large playlists and on the road it beats carrying a record player on the bus any day.

The steps taken above is a rough sketch that is minimum to get acceptable sound. The quality is limited only by your patience, the state of the media you have and the ability of your playback device and sound card, and your determination to get the sound as close to what the producer and engineer wanted. Digital has the ability to reveal many of the shortcoming of analog technology and if you're not careful you will be trying to achieve the digital sound at the cost of the original analog sound. Think about it. How many details, hum and hiss will you hear when you're on the road, motor running, sound from other people and not to forget your level of concentration. Are you commendeering the bike, motorbike, bus, train or plane? Perhaps you should make it possible to enjoy but not be absorbed into the music. You might kill yourself or someone else by not paying attention to where you are. Overlook a sign or react too slow or not at all in situations where you usually drive on automatic and hum with the music.

You can start out with a few tapes or a few records and see if the results are good enough to keep up the effort and eventually let go of the analog medias and gear, or if you just want someone else to do it or skip it and wait to find it on cd somewhere.
You can even upgrade some of your gear by buying used. And even buying a decent cassette deck used, trimming it for your tapes then sell it when you're done doesn't necessarily mean you are losing a lot of money. Perhaps someone else will want your analog gear to make transfers. Or as parts to revive their gear. Keep the picture of the original ad and sell the deck when you're done using it.

Enjoy
Mikkel Breiler

mibm at tdcadsl dot dk