Category: Geeks r Us
How would I do this? For example if I had recordings I made of lecture on 4 track tape, how could I convert them into mp3 format?
You would have to do a real time convertion as it's an analog source. You could take a line out signal from your headphone jack and run it into your line input on your sound card. The cable you'd need would be a 3.5 millameter to 3.5 millameter, male jack on both ends. Then if you download adasity, or if you have a program like sound forge or goldwave etc, just set the recording default device to your sound card's line input. Make sure your set to record in mono and not in stereo as it's a mono source. Now, since it's coming from four trakc cassette, your going to have a certain amount of signal to noise ratio to deal with as well as some nasty EQ issues. However, that could be solved with plug ins such as sonic foundry noise reduction etc. Now, when you've recorded it, the default file type will most likely be sixteen bit, 44.1kHz wave. Sound forge has a built in mp3 converter. If you're using adasity, which is free by the way, you can simply download the lame mp3 encoder from source forge and then convert your waves into mp3s. That should do it. any questions, get in touch.
Or, you could follow the above mentioned process in terms of the line in and headphone jack procedure, but use CDEX which is free and not have to worry about the mp3 conversion, as it's done on the fly. Sure, you'll have that nasty noise floor to deal with due to it being a tape, but unless you are using it for some sort of professional recording or the noise is atrocious, who cares? As for line in to headphone plugs, you can buy them at radio crap for like $5 and it's just a simple patch cord that has 2 standard headphone jackes on it. HTH.
Yeah, that would work too. I'd also suggest doing a test recording first to set the level. since you're taking a headphone jack out into a line input, you'll want to adjust the volume on the tape player accordingly. too little and you'll struggle to hear it, too much and you'll get distortion.
Does somebody need a special player to play these tapes? Because i had some of those but with a normal cassette player i could hear two things at the same time. One track playing normaly and another one playing in revers lol. I don't remember if also the speed was different.
Yeah, but if you wantYes Nikos, you do need a special player in most circumstances, but you may be able to record the 4 track tapes in higher speeds at a high sampling rate like 44.1khz, and then resample it down to 32, or 22.5khz and achieve halfway normal sounding audio. I've never tried this, but in theory, it should work.
Nikos, you need a four track tape machine to play four track tapes. All cassettes actually have four tracks available on them for recording, however usually two tracks are assigned per side in order to make a stereo recording. This means in effect that when you play a four track cassette in a standard player you are indeed hearing two different things because completely different things are recorded onto each of the tracks passing over the heads of the machine. This is why you need a specific type of player to play four track tapes because the player must be able to read from two different tracks on the same side of a cassette where as with a standard stereo player, it only has to read one set of tracks.
Hope that makes sense.
Dan.
Thanks scot and Dan. Yes it makes a lot of sence.
Finally you can edit out a lot of the crappy bacground noise with not much effort y taking a sample of it, and doing a search and cut. (I've done this with goldwave at least.)