>What to do with the cassettes? Probably trash them, as I don't >have infinite storage space.
Charles, I should have written earlier to suggest when playing back cassettes - stop the player before the end of each cassette to prevent breaking. Don't throw the cassettes away! Now that you have copied the material down, you might consider revisiting the cassettes, or have someone else do it, to extract a better quality sound. In the recording industry, recorders are calibrated and then archived along with the master tapes, for play-back in the future (at least the major houses did pre-digital.) Although I'm not familiar with the cassette player you used for play back, there are two additional "home brew" quickies to consider...which I've done myself with older cassettes from the 70's. To prevent "play back noise" I use a more expensive stereo-cassette deck, and record onto a multi-track digital-mixer-program as two seperate channels. I've found that there are cassettes, that when originally recorded on a mono portable, are not equal on both channels - and the noise off either channel can be eliminated. An adjustable play back head is also helpful. This avoids two sources for noise, the playback machine and the originally recorded noise on the cassette. Been there, done that, and at times does in fact make a difference - especially those cassettes that may have given you some trouble. I had some cassettes that won't play on a lower priced player, but worked just fine as desribed above. Also, cleaning the playback heads after each single cassette side also prevented a muffled sound - in some cases I had to digitally splice the material together in the mixer, due to the old cassettes flaking down and collecting onto the heads. At pennies a piece, always consider making a duplicate CD of each recording as a master & Master-copy (do you really want to revisit the cassettes again?) but that depends on how much you value what you have and wish to preserve them. Besides, copies on anyone's computer are prone to a crash and loss. Once you've stored your wave files, you can always convert to any hardware in the future (DVD, bluewave, etc.) and make mp3s for listening now. I also avoid adding labels to CDs for warpage (over time). Memorex CDs netted 100 out of 100, however the clear coating to the silver is quite vulnerable to flaking; I ended up converting to a silkscreened coated HP CD & DVD and use a non-pointed sharpie to ID/mark the surface: HP DVDs are 100% thus far, and a new package of CD-R are currently 1 bad out of the first 20. Finally, once you've revisted a "clean" digital base, them you can have someone play with the levels. So when can we purcahse the collection? 73s, Konnie SW CT _________________________________________________________________ Exercise your brain! Try Flexicon. http://games.msn.com/en/flexicon/default.htm?icid=flexicon_hmemailtaglinemarch07 _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: [email protected]
