Hello,

As a newbie, I want to ask if anyone can recommend a good analog to
digital audio converter with USB or Firewire connection for laptops. I
have a moderately large collection of music cassette tapes and some
with speeches which I want to digitize in mp3, but in a manner which
excludes background noise and disturbance etc. to the maximum possible
extent.

Any good hardware out there for this purpose? A google search turned
up several options but, as I have no experience in this field and dont
want to rely solely on the manufacturers claims, I thought I may first
ask around in this newsgroup.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Khan

In article writes:

As a newbie, I want to ask if anyone can recommend a good analog to
digital audio converter with USB or Firewire connection for laptops. I
have a moderately large collection of music cassette tapes and some
with speeches which I want to digitize in mp3, but in a manner which
excludes background noise and disturbance etc. to the maximum possible
extent.

You aren't going to like this answer, but it really doesn't matter.
You'll be connecting the cassette deck to the sound card directly
(rather than going thorugh a microphone), and the background noise
from even the cheapest sound card will be so much lower than what's on
your tapes, that it will be insignificant. You can encounter hum and
noise problems due to defective cables or improper level matching, but
those things are fixable.

The one specification that you should pay attention to is the input
sensitivity of the sound card, which, unfortunately isn't always
stated correctly, or in the proper terms. This is what's important to
match to your cassette deck (don't let anyone worry you about
impedance). Unless you have a professional studio or commercial grade
player for the cassettes, it will have a comsumer-gear output level.
If you get too "professional" of a sound card, it may only match up
properly to professonal equipment and will give less than optimum
results. Look for numbers like "-10" and avoid numbers like "+4"
(unless it's switchable between -10 and +4 operating levels).

If you want to try to reduce the noise that's already on the cassette
recording, there are software tools to do that, but if you have "a
lot" of cassettes, while you may mean well, you probably will find
that you don't want to spend the time this process requires. Many
people say they want to do the same thing you do, but I haven't lived
long enough yet to hear from anyone who said "Whew! I just got
finished cleaning up and transferring all of my 1352 cassette music
collecton from high school over to digital."



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

In article writes:

Actually, I
liked your answer a lot since it means I don't have to buy expensive
conversion equipment now.

My, what a breath of fresh air. Usually people decide beofore they
learn how things work (or how well they work, or don't) they decide
that they aren't going to start their project with anything less than
"the best."

My
Fujitsu-Siemens Laptop manual doesn't give much information about the
sound card except that it has "20-bit stereo audio (AC 97)", but since
the gadget is quite new, I suppose it should give acceptable results.
As for software, I will use Cool Edit Pro

That should work just fine. Set Cool Edit Pro to record 16-bit and go
for it.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

Mike Rivers wrote:

My, what a breath of fresh air. Usually people decide beofore they
learn how things work (or how well they work, or don't) they decide
that they aren't going to start their project with anything less than
"the best."

So they budget a thousand bucks, and an afternoon.

--
ha

Khan wrote:

As for software, I will use Cool Edit Pro which an Associate
recommended.

CoolEdit 2000 is quite adequate for what you're planning, and costs
about 70% less than CEP.