Converting audio from cassette to digital

[mundane]

Title and summary pretty much sums up the situation.

Details: My FIL had a club in Hawaii a couple of decades ago, and had some fairly popular artists come through and do shows, which he recorded. Unfortunately, they're still in cassette format, sitting in boxes in the garage. For posterity's sake, he'd like to get them into a more resilient format while there's still time (it may be too late for some of the recordings already).

My suggestion: Any old cassette deck with line out to feed into his PC. I suspect he'll see a quality hit during the conversion.

Does anyone have a better suggestion? I'm sure there are services out there to do this, anyone have input? Better tools for this process? He does have a small firewire device he uses to record and mix his classical guitar sessions, and I imagine it supports higher fidelity inputs than the standard 3.5mm PC mic socket.

Thanks is advance.

Edit: He's now looking at picking this ( ION TAPE2PC USB Cassette Archiver) up from Newegg.

 

[PurdueRy]

I've done this. I did pretty much exactly what you stated. I ran an old cassette player into the line inputs of my E-mu 1212m. I then recorded the tape at 192KHz sampling rate and then converted it after editing into a 44.1KHz FLAC file. Sounds just as good as the tape...which isn't that good but I was pleasantly surprised.

If you don't already know "Audacity" is a great free recording tool.

EDIT: There's no reason to buy a fairly expensive converter if you have a sound card with a good line in(hopefully not a microphone in). A line in is much more versatile than being stuck with a product that only converts from cassettes to digital.

 

[mundane]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll pass it on to him - no need to drop $140 on a piece of hardware which will only be used once.

 

[Billb2]

ION Tape2PC
http://www.ion-audio.com/tape2pc

 

[Rubycon]

It depends on the tape condition, tape type (metal tapes will have better frequency response at the upper end, for example) and most importantly the quality of the deck you're running. Recording at 192kHz (upper audio limit of 88kHz) does absolutely no good if your input is a Supercope cassette player with a frequency response of 50-12kHz. Another important thing to consider is wow and flutter. It's quite noticeable on cheaper decks/transports. Tapes exposed to stray magnetic fields may also have up/down levels (lines of flux partially demagnetizing the tape on the reels) which is difficult for the novice to correct.

Firewire interfaces typically have combination balanced/unbalanced inputs on them. All you need is an RCA to TRS (1/4") adapter x 2. Put left on CH1, right on CH2 etc. Find the loudest part on the tape and set the recording level on your recording software to -3dB for safety and you should be good to go. (you can normalize later)

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: Rubycon
It depends on the tape condition, tape type (metal tapes will have better frequency response at the upper end, for example) and most importantly the quality of the deck you're running. Recording at 192kHz (upper audio limit of 88kHz) does absolutely no good if your input is a Supercope cassette player with a frequency response of 50-12kHz. Another important thing to consider is wow and flutter. It's quite noticeable on cheaper decks/transports. Tapes exposed to stray magnetic fields may also have up/down levels (lines of flux partially demagnetizing the tape on the reels) which is difficult for the novice to correct.

Firewire interfaces typically have combination balanced/unbalanced inputs on them. All you need is an RCA to TRS (1/4") adapter x 2. Put left on CH1, right on CH2 etc. Find the loudest part on the tape and set the recording level on your recording software to -3dB for safety and you should be good to go. (you can normalize later)

Except for the fact that most sound cards have the best S/N Ratio and lowest THD at their highest sampling frequency.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Except for the fact that most sound cards have the best S/N Ratio and lowest THD at their highest sampling frequency.

And the noise floor of these decks is -50dB. Well, well above even the crappiest pc audio card!

 

[mundane]

Thanks for all of the additional input - a lot of terms I need to go look up now

 

[Billb2]

Basically what everyone is saying is that the quality of the sound you end up with is totally dependant on the quality of what's on the original tapes. Running the original sound through $1000 worth of electronica isn't going to make it sound any better. I'd start by listening to the tapes on a high quality system. Then decide if they are worth using high end components to re-record. If they sound bad, then all you need for re-recording is a cheep cassette player. If they sound good, and you use cheep components to re-record then, well, then you're not fulfilling your intended purpose of saving something that may be of value.