Hi Chris and welcome.
First of all I will assume that the analogue tape is in the form of
reel-to-reel and not cassette and that it would have analogue outputs etc?
Depending on your budget, I find that the best way of transferring to
computer is through a midi interface like a Roland UA30
http://pcbuyersguide.com/audiobuyersguide/hardware/recorders/Roland_UA-30-pt
2.html
The one I use is a Motu 828.
http://powermax.com/cgi-global/generate_css_temp.cgi?p=dv-motu-828
There is also the excellent Sound Devices USBpre
http://www.sounddevices.com/products/usbpremaster.htm
The rest of the group will give many other options too.
These units give you many options of transferring to computer and they use
either USB or firewire. All can be used with either PC or Mac.
I would not go out and buy some kind of soundcard; there are too many
conflicts these days by internal cards and firewire or USB2 are the way to
go.
The general feeling is .Wav is the format to use. And a sample rate of
4410.16bit will give you uncompressed sound, CD quality but you will need a
fairly large hard drive on your computer to store 50 hours of sound.
Transferring the sound is easy, you would have to transfer "real time" but
you do not need any amplifiers as such, just a set of speakers on your
computer to listen to. I use a program called Adobe Audition 1.5 to edit and
archive my recordings. Transferring to CD is self explanatory and made
relatively easy within the program.
http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/main.html
If you are using Mac, I believe most of the people here use Peak?
Martyn
Martyn Stewart
Bird and Animal Sounds Digitally Recorded at:
http://www.naturesound.org
N47.65543 W121.98428
Redmond. Washington. USA
Make every Garden a wildlife Habitat!
425-898-0462
-----Original Message-----
From:
On Behalf Of milenskyc
Sent: Friday, July 01, 2005 7:09 AM
To:
Subject: [Nature Recordists] archiving question
Hi All,
I am a technician in the Bird Division at the Smithsonian and I have a
few questions about archiving and thought maybe the people on this
list would know something about it. One of our researchers has about
50 hours of analog tape, collected over the last 20 years of one
species of warbler. We want to transfer this to digital format, but
being museum types we are interested in preserving the original sound
as best we can. We have a small sound lab with a HHB CDR-850
professional recorder which could be used to directly capture the
sound from analog tape. I think is the best way for preserving
quality, but I was asked to look into other methods using computers,
soundcards, etc. I know that you can hook a tape recorder up to a
computer and capture sounds easily, but I don't think .wav or MP3 are
going to be of the quality I want.
So, my question to you all is...how would one go about transfering
audio tapes to digital using a PC with an emphasis on preserving sound
quality?
What is the best format?
What is the best soundcard?
Do I need an amplifier?
What is the best way to attach the analog recorder to the computer?
What software would best capture the sound?
What else...?
Thanks for you help! I am new to the list, so my apologies if this
topic has already been covered recently.
Chris Milensky
SI - Division of Birds
202-633-0794
"Microphones are not ears,
Loudspeakers are not birds,
A listening room is not nature."
Klas Strandberg
Yahoo! Groups Links
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