Cassette Tape Transfeer

[Susan Penfield]

I also like Audacity -- a free download -- and use it with a PC , just
running cassette tapes into it. This is a very straight forward way to do
it... Ah yes, Margaret -- I remember those Uher recorders (though I
think mine was a Wallensach)...

S. yes

On 7/24/07, Buckner, Margaret L <MBuckner at missouristate.edu> wrote:
>
> I've had really good luck with the iMic, which imports sound very easily
> onto a Mac, using the (free) sound-editiing software program,
> Audacity.  I've imported from reels recorded in 1960s on a Uher, and also
> from cassette tapes.  (It took a while to find the right connecting cable
> for the Uher, but once I found one, it worked great.)  The iMic costs about
> $30.
> For PCs, others will have to answer...
>
> Margie Buckner
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Indigenous Languages and Technology on behalf of Dr. Dorene Wiese
> Sent: Tue 7/24/2007 11:19
> To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
> Subject: [ILAT] Cassette Tape Transfeer
>
> What programs do researchers recommend for transferring cassette tapes to
> cds and other formats?
> Dorene
>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Natasha L Warner <nwarner at U.ARIZONA.EDU>
> To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
> Sent: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 2:28 am
> Subject: Re: [ILAT] ipod recording
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> before we totally write off all compressed data that already exists, let's
> think twice.  Sure, if you're choosing at the beginning of a project, it's
> probably far better to just record uncompressed in the first place.  But
> if data exists that was recorded in a compressed format, that doesn't make
> it useless, it depends greatly on what you're going to be measuring.
> Pitch, for example, is extremely robust, even under atrocious recording
> conditions and with poor equipment.  One of the few things that will make
> pitch unmeasurable is overlapping voices (or other periodic sound sources)
> where the one you're trying to measure is not substantially louder than
> the others.  But considering that you can measure pitch even with shocking
> amounts of background noise, or an extremely clipped signal, I'd be
> surprised if you couldn't measure it pretty reliably on mp3 data.  On the
> other hand, if you want to measure voice quality (creaky voice, breathy
> voice, etc.), then you need to know that you have a really reliable
> recording that didn't mess with the spectral tilt.  But at that point,
> position of the mic relative to the mouth is also going to be pretty
> important.
>
> A few years ago when the compression at issue was minidiscs, I
> heard that a few phoneticians, including Ian Maddieson, did a test of
> compressed vs. uncompressed recordings and couldn't find a difference in
> any part of the signal they were interested in.  They concluded the
> compression wasn't so bad.  Of course, I'd rather know I have uncompressed
> data so I just don't have to worry about it.  But given a choice of using
> existing compressed data or starting over, I would look at the signal and
> see what looked measurable and what didn't, keeping the compression in
> mind.
>
> Also, it's worth considering that in many field recording situations, the
> background noise (whether it's airplanes, construction noise, chickens,
> kids, crickets, refrigerator hum, a college cafeteria, or a preschool
> setting--I've run into all of these at least indirectly, for acoustic
> phonetics work) is going to contribute a whole lot more problems to the
> signal than the compression creates.  And sometimes we do work with data
> collected over the phone, which limits the signal a lot more than
> compression does.  So my personal approach would be to use a reasonably
> good headmounted mic, get it as close to the speaker's mouth as possible,
> make sure any other noise sources are far further from the mic than the
> speaker's mouth is, and record uncompressed if possible.  It would also be
> nice to have a clearer understanding than I do at this point of just what
> we lose during the compression.
>
> Thanks for the discussion, everyone,
>
> Natasha Warner
>
>
> *******************************************************************************
> Natasha Warner
> Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics
> University of Arizona
> PO Box 210028
> Tucson, AZ 85721-0028
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
> AOL now offers free email to everyone.  Find out more about what's free
> from AOL at AOL.com.
>



-- 
____________________________________________________________
Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D.

Associate Director, Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language
and Literacy (CERCLL)
Department of English (Primary)
American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI)
Second Language Acquisition & Teaching Ph.D. Program (SLAT)
Department of Language,Reading and Culture
Department of Linguistics
The Southwest Center (Research)
Phone for messages: (520) 621-1836


"Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought,
an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities."

                                                          Wade Davis...(on a
Starbucks cup...)
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