[Digitaltoast]

My parents have LOADS (I mean hundreds) of reel to reel tapes that
they want to mp3-ify (not to CD).
They have two reel-to-reel machines and they have a mac and I have a
PC I could lend them.
We were thinking of making a little production line of two machines
going at once - processing the audio while the other started.
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.
All this is a one-off even, audio quality isn't massively paramount
(but it's music, so still important) but if anyone can think of any
way to speed this process up, we'd all be grateful!
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

[bg[_2_]]

Digitaltoast wrote in message ...
My parents have LOADS (I mean hundreds) of reel to reel tapes that
they want to mp3-ify (not to CD).
They have two reel-to-reel machines and they have a mac and I have a
PC I could lend them.
We were thinking of making a little production line of two machines
going at once - processing the audio while the other started.
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.
All this is a one-off even, audio quality isn't massively paramount
(but it's music, so still important) but if anyone can think of any
way to speed this process up, we'd all be grateful!
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

You can playback the tape at high speed and then slow it down with software,
but the EQ (tone) will be wrong. If you like the way it sounds, go for it.

[Geoff]

Digitaltoast wrote:
My parents have LOADS (I mean hundreds) of reel to reel tapes that
they want to mp3-ify (not to CD).
They have two reel-to-reel machines and they have a mac and I have a
PC I could lend them.
We were thinking of making a little production line of two machines
going at once - processing the audio while the other started.
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.
All this is a one-off even, audio quality isn't massively paramount
(but it's music, so still important) but if anyone can think of any
way to speed this process up, we'd all be grateful!
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

Is the tape of high quality ? If so have they really thought thru why they
want to compromise the quality, given that storage and media capability is
exploding.

Which is why it amuses me when the next greatest memory technology is
invented and the technology 'journalists' say that now we will be able to
store 10 billion songs on your ipod. Why don't they say that we can now
store only one billion songs, but they won't sound like crap ?!!


geoff

[Richard Crowley]

"Digitaltoast" wrote ...
My parents have LOADS (I mean hundreds) of reel to reel tapes that
they want to mp3-ify (not to CD).
They have two reel-to-reel machines and they have a mac and I have a
PC I could lend them.
We were thinking of making a little production line of two machines
going at once - processing the audio while the other started.
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.
All this is a one-off even, audio quality isn't massively paramount
(but it's music, so still important) but if anyone can think of any
way to speed this process up, we'd all be grateful!

You can try playing them at 2x speed and then diddling the
resulting audio files on the computer to slow them back down
to "normal". This may not even be possible if you want to record
directly to MP3. You may have to record WAV (or whatever
Apple calls it) and then diddle the speed and then encode into
MP3.

The tonal equalization is not likely to be very good, but only you
(or your parents) can make the final decision whether it is "good
enough" for this application.

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

Seems like overkill to get a box designed for 6 chanel sound.
You can likely get something that will do 2 channels for half
that cost.

[James]

Your reel to reel is not designed to play back at high speed. Depending on
the unit and the speed that the tapes were recorded at you may be able to
play back at a somewhat higher speed. But I doubt it would be enough
difference to justify the hassle of getting the sound back to the right
speed computationally.

The main hassle in transfering any old format like that is queing up the
tape, playing it, shutting it down, and then going to the next one. You
might be able to find some software that can identify the pauses to break up
the songs depending on the source. But even that is sometimes not simple as
some songs will carry into the next one and some songs will have intentional
moments of silence.

There are services that do this.

"Digitaltoast" wrote in message
...
My parents have LOADS (I mean hundreds) of reel to reel tapes that
they want to mp3-ify (not to CD).
They have two reel-to-reel machines and they have a mac and I have a
PC I could lend them.
We were thinking of making a little production line of two machines
going at once - processing the audio while the other started.
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.
All this is a one-off even, audio quality isn't massively paramount
(but it's music, so still important) but if anyone can think of any
way to speed this process up, we'd all be grateful!
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

[Digitaltoast]

On May 6, 1:15 pm, "James" wrote:

There are services that do this.

I'm listening - to everyone's suggestion, but particularly this one!

Apparently, there used to be something called the institute of
recorded sound, but all they could tell my parents was to used
Audacity!

I think it might just end up being a long hard slog!

[James]

"Digitaltoast" wrote in message
...
On May 6, 1:15 pm, "James" wrote:

There are services that do this.

I'm listening - to everyone's suggestion, but particularly this one!

Apparently, there used to be something called the institute of
recorded sound, but all they could tell my parents was to used
Audacity!

I think it might just end up being a long hard slog!

Is this non-commercial music? If not have you checked to see if it is
available on cd? A lot is available on cd. Depending on the value of your
time that may be cheaper.

[Digitaltoast]

On May 7, 11:58 am, "James" wrote:

Is this non-commercial music? If not have you checked to see if it is
available on cd? A lot is available on cd. Depending on the value of your
time that may be cheaper.

Yes, it's mainly concert-hall recordings of live performances, and
some recorded of live broadcasts off radio three in the 70's.

Good suggestion though

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

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 important) 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