New recordings 8-5-10

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New recordings 8-5-10

Postby e.auxer on August 5th, 2010, 1:26 pm

I am a student of French, so I very much appreciate your excellent web site and the service you perform.

I have used your very good recordings of FSI Basic French 1, lessons 1 to 12. But I understand your recordings of FSI Basic French 2 aren’t so good.

I have a good set of audio cassette recordings of FSI Basic French 2, lessons 13 to 24 that I am about to digitize.

I will pass along copies to you for posting on your site.

I don’t know a lot about how exactly to do this, almost all of my recording experience is with analog recording where one was mainly concerned with tape speed and watching the VU meter, if not using automatic gain control or a compressor.

So what should I use to digitize the FSI cassettes?

Sample size 8, 16, 24, 32 bits?

Sample rate 44,100 hz and up?

Is there anything else that I should know about digitizing these cassettes?

I’m eager to get started on digitizing so please let me know the answers to my questions as soon as possible.

Thank you.

Sincerely

Ed Auxer
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Re: New recordings 8-5-10

Postby liddytime2 on August 6th, 2010, 6:04 am

I used Audacity. It is a free program and allows you to edit the sound files. I have found the noise reduction function VERY useful for the FSI tapes. You can also apply filters and what-not to improve the sound quality. 32kBps is a good sample rate - I tend to use 48kBps and 44100Hz for a little bit better quality.
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Re: New recordings 8-5-10

Postby mantis713 on August 11th, 2010, 1:35 pm

I have a macine that digitizes the cassettes without noise that you get from other methods. I have laready done this for another member. I can digitize the tapes, make them available to the group and return them to you if you like for no charge.


dave
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Re: New recordings 8-5-10

Postby VagabondPilgrim on August 15th, 2010, 9:57 pm

Oberon has provided an excellent "how-to" post here.

Hope that helps,
-VP
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Re: New recordings 8-5-10

Postby e.auxer on August 27th, 2010, 9:40 am

To Mantis713

Thank you for your interest in digitizing my French Basic lessons 13 to 24 cassettes.

May I ask, please, what kind of "machine" do you have for this process that adds no noise to the recordings? And where would I send my cassettes?

I looked at the Ion USB cassette decks, but found reviews saying that Ion decks add rumble to the recording. So I purchased a Sony, last-of-the-breed cassette deck, the TCW-E475, which has gotten excellent reviews and sounds pretty good to me. I have two different USB interfaces, which I'm told are better than going through regular input jack on the computer. I have the Griffin iMic microphone/line in USB connector, and the much more expensive and flexible M-Audio USB preamp.

To further update the rest of the group on my efforts: I had intended to use Garage Band on my Macintosh to do the digitizing. But now VagabondPilgrim has provided me a link to Oberon's instructions for using Audacity to do the digitizing. I have copied those instructions and I'm about to give them a test. Naturally, I want a program that will make the cleanest recordings possible. One feature that I consider highly desirable is a gate that will eliminate any low level crosstalk on my cassettes. I would also like to reduce hiss. And I want to make the level as high as possible short of distortion to compensate for the imposed limited output on most mp3 players such as the iPods. I'm still experimenting with Audacity and comparing it to Garage Band recordings.

I'm eager to hear from you Manitis713 and any one else about how I can best didgitize my pretty good cassette recordings of Basic French lessons 12 to 24.

eauxer
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Re: New recordings 8-5-10

Postby mantis713 on September 8th, 2010, 11:02 pm

I'm sorry I did not reply sooner. I never got a message telling me there was a reply. You can respond to me directly @ mantis713 @ gmail . com.

I have a Tascam cc-222 MK III. I think there is an updated version of this machine. It records directly from a cassette to a wma file on a cd. I then have to take the cd and convert it to MPS. I use Soundtrack Pro 3 on my Mac to do this. If need be I can also clean up the sound using Soundtrack but I found that the recordings are usually noise free.
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Re: New recordings 8-5-10

Postby davidzweig on September 26th, 2010, 9:08 am

I've done a fair amount of tape digitalising.

Here's some more things that might help:

Record at 44.1 kHz, 16-bit. Recording at 16-bit gives you a dynamic range of 96dB, although your audio interface might only be capable of a bit less. Cassette tapes without any Dolby can give a dynamic range of up to 56dB. So there's no need to turn up the gain all the way when making recordings, you wont be loosing information. The levels can be changed afterwards very easily, the important thing is that there is no clipping. You should set the gain so that the computer registers the maximum amplitude (the loudest parts of the audio) at between -6 and -12 dB. This will leave some headroom, as the recording level on some cassettes varies over the length of the cassette.

If the cassettes where recorded without dolby originally (ie no dolby sign on the cassette), make sure you play the cassette back with dolby OFF on the deck. It will sound more noisy, with more hiss, but this can be dealt with later in software. Otherwise you will be loosing valuable high frequencies.

In my experience, is there is any phase difference in the left and right channel of the recorded channel, converting to mono can result in loss of high frequencies. Keep a backup in stereo. (Anyone have any experience with this?) Adobe audition has a tool for automatically correcting phase error.

Keep a wav backup of the file before any editing, at 44.1 kHz / 16-bit.

For removing tape hiss, Adobe Auditon's 'adaptive noise reduction' on 'light noise reduction' gives very good results. It doesn't leave a momentary 'swishing' noise after when a silence starts after someone stops speaking, like many other algorithms do. If you send the original recordings to another member who has access to the software, I'm sure they can it for you. Audition has a batch mode, so it's not a lot of work. I could do this for you too.

One more tip: if you happen to have a twin cassette deck, it means you only have to change cassettes every two hours :-).
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Re: New recordings 8-5-10

Postby e.auxer on October 5th, 2010, 2:25 pm

mantis713 and all,

I have been ill for over two weeks with the worst chest cold that I’ve ever had, so I have been slow to reply, as well as to move forward with my tests.

manits713, your Tascam cc-222 MK III appears to be a very nice, sophisticated cassette-to-CD dubbing deck, although it has been replaced by a newer unit.

The Tascam cc-222 MK III has marginally better specs, and is a little more flexible than my Sony Sony TCW-E475 cassette-to-cassette dubbing deck from which I would digitally record my French cassettes through my computer using Garage Band, or Audacity, or try both.

I wonder if going through my computer with Garage Band which has both a gate to eliminate low-level noise and a compressor to prevent clipping will not give me greater control of the recording process than you could obtain with the Tascam going to CD, as good as the Tascam is.

Alternatively, I have a Sony PCM-M10 digital recorder which offers many recording options built-in. Even though it’s a hand-held unit it’s very high-quality; I believe it costs more than the Tascam cc-222 MK III. So, I’m also going to try the Sony PCM-M10 for its simplicity in recording: just a few pre-sets and bingo, it’s done with minimal setup.

Let me continue with my experiments.

When I have a complete set of good recordings, I would then be willing to risk the mail or courier service to send you my one-of-a-kind cassettes on loan, and see if you can top what I have done.

e.auxer
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