I'm trying to put together a solution to replace a poor performing and
rather expensive solution (~$9000 for 2 duplicators and 1 card) that
uses a Sony CCP-1300 and the Telex EDAT Zing A/D card. The card is
sampling at 352.8khz and with the playback at 30ips (16x) it provides
a frequency response to about 11khz, which is more than is really
usable out of the duplicator anyway. The card has a suprisingly low
noise floor of approx -54db, which of course means marginal SNR for
cassettes.

The content to be digitized is always speech, but the quality of the
tapes is quite variable. No more than a very slight loss in
intelligibility and noise floor can be tolerated in the process, as
tapes often need heavy compression and eq to be usable.

I'm considering switching to 15ips playback and using a 192khz/24bit
audio interface. The biggest stumbling block is a lack of appropriate
cassette tape transports for that speed and frequency range. Since
this is a high volume operation with multiple tapes will be running at
the same time to meet volume requirements) I'm trying to come up with
a solution that is more cost effective than duplicators and zing card
and who's control signals can be interfaced with the PC.

Does anyone out there have any guidance on how to get the performance
I'm looking for? Should I start with an 8X duplicator? Some of the 1:1
models are pretty inexpensive (~$500) but I need a better SNR and I
would need to hack the controls in, which is definatly an option. Can
I do a head and amplifier replacement to bring it up to spec for a
reasonable price? I'm looking to extract as much SNR as the tape
provides, or very close to it, I'm thinking within 3db at worst. The
duplicators that deliver that are all in the same price range as I'm
using now, and $2500-3000 seems really excessive for a machine that
only gets used for playback.

Thanks,
- Amy Linari