Have you had an replies; I'm interested in what others suggest... I have a few comments based on my experience.
1 I have often used and always admired MicNotePad Lite when I needed my Mac (there have been a succession of them) to serve as a dictation machine. It's incredibly easy to use and still stable and I wish the guy who developed it were still in the field. I lost touch with him several years ago. Problem is, I have never found a way to convert his file format to one that I could edit. 2 Your interviews are potentially priceless and you should go for 'broadcast quality' in the original taping. What you don't capture, you can never create, no matter the technology. You can get excellent results with an ordinary cassette recorder (with clean heads) if you use decent tape and a decent mic -- meaning that it costs at least $100 -- and you close-mic. You can also use MD (minidisc) recorders but I think you'll capture more/better if you invest the money in the mic rather than the recorder. Recording direct to disk on your PB will use scads and scads of HD space unless you compress (and you shouldn't). 2 Getting the recorded audio into a sound file was expensive if you wanted professional quality (CD-quality or better). There are now USB audio interfaces at the consumer levels. The cheapest is the iMic (see http://www.griffintechnology.com/audio/imic_main.html ) that sells for $35 msrp, claims 24 bit signal processing, and would support recording your taped material to hard disk. I haven't used the iMic so I'm just telling you what their ad says. It doesn't have either xlr (balanced) analog inputs or s/pdif (digital) inputs; but at that price it's a bargain if its AD (analog to digital) converters are any good. 3 Once you have audio files, you'll need software to edit them. You can spend a lot of money but PEAK LE is entry level pro, costs $99 and you can download a demo at http://www.bias-inc.com/products/peak_le/index.html. Digidesign gives away a version of ProTools; go to http://aria.digidesign.com/ptfree/ptfree_orderonline.html and fill in the form.... I like the folks at BIAS (Berkeley Audio Systems Inc) 4 You might want to check out the listserv devoted to audio on Mac PBs: Mailing-List: list [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] Have fun (and get a decent mic), Gene At 6:18 PM -0400 10/14/01, Donna Hood Pointer wrote: >My "other PB" is an iMac. I want to record some family stories from older >family members for genealogy purposes. A hand-held tape recorder would >probably be the easiest. I would then like to get them in to the computer >and write them out to a CD. I can record in to my PB520 with an great >little application I have already used before, called MicNotePad Lite. If I >did that I would need to get the file(s) over to my iMac so I can use the >burner. I just bought a firewire burner. It came with Toast light. I have >firewire on my iMac--I don't on my PB520. Both of them have mike input via >the built-in mike. It would be better to be able to plug the tape recorder >directly in I think. Any suggestions as to how I can plug an ordinary tape >recorder in to either of these machines and get the sound file in there so >it can be written out to CD? >Donna Pointer-- iMac, ergo iAm -- PowerBooks is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PowerBooks list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/powerbooks.shtml> Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/powerbooks%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Macintosh? Get free email and more at Applelinks! <http://www.applelinks.com>
