I have been asked by a friend to move everything from his audio cassette
catalog to compact disk. It's a series of topic talks on approx: 60
cassettes. He would like to be able to duplicate the CD's on demand. It's
a very low volume operation. We want to do this in house. Currently he
uses a cassette duplicator that copies three cassettes at once, both sides
at once at high speed. So, here are my questions:



1) What would be the best software for a non sophisticated user to
record audio cassettes into a PC? I personally use Sound Forge which is
overkill for him. I'd like to find lower cost easy to use software with
editing capability (volume level matching, limited EQ, cut and paste etc).
He is an older gentleman who wants to learn to do this on his own so I don't
want something too difficult to learn.



We will create each master CD on the PC. We have the sound board and
disk space.



2) What would you recommend for a low cost stand alone CD Duplicator?
From what I've seen I'm leaning toward something like an Octave tower drive.
It has a four recording trays with an 80Gig hard disk to hold 72 CD images.
It cost approx $900. This sounds ideal to me.



3) We didn't talk too much about CD label/disk printing, if there are
any suggestions on this I'd appreciate it.



If there is a more appropriate place to post let me know.



Thanks in advance.



Kevin

In article writes:

I have been asked by a friend to move everything from his audio cassette
catalog to compact disk. It's a series of topic talks on approx: 60
cassettes. He would like to be able to duplicate the CD's on demand. It's
a very low volume operation. We want to do this in house. Currently he
uses a cassette duplicator that copies three cassettes at once, both sides
at once at high speed.

It's going to be hard to match that speed and simplicity without a
pretty hefty investment in time. Fortunately it won't cost a whole lot
of money, but some.

1) What would be the best software for a non sophisticated user to
record audio cassettes into a PC? I personally use Sound Forge which is
overkill for him. I'd like to find lower cost easy to use software with
editing capability (volume level matching, limited EQ, cut and paste etc).

Most of the "popular" recording and editing programs are about the
same, and each version tries to add more features than the last
generation of the competition. The only one that's significantly
different in the way it works, which being an older gentleman myself,
I find much easier to understand and use is Fast Edit (I see they
finally started spelling and typing it in the conventional manner)
from http://www.minnetonkaaudio.com. It's very intuitive and fast. I
hope they're not going out of business. I just checked the web site to
verify the spelling and found that the links to "products" other than
their surround mastering programs on the home page were dead.

One thing that will require an intermediate step if you want to maked
indexed CDs is you'll have to pick those index points by hand/ear and
insert them manually. Unless the Diamond Cut people (who were talking
about this a couple of years ago) have software for it, your typical
recording/editing program won't insert CD index marks on the fly.
While the people using cassettes never had this convenience, chances
are that in CD format, they'll expect it.

2) What would you recommend for a low cost stand alone CD Duplicator?
From what I've seen I'm leaning toward something like an Octave tower drive.
It has a four recording trays with an 80Gig hard disk to hold 72 CD images.
It cost approx $900. This sounds ideal to me.

I don't have a lot of experience with those, but they're becoming more
prevalent and the prices are dropping. I saw a stack of Microboards
two-drive (one master, one dupe) duplicators at Guitar Center last
week for $250. Primera and Diskmakers both have a line of sub-$1000
CD duplicators that work off a stack and can label the disks as well
as duplicate the audio.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

In article rejPa.28486$Ph3.2376@sccrnsc04 writes:

Cool Edit Pro will insert track marks while recording (Contrl-F8) that are
recognized by burning software. However, Nero burning software also has a
rudimentary editing function that can add track marks to any file.

I didn't realize that Cool Edit Pro did this on the fly, though I
guess you still have to do it manually. I presume you can edit their
locations since you'll probably miss by a bit even if you're paying
attention. It would mean listening through during the transfer to set
the markers, but you should probably be listening anyway (though most
of us are too lazy or impatient to do that).

I was thinking along the lines of Nero. I've used that feature to drop
markers into a continuous live recording, thanks to the suggestion of
a couple of folks in this newsgroup.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

Thanks for the responses. I'm reading about a "Digital Audio Editor"
program called GoldWave. For $40 it includes noise reduction and pop/click
filters that some programs want you to purchase as an add-in. I'm sure
feature this will be usefull to him. http://www.goldwave.com/index.html
The others programs look interesting but this one might be the best value
yet.



I'm going to check out those duplicators mentioned as well. Good
suggestions for me to follow up.



Thanks very much.



Kevin



"Kevin" wrote in message
...
I have been asked by a friend to move everything from his audio cassette
catalog to compact disk. It's a series of topic talks on approx: 60
cassettes. He would like to be able to duplicate the CD's on demand.
It's
a very low volume operation. We want to do this in house. Currently he
uses a cassette duplicator that copies three cassettes at once, both sides
at once at high speed. So, here are my questions:



1) What would be the best software for a non sophisticated user to
record audio cassettes into a PC? I personally use Sound Forge which is
overkill for him. I'd like to find lower cost easy to use software with
editing capability (volume level matching, limited EQ, cut and paste etc).
He is an older gentleman who wants to learn to do this on his own so I
don't
want something too difficult to learn.



We will create each master CD on the PC. We have the sound board
and
disk space.



2) What would you recommend for a low cost stand alone CD Duplicator?
From what I've seen I'm leaning toward something like an Octave tower
drive.
It has a four recording trays with an 80Gig hard disk to hold 72 CD
images.
It cost approx $900. This sounds ideal to me.



3) We didn't talk too much about CD label/disk printing, if there are
any suggestions on this I'd appreciate it.



If there is a more appropriate place to post let me know.



Thanks in advance.



Kevin

"Justin Ulysses Morse" wrote

But if he REALLY wants to burn multiple copies at once, it can be done
using Feurio! (last I checked it was distributed by Nero but may be
fully independent now, try http://www.feurio.com ). Feurio is
shareware but you have to pay for it if you want multiple-burner
support. I paid $70 or so for a 2-burner license.

Excellent suggestion. I have a $70 2-burner license as well. A great,
simple and very dependable burning package. The editting feature makes
putting index marks in a dream.


3) We didn't talk too much about CD label/disk printing, if there
are
any suggestions on this I'd appreciate it.

I don't remember seeing it mentioned before, but for quick one-ofs, I
think the Casio thermal printer is really slick. It costs about $100 and is
head and shoulders above labels and far as professional appearance. It only
does one color, and you have to manually flip the disk if you want to print
the top *and* bottom half, but it looks really neat. I doubt 99% of the
population could tell it from silk screened graphics. I always get comments
when I hand over a demo.

- Tommy

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1057885425k@trad...

In article writes:

You can move track (and index) marks around after initial placement, but
there's no need to miss the desired point at initial placement, given
that
you can just enlarge the time scale as required to position them by eye
and
ear quite precisely (to the nearest sample which will probably get
rounded
to nearest frame).

No need to miss as long as you listen through that segment and spot
where you want to put the track marker.

True, but often the listening part is often optional for me. As time wears
on, I'm more likely to use listening more to confirm things that I did more
and more visually.

I was thinking about hitting
the F8 key as you were playing the cassette into the computer.

I'm getting the idea that lots of people still use DAW like it is a
traditional analog system implemented digitally. I never was much of a
serious analog recorder, so I approached digital with a clean slate. IMO
visual-centric editing is the way to go.

It's like scrubbing. People complain that you can't scrub on a PC DAW. My
question is why would you want to scrub if you can edit visually with so
much higher resolution?

I generally don't listen or watch while I'm digitizing analog media. I set
the operation up with more than enough headroom and find something else
interesting and useful to do. Often my first edit after digizing is to
remove 2 minutes of silence at the end if you catch my drift.

You'd probably be a little late with that unless there was plenty of
space
between sections, and even then, you might want to trim it up.

There's also the issue of control latency. I don't know how CEP compares to
other products in this regard, but its controls seem to be pretty rubbery to
me while its playing or recording. CEPs punch-ins are pretty good, but IME
the punch-outs are approximate to say the least, particularly when recording
say 10 tracks at a time.

No, it can be done by eye in very little time. I think it took me about
2
minutes to put 8-12 marks in about 20 minutes of live audio.

It depends on the program material. If the song stops and the applause
starts immediately, and the performer starts talking over the
applause, it can all look like grass, and you need to make a judgment
call (by ear) as to where to put the index.

In the overview sense, yes. However singing, applause and talking almost
always look very different to me. I generally make the track mark or index
mark decision visually and change it only if it fails the *final* audition.

If I remember the sequence of the music well enough from recording and
previous editing steps, the track mark might just go in without any more
listening at all.

I often click in the track marks, burn a CD and then check the positioning
of the track marks while I'm listening to the CD while driving. It doesn't
seem to be too hard to have a pretty good batting record at doing this.

In article writes:

I'm getting the idea that lots of people still use DAW like it is a
traditional analog system implemented digitally. I never was much of a
serious analog recorder, so I approached digital with a clean slate. IMO
visual-centric editing is the way to go.

In a live show that I'm recording with a DAT, I'll turn off the
automatic program numbering and insert index markers manually, like
between songs, or if it's a round-robin, between singers, or between
speakers at a panel discussion.

It's like scrubbing. People complain that you can't scrub on a PC DAW. My
question is why would you want to scrub if you can edit visually with so
much higher resolution?

Because first you have to get to the place where you can use that
resolution. I find that if I have the zoom level up to the point where
I can see exactly where I want to place a marker, if I play the
recording up to that point, I don't always stop the playback at the
point where I can see where I want to place the marker (I didn't grow
up playing video games, so my eye-ear-hand coordination isn't what it
could be). And then I have to zoom out, try to find a place to drop a
marker, zoom in again, place the marker, then check to see if I got it
in the right place, or maybe I put it in the breath pause between the
wrong two words.

Some spots are visually obvious, others aren't.

I generally don't listen or watch while I'm digitizing analog media. I set
the operation up with more than enough headroom and find something else
interesting and useful to do. Often my first edit after digizing is to
remove 2 minutes of silence at the end if you catch my drift.

I like to keep an ear open, if not listening critically, just to make
sure that the tape didn't break, the recorder didn't jam, or the
comptuer didn't crash.

I often click in the track marks, burn a CD and then check the positioning
of the track marks while I'm listening to the CD while driving. It doesn't
seem to be too hard to have a pretty good batting record at doing this.

I guess you get better at it the more you do. I don't do this very
often, so every time is like the first time for me.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

In article ,
says...
Thanks for the responses. I'm reading about a "Digital Audio Editor"
program called GoldWave. For $40 it includes noise reduction and pop/click
filters that some programs want you to purchase as an add-in. I'm sure
feature this will be usefull to him. http://www.goldwave.com/index.html
The others programs look interesting but this one might be the best value
yet.

Goldwave is a very good sound recording /editing program, whether it does
what you want I don't know

I gave it a test run this past weekend and it will do fine for what I'll
need it to do. One very cool feature was the noise filter. I selected a
section of noise and had the program remove it. Worked great! The program
takes a little getting used to, it's screen re-draw is slow compared to
Sound Forge. Whenever you select a section of the audio it appears to
recaculate the display. On my 266mhz computer it's slow. Another minor
thing I didn't like was that the "vcr" buttons for play, pause etc. were not
fixed to the form. You select them and they float. I'd rather have them
always available.

For low budget it does the trick.

Kevin


"Mainlander" *@*.* wrote in message
. nz...
In article ,
says...
Thanks for the responses. I'm reading about a "Digital Audio Editor"
program called GoldWave. For $40 it includes noise reduction and
pop/click
filters that some programs want you to purchase as an add-in. I'm sure
feature this will be usefull to him. http://www.goldwave.com/index.html
The others programs look interesting but this one might be the best
value
yet.

Goldwave is a very good sound recording /editing program, whether it does
what you want I don't know