Digitaltoast wrote:
> My parents have LOADS (I mean hundreds) of reel to reel tapes that
> they want to mp3-ify (not to CD).
Hmm .... there are some mp3 choices that are less poor than other.
> They have two reel-to-reel machines
Which, in what state, how many decades since last alignment and service?
> and they have a mac and I have a PC I could lend them.
Undefined variables.
> We were thinking of making a little production line of two machines
> going at once - processing the audio while the other started.
Processing how?
> But I believe in the tape copying world, it's possible to record to
> the PC at ultra-high speed and then just slow down in software.
High speed tape operations require hardware that is designed for another
frequency range.
> All this is a one-off even, audio quality isn't massively paramount
> (but it's music, so still im****tant) but if anyone can think of any
> way to speed this process up, we'd all be grateful!
Use a program like audiograbber for recording, it is also able do line-in
recording and is able to divide the audio into separate files. It can also
do on the fly mp3-encoding, but don't. Leave that for a separate batched
stage once the audio is split up in neat files.
> BTW, we were thinking of this box to get the sound into the Mac Mini
> (as it has no sound input)
> http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?criteria=A18FW
I can't comment, didn't check the link. From a productivity viewpoint
stereo
recording is enough, you will have plenty do do with just cutting and
trimming. Audacity is probably a good suggestion, this is a bulk job, do
yourself the favour of not getting into eq and noise reduction. The
overall
fastest procedure is likely to be the one that requires the least post
processing, so you should transfer at the original speed.
Be careful with the mp3 options you select, some reduce stereo width in
the
treble and you do not want that to happen with audio that is recorded and
played back on real world tape machines in less than optimum trim, I think
you should leave it as wavefiles or look at lossless compression. WMA
lossless might be one option, FLAC another.
Kind regards
Peter Larsen
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