Converting audio tapes to .mp3?

Sigman

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Anyone have any pointers/suggestions on converting audio tapes to .mp3 files?

I've got some tapes (spoken word) I'd like to convert so I can listen to them in my mp3 player.

Just started dabbling today with Audacity & Roxio. Certainly haven't perfected anything yet! I'm not satisfied with any trials I've attempted so far. The biggest problem I'm having is the input audio level. Even with the "auto adjustments" - it still seems to be saturating the levels at the top. Perhaps I'll try manually adjusting the level...

Any pointers/suggestions/directions to put me "on the road" would be greatly appreciated. Oh, I'd "really" rather not have to buy software other than what I'm already using - but could perhaps consider it. I'd really like to convert these tapes!
 

ViReN

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I have converted some old songs to tape. here is how I did... perhaps this may help..

Steps for Windows based PC

1) Check if you have "Line In" Jack on your PC, this jack is different to Mic jack.

2) if You have "Line In" jack ... check if you have a Good Tape Player (I used Sony Walk Man with Digital Audio Filter)

3) The Tape Player's "Head Phone" should be connected to PC's "Line In" volume set to 50% (or adjust afterwards depending on requirement)

4) Software: I used Sound Forge 6.0a ... you could use any good sound recording software that can either directly saves as .mp3 or .wav . Sound forge can save files using .wav, also, it will show the level of sound while recording, (this helps to adjust appropriate volume) so that the sound does not 'cut' and all the information is recorded correctly. I have not used any filters / post processing, however, there are some softwares that will automatically remove 'hissing noise', 'dust and scratches' and normalize both the channels.

5) I used iTunes to save the .wav files as .mp3 for voice, i suggest use 48 kbps bitrate as the tape may be an hour long... ... music i usually save files as 128 kbps bitrate.
 

bfg9000

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I've found the simplest high quality audio capture utility is Microsoft's free downloadable Windows Media Encoder, if your .mp3 player also plays .wma files. The problem with .mp3 encoders is the good quality ones are not free.
 

Coop

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Sound forge is good software, but you might want to try Adobe Audition (used to be cool edit before they were bought by adobe) If I remember correctly, there is a fully functional limited time trialversion for download from the adobe site.
 

Sub_Umbra

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I like CDex w/LAME for win boxes and Gramofile w/LAME for *NIX. All free -- Open Source.

And what Ras said.
ViReN said:
..i suggest use 48 kbps bitrate as the tape may be an hour long...
I always rip spoken word in MONO, too.
 
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s.duff

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another option is to buy a cd recorder component for your stereo system. then you can make a cd of the tape recording and then rip the cd to your computer. the only pain is to make sure that you advance the tracks in between each track , it has to be done manually or else the cd will record with only one track for the entire recording.
 

Sub_Umbra

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Sometimes you can find freeware that can 'sense' the silence between cuts and chop the big files up for you. Making mp3s of audio tape is always pretty labor intensive, though.
 

zulu45

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I use Nero 6.0 for mine, and it works great. Nero has a wave editor which has so many features, it's almost worth buying in itself. Perfect for doing fade in/out effects, if you want to get one song from a combined song. Using the Line in method works great. It also lets you copy/cut/paste as if it were text, the parts of the song, including zooming in to an amazing amount of precision. It almost boggles the mind. I've been able to use this to make great backups of my LPs and tapes. This will save to WMA, but only has a limited saves to mp3, which is why I would suggest using Musicmatch Jukebox (the free version will do just fine) to convert from wav to mp3. I, though, use the Creative MediaSource Audio Converter, which came with my Creative Zen Micro 6gb.
 

danielo_d

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Sub_Umbra said:
Sometimes you can find freeware that can 'sense' the silence between cuts and chop the big files up for you. Making mp3s of audio tape is always pretty labor intensive, though.

Definitely, agree! I volunteered to convert some tapes for my daughter's preschool to CDs. They had some old children songs, story tapes, and bible songs, too, that they wanted on CD. [some of the tapes were very old.] They were original tapes so I figured it would be OK. I thought it would be about 5 or 6 tapes, it turned out to be 19. I had Roxio EZCD creator 5 which had the auto track splitting which helped a bit. The story tapes I had to split manually, but only into 2 tracks, 1 for each side of the tape. Also, it took awhile to configure levels for each tape as they differed and I tried to clean up the hiss/pop. They were definitely happy with the results.

I first converted them [or recorded them] into .mp3 format. Once that part was done, I burned them onto the CD's.

It was very labor intensive, but a good deal of it was the learning portion.
 

Coop

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danielo_d said:
I first converted them [or recorded them] into .mp3 format. Once that part was done, I burned them onto the CD's.

If you only want to burn them to cd, why convert to mp3? You will just convert the wave file to mp3 and when you burn to cd the software will convert back to wave again... That won't do much good for the soundquality.

If you are going to burn to cd AND convert to mp3, the best is to first burn the cd from the original waves and convert afterwards as you will have the least loss of soundquality.

Another tool for easy conversion from wave to mp3 (or other compressed format), cd to wave, cd to mp3, mp3 to wave etc. is CDEX free for download and has some nice features like remote cddb access so that if you rip a cd to wave or mp3 the mp3 tag info will be automatically added.

Have fun!
 

Mike Painter

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zulu45 said:
I use Nero 6.0 for mine, and it works great. Nero has a wave editor which has so many features, it's almost worth buying in itself. Perfect for doing fade in/out effects, if you want to get one song from a combined song. Using the Line in method works great. It also lets you copy/cut/paste as if it were text, the parts of the song, including zooming in to an amazing amount of precision. It almost boggles the mind. I've been able to use this to make great backups of my LPs and tapes. This will save to WMA, but only has a limited saves to mp3, which is why I would suggest using Musicmatch Jukebox (the free version will do just fine) to convert from wav to mp3. I, though, use the Creative MediaSource Audio Converter, which came with my Creative Zen Micro 6gb.

"Old" versions of Nero, can usually be bought dirt cheap on eBay.
 

Sigman

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I do have Nero...downloaded a couple wares mentioned in this thread...now to "play"! :D

Thanks for all the info & guidance!
 

panflute

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I am a musician....I would input into the line in jack and use GOLDWAVE...
you can set levels, edit, convert to and from many formats and it has a graph so you can see what is going on...also has trim & cut functions...
you don't have to register it unless you need advanced functions-
 

Sub_Umbra

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If you only want to burn them to cd, why convert to mp3? You will just convert the wave file to mp3 and when you burn to cd the software will convert back to wave again...
Wow! I think the little man inside your burning software is crazy! :D Anyway it doesn't always work that way. There is no conversion if you burn them as data files. When I burn mp3s (or anything else) to CDs I don't use a CD burning application at all. I burn CDs direct from the Command Line -- CD burning is done with a command that's built right into my operating system.

I think that any burning software will probably let you burn mp3s as data files.
 
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