Hello,

I run the sound system at my church and we are thinking about
recording our services and making cassette tapes to send to our
members. We would like to record onto a PC so we can more easily
archive and work with the recordings. But then we need to make copies
onto cassette tapes.

Is there hardware/software out there to quickly make a master cassette
tape from the computer? I would hate to have to play at real time
speed the recording onto a cassette. We can then use a standard tape
copy machine to mass produce tapes.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Bart Torbert

"Bart Torbert" wrote ...
I run the sound system at my church and we are thinking
about recording our services and making cassette tapes
to send to our members. We would like to record onto
a PC so we can more easily archive and work with the
recordings. But then we need to make copies onto cassette
tapes.

Is there hardware/software out there to quickly make a
master cassette tape from the computer? I would hate to
have to play at real time speed the recording onto a cassette.
We can then use a standard tape copy machine to mass
produce tapes.

Any time you run audio at "x" faster than real-time, you shift
the frequency band up by x. If you run it 4x speed, you also
shift the frequencies from nominal 20-20KHz up to 80-80KHz
(for example). There are ways to play audio at some arbitrary
speed out of a computer, but there are likely NOT audio cards
that have the kind of high frequency response to allow full-
bandwidth performance at several x real-time.

OTOH, if it is just speech (like 50Hz ~ 5KHz), then one could
argue that a sound card (or whatever D/A interface is involved)
would have sufficient bandwidth (20KHz assumed) to adequately
reproduce 5KHz at 4x (=20KHz) I think it would be worth trying.

However, do you have a device that will record your "master"
cassette at 4x? All the 4x devices I have seen (granted not a large
sampling) had only tape-to-tape capability and no audio inputs.
Or, you could dedicate an old junker PC to feed the tape duplicator
directly at 4x (or whatever), again if you had audio inputs.

(Bart Torbert) writes:
Is there hardware/software out there to quickly make a master cassette
tape from the computer? I would hate to have to play at real time
speed the recording onto a cassette. We can then use a standard tape
copy machine to mass produce tapes.

You know, you may actually find it easier to make CD's than cassette
tapes. High-speed CD burners are already in most computers these days
and inexpensive if not, and if you want to make them in moderate
volume, even automatic duplication equipment isn't all that expensive.
For $1000 or so you can buy a robotic duplicator that will make 100
cd's in a few hours automatically.

Richard Crowley wrote:
Is there hardware/software out there to quickly make a
master cassette tape from the computer?

Any time you run audio at "x" faster than real-time, you shift
the frequency band up by x. If you run it 4x speed, you also
shift the frequencies from nominal 20-20KHz up to 80-80KHz
(for example). There are ways to play audio at some arbitrary
speed out of a computer, but there are likely NOT audio cards
that have the kind of high frequency response to allow full-
bandwidth performance at several x real-time.

Just to clarify, you can get cards that run at 192 kHz sampling
rate. What is the reason that you couldn't then make a 48 kHz
recording and play it back at 192 kHz? I suppose there are
some filters involved that remove things above 20 kHz, so that
the attentuation starts a bit above 20 kHz and is complete
(theoretically infinite attentuation) by the time you hit 96 kHz,
and that is the reason you can't play back frequencies above
20 kHz even on such a card. Is that accurate, and does it apply
to all sound cards?

- Logan

Logan Shaw wrote:
Richard Crowley wrote:
Is there hardware/software out there to quickly make a
master cassette tape from the computer?

Any time you run audio at "x" faster than real-time, you shift
the frequency band up by x. If you run it 4x speed, you also
shift the frequencies from nominal 20-20KHz up to 80-80KHz
(for example). There are ways to play audio at some arbitrary
speed out of a computer, but there are likely NOT audio cards
that have the kind of high frequency response to allow full-
bandwidth performance at several x real-time.

Just to clarify, you can get cards that run at 192 kHz sampling
rate. What is the reason that you couldn't then make a 48 kHz
recording and play it back at 192 kHz?

No reason, however for practical reasons, far lower sample rates like 24-30
KHz seem to make more sense.

I suppose there are
some filters involved that remove things above 20 kHz, so that
the attentuation starts a bit above 20 kHz and is complete
(theoretically infinite attentuation) by the time you hit 96 kHz,

It depends on the sound card.

http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/L....htm#FR_1644-a shows a card
that is flat within a few 0.1 dB out to 70 KHz.

and that is the reason you can't play back frequencies above
20 kHz even on such a card.

No, even 96 KHz cards do well out to 42 KHz or more.

Is that accurate, and does it apply to all sound cards?

YMMV but none are as bad as you seem to be suggesting. It is widely accepted
that high sample rate cards will sacrifice true brick-wall filtering well
above 20 KHz to achieve less steep ultimate roll-off slopes.

I think we need to have a bit of practical perspective on this. First off
the actual performance of cassette machines is ludicrously poor by modern
standards. If you read between the lines on the spec sheets in the day of,
cassette machines only had something vaguely resembling flat response 50-15
KHz at a whopping 20 dB below Dolby level. And we're not talking flat
response +/- 0.1 dB, we're talking more like +/- 2 or 3 dB which allows 4-6
dB swings. And that was with type two or type four tape, not the type one
tape that is commonly used for duplicating sermons today.

Bottom line, there's no reason to try to preserve signals above 12-15 KHz on
a cassette recording. Given that 200 KHz sampling is readily supportable,
we're talking practical recording speeds of 6x - 8x. This compares with
copying speeds of 10x, 20x or 32x. for traditional cassette duplicators.
So, our proposed digital duplication scheme lacks speed when compared to
real time recording and traditional high speed means of duplication.

Long story short, if you plan to deliver significant volumes of tapes around
the time of the end of the service, real time recording and traditional high
speed duplication still has a lot of romance.

As others have pointed out, CD burning can be advantageous. IME most of your
congregation aged 65 and younger probably has a CD player. Even when older
attendees resist home CD and DVD players, they end with them in their new
cars.

It turns out that while CD recorders offer blazing speed when making
CD-ROMs, recording speeds can suffer significantly when recording audio CDs.
Nevertheless IME audio CD burning speeds in the 16-32x range may be
frequently observed. A common burning speed that is quoted is "a CD in 4
minutes". This nets out to 20x.

For reasonable prices you can buy dedicated CD burner controllers for mass
duplication for use with off-the-shelf CD burners, or you can buy
pre-assembled CD duplication stations.

I run the sound system at my church and we are thinking about
recording our services and making cassette tapes to send to our
members. We would like to record onto a PC so we can more easily
archive and work with the recordings. But then we need to make copies
onto cassette tapes.

Suggestion #1: Do it on CDs. You can record an 80-minute audio CD (that
anyone can play on a regular audio CD player) in about 3 minutes.

Suggestion #2: Transfer to tape? Make a CD and record that on the tape
machine.

Software suggestion: http://www.cdwave.com

"Paul Rubin" wrote in message
...

You know, you may actually find it easier to make CD's than cassette

Much easier. I haven't bought tape in bulk in years but the difference in
price of a blank CD vs blank tape (at Wal-Mart for example) is ENORMOUS.
Blank CD for about 10-cents versus the same length tape for about $3. CD is
my preferred method. The problem I've ran into is that, even for a
400-member congregation, a lot of "church" stuff is listened to by little
old ladies (no, I'm not "age-ist") with cassette players. It's a huge hassle
to have to do that (versus the CD) but these people seem to be the most
"loyal" listeners.

(Bart Torbert) wrote in message . com...
Hello,

I run the sound system at my church and we are thinking about
recording our services and making cassette tapes to send to our
members. We would like to record onto a PC so we can more easily
archive and work with the recordings. But then we need to make copies
onto cassette tapes.

Is there hardware/software out there to quickly make a master cassette
tape from the computer? I would hate to have to play at real time
speed the recording onto a cassette. We can then use a standard tape
copy machine to mass produce tapes.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Bart Torbert


You'll probably need a recording mix that is different from your
Front of House mix. (The stuff that's loud enough without any extra
amplification in the house still needs to get on to the tape without
being boosted in the house.) Trying to mix both at the same time on
the same board from inside the sanctuary is *lots* of fun :-( Hint:
You'll need a good set of enclosed type headphones that won't fall
apart from being whipped on and off your head every few minutes or
more often as you try to listen to two different things at once while
only hearing one of them at a time.
Your tape copies (highspeed reproducer, right?) aren't going to be
all that great sound-wise, especially on music, lots of wow and
flutter, no high end except for tape hiss, it's the nature of the
beast. Since the service happens in real time you might as well get a
quality cassette mastering deck and record in real time and put that
into the high speed duplicator. You can still real-time record onto
the hard drive as well and use that to burn CDs for those who prefer
them to cassette.
If you want to send out cassettes of an edited version of the
service, like just the sermon, or 3 months worth of the choir special
numbers, you'll still need a good cassette mastering deck to make a
good cassette master on to have something decent to put into the
duplicator. I shudder to think how bad a high speed dupe of a high
speed dupe would sound.
Even if you could run a cassette transport at high speed without any
other problems, the signal to the record head would have to be shifted
up in frequency to come back down to the right frequency when played
at regular cassette speed and both the tape and the tape head can only
go up just so far frequency-wise whilst maintaining flat response.

Ricky W. Hunt wrote:
Much easier. I haven't bought tape in bulk in years but the difference in
price of a blank CD vs blank tape (at Wal-Mart for example) is ENORMOUS.
Blank CD for about 10-cents versus the same length tape for about $3. CD is
my preferred method. The problem I've ran into is that, even for a
400-member congregation, a lot of "church" stuff is listened to by little
old ladies (no, I'm not "age-ist") with cassette players. It's a huge hassle
to have to do that (versus the CD) but these people seem to be the most
"loyal" listeners.

I guess you could always ask for a donation that covers the cost
of the blanks. When they realize they only have to donate $0.10
for the CDs but $3.00 for the cassettes, maybe they will start
to appreciate why us young whippersnappers have all made the
switch already.

Or just give them all $25 portable CD players for free. It
sounds like this could actually save your church money in
the long term!

- Logan

I guess you could always ask for a donation that covers the cost
of the blanks. When they realize they only have to donate $0.10
for the CDs but $3.00 for the cassettes, maybe they will start
to appreciate why us young whippersnappers have all made the
switch already.

Where I live (The Netherlands), the result would be that all the old folks
would buy the CD version and then force their offspring to convert it to
cassette for them. That would solve your problem though, as the offspring
will surprise granny Weatherwax at the first available oppurtunity
(birthday, thanksgiving, x-mas, 34th anniversary of their second
grandson-in-law's third cousin) to give her a CD player.

Or just give them all $25 portable CD players for free. It
sounds like this could actually save your church money in
the long term!

Where I live, you'd suddenly see virtual people. While there are no more
than 150 praying citizens at any time in the church, there will still be a
demand for about 3000 CDs (and complementary players...)

Mike.

"Logan Shaw" wrote in message
...

Or just give them all $25 portable CD players for free. It
sounds like this could actually save your church money in
the long term!


Believe it or not, I almost put that in my post. And it really is cheaper in
the long run (as long as the recipients are responsible). But I don't think
it's the best answer. I've thought about trying to find a good, inexpensive,
and easy-to-operate CD player and putting up a note where they can buy that
model (Wal-Mart, etc.) maybe with a group discount "coupon" if they bring in
a current church bulletin. I feel the answer is to teach people the "value"
of things (including music), not to just "give" them things.

Ricky W. Hunt wrote:
"Paul Rubin" wrote in message
...

You know, you may actually find it easier to make CD's than cassette

Much easier. I haven't bought tape in bulk in years but the difference in
price of a blank CD vs blank tape (at Wal-Mart for example) is ENORMOUS.
Blank CD for about 10-cents versus the same length tape for about $3. CD is
my preferred method. The problem I've ran into is that, even for a
400-member congregation, a lot of "church" stuff is listened to by little
old ladies (no, I'm not "age-ist") with cassette players. It's a huge hassle
to have to do that (versus the CD) but these people seem to be the most
"loyal" listeners.

When I do practice tapes for choirs, invariably they order a large number of
CDs with a smaller number of cassettes. I usually charge them considerably
more for the cassettes, because it's that much work, but they pay it. When
I ask, invariably I am told that some of the folks want to listen to the tapes
in their car. For what I charge per cassette they are well on their way to
purchasing a cheap Discman....
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

"Ricky W. Hunt" writes:
Much easier. I haven't bought tape in bulk in years but the
difference in price of a blank CD vs blank tape (at Wal-Mart for
example) is ENORMOUS. Blank CD for about 10-cents versus the same
length tape for about $3. CD is my preferred method. The problem
I've ran into is that, even for a 400-member congregation, a lot of
"church" stuff is listened to by little old ladies (no, I'm not
"age-ist") with cassette players. It's a huge hassle to have to do
that (versus the CD) but these people seem to be the most "loyal"
listeners.

You could make a CD from your computer. Dubbing it to cassette is
then just a matter of dropping it into a hi-fi with a tape deck and
pushing a button.

It occurs to me, there are high speed cassette-to-cassette dubbing
machines and it sounds like you may have one already. Perhaps there's
also such a thing as a high-speed cd-to-cassette dubbing machine,
since high-speed cd readers are the norm these days.

Bart Torbert wrote:

I run the sound system at my church and we are thinking about
recording our services and making cassette tapes to send to our
members.

Check whether CD's is acceptable to the members prior to starting
something up.

Bart Torbert


Kind regards

Peter Larsen

--
*******************************************
* My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk *
*******************************************

On or about 28 Mar 2004 11:20:58 -0800, Bart Torbert allegedly wrote:

Hello,

I run the sound system at my church and we are thinking about
recording our services and making cassette tapes to send to our
members. We would like to record onto a PC so we can more easily
archive and work with the recordings. But then we need to make copies
onto cassette tapes.

Is there hardware/software out there to quickly make a master cassette
tape from the computer? I would hate to have to play at real time
speed the recording onto a cassette. We can then use a standard tape
copy machine to mass produce tapes.

Another idea may be to use a cassette duplicator that is driven directly
from the computer. Saves the real time making of a master cassette, and
every cassette comes straight from a digital master, so you knock out the
cassette to cassette stage. Done with a high speed D/A card that also
sends control signals to the slaves. See Telex or Graff.


Noel Bachelor noelbachelorAT(From:_domain)
Language Recordings Inc (Darwin Australia)

Thanks for all your input. Still wondering about CD vs Cassette. I
understand the lesser cost of CD.

But you know the old saying about "You can't teach an old dog new
tricks". I have got some real old dogs to deal with.

Practicallity may well win out over economics.

My church is quite small so there would not be a huge volume of
product to deal with. Maybe a dozen copies each week. I will survey
the likely recipients and see what the market will bear.

One further question. The wave files for an hour plus long service
will get quite big. Is there a rule of thumg of how many bytes per
minute of input? Are their software programs that will compress the
input, then be able to create a normal file for writing to a CD?

Bart Torbert

Bart Torbert wrote:
One further question. The wave files for an hour plus long service
will get quite big. Is there a rule of thumg of how many bytes per
minute of input? Are their software programs that will compress the
input, then be able to create a normal file for writing to a CD?

If you are doing 44100 Hz sampling rate and 16-bit samples, then
you are recording 88200 bytes of samplers per second per channel.
If you are doing mono, then that's 88200 bytes per second, which
is about 317MB per hour of raw sample data. WAV files are basically
just a few headers plus raw sample data, so the size will be
pretty comparable. So call it 350MB per hour for mono and 700MB
per hour for stereo to be a little conservative.

Yes, it is possible to losslessly compress WAV files. One way
is to use the FLAC ("Free Lossless Audio Codec") format/software.
See http://flac.sourceforge.net .

As for compression ratio, the FLAC web site says on average it
compresses things down to about half their size. However, if
you are compressing the spoken word instead of music, you may
find that the compression is better than that (although that
is just a guess).

- Logan

Bart Torbert wrote:

One further question. The wave files for an hour plus long service
will get quite big. Is there a rule of thumg of how many bytes per
minute of input? Are their software programs that will compress the
input, then be able to create a normal file for writing to a CD?

That's two guestions.

A1. There's an exact formula; for a CD it's:

44100 x 2 x 2 x 60 = 10,584,000 bytes/minute

(samples-per-second x bytes-per-sample x channels x seconds-per-minute)

Add 36 bytes for the WAV header.


A2. CD audio data are not compressed, so there's nothing to be gained, unless I
misunderstood Q2.

In article ,
Logan Shaw wrote:

As for compression ratio, the FLAC web site says on average it
compresses things down to about half their size. However, if
you are compressing the spoken word instead of music, you may
find that the compression is better than that

If you're doing spoken word where the source material is a cassette
tape, why wouldn't lossy compression codecs be acceptable?

I'm not trolling, it's a serious question. Most of what I record is
spoken word, reading books for blind students, and I'm the only person
in the whole chain who cares about audio quality past "intelligible."
(I try to do a lot better than that!) I .ogg my wav's and that's the
end of the wav's. But... My other recording endeavors are pretty much
classical piano and flute. And for this stuff, I keep everything in the
original .wav file because I don't even trust lossless codecs. Don't
trust CDR or hard disks for that matter :-)

Anyway my point is that my recording takes me to opposite extremes. The
irony, I guess, is that the important gig (book reader), has far lower
quality requirements than the unimportant gig (music practice).

Whenever I come up with something that's "good", it goes on CDR.
Otherwise, I just use removable HD's and replace the data drive when
it's time. Means I buy a HD every quarter or so. I delude myself into
believing that still comes out less than I used to spend on 1/4" tape ;-)

Thanks Logan, not trying to detract from the otherwise sensible
discussion here, but I value your insight.

(Bart Torbert) writes:
One further question. The wave files for an hour plus long service
will get quite big. Is there a rule of thumg of how many bytes per
minute of input? Are their software programs that will compress the
input, then be able to create a normal file for writing to a CD?

Yes, Ogg Vorbis or any mp3 encoder can do that. www.vorbis.org or
www.lame.org can point you to encoders. WAV files at CD rate needs
about 170 kbytes/sec. mp3 or Vorbis is most often done at 128
kbit/sec or 16 kbyte/sec. This is considered mid-fi, and critical
listeners prefer higher bit rates (like 256 kbit/sec) for high quality
music listening, but for stuff like sermons (spoken word), 128k/sec
is more than plenty, especially with Vorbis.

"Logan Shaw" wrote in message
...
Bart Torbert wrote:
One further question. The wave files for an hour plus long service
will get quite big. Is there a rule of thumg of how many bytes per
minute of input? Are their software programs that will compress the
input, then be able to create a normal file for writing to a CD?

You can compress it either through file compression (like Zip - which may
not offer much size reduction) or psychoacoustic compression (such as MP3,
which usually turns out a file around 1/10th of the size of the original
file if compressed at 128kb). But the only CD you can make with the
compressed files is data CD's. Meaning they won't play on a standard redbook
CD player. There are quite a few CD players now though that will play MP3's
stored on a CD though. But as for "standard" CD players (and just about any
player over a year or two old), they will only play audio CD's.

james wrote:

In article ,
Logan Shaw wrote:


As for compression ratio, the FLAC web site says on average it
compresses things down to about half their size. However, if
you are compressing the spoken word instead of music, you may
find that the compression is better than that

If you're doing spoken word where the source material is a cassette
tape, why wouldn't lossy compression codecs be acceptable?

In this particular case, I believe the original poster is
recording stuff to computer, then converting that to cassette.
So the audio is being compressed on the computer before it goes
to cassette. At least as I understand it.

My other answer is that, for my own personal usage, lossy codecs
aren't acceptable for two reasons. One is that disk is really,
really cheap these days. I bought a 200 GB (7200 RPM, 8 MB cache)
disk for $99 this last weekend. For about not much over $500, you
can have 1 terabyte. That's 1575 hours of CD-quality stereo audio.
If you use lossless compression at a 2:1 ratio, call it 3000 hours,
which is 125 days of continuous audio.

The second reason is successive compression/decompression cycles
with lossy codecs will continue to degrade the sound. If you
do enough of these, you may very well notice the difference.
This in and of itself isn't terrible because you can work around
that. But, that is just one extra thing to worry about, one way
that things have become inflexible. Using no compression or only
lossless compression means I don't have to think about that.

To me, the feeling of freedom (from not having to think about
that) is worth the extra money. It's sort of like when people
buy the unlimited long distance package for their home phone
service. I myself priced this out and figured I'd pay, on
average, about $10 MORE a month for unlimited long distance
than I am paying now. But it might still be worth it because
even though I am actually paying more, there is a key difference,
which is that while I'm on the phone, I don't have to think about
how much I'm paying. I might still talk to my sister in New York
for the same amount of time either way, but if I have the
unlimited long distance, I might enjoy the phone call slightly
more because there is no chance at all I'm thinking about how
much it costs me per minute.

Basically, to me lossy codecs are more trouble and thus more stress
than lossless codecs, and the monetary cost is low, so I don't
want to add the complication.

On the subject of trusting lossless codecs, the great thing about
lossless codecs is that they are easy to evaluate. Just
compress, then decompress, then compare to the original.
If they are byte-for-byte identical, you know you are good.
If they are not, stop using that lossless codec NOW. :-)

- Logan

Thank you all for the input. I am still trying to figure out CD vs.
tape. I understand the economics, but the practicallity may outweight
economics.

Does anyone know of a recording program that will compress the audio?
I am worried about eating up large amounts of hard drive space if I go
the CD route.

Bart Torbert

Bart Torbert wrote:

Does anyone know of a recording program that will compress the audio?
I am worried about eating up large amounts of hard drive space if I go
the CD route.

http://www.totalrecorder.com/ will do that for $12

On 29 Mar 2004 12:36:37 -0800, Paul Rubin
wrote:

It occurs to me, there are high speed cassette-to-cassette dubbing
machines and it sounds like you may have one already. Perhaps there's
also such a thing as a high-speed cd-to-cassette dubbing machine,
since high-speed cd readers are the norm these days.

Have you ever listened to the affordable ones? Not good enough for
music.

CubaseFAQ www.laurencepayne.co.uk/CubaseFAQ.htm
"Possibly the world's least impressive web site": George Perfect

In article ,
Laurence Payne wrote:
On 29 Mar 2004 12:36:37 -0800, Paul Rubin
wrote:

It occurs to me, there are high speed cassette-to-cassette dubbing
machines and it sounds like you may have one already. Perhaps there's
also such a thing as a high-speed cd-to-cassette dubbing machine,
since high-speed cd readers are the norm these days.

Have you ever listened to the affordable ones? Not good enough for
music.

Well, they sound lousy. The thing is, though, most of the people who are
ordering cassettes today are people who don't care about sound quality
anyway. Sadly, the people who are using the format that requires the most
care are the people who are giving the least care to their equipment. Just
ask any one of them when they last had someone check the azimuth....

You make rotten-sounding mono copies on a Telex and they won't complain.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."