Transferring audio tapes to digital media?

[Celso Alvarez Cáccamo]

(Apologies to people who may find this topic boring; I personallly don't, I love gadgets).

Thanks, Robin and Harriet for your tips, too. It's good to know about how the Edirol works. So, the Edirol needs a pre-amped signal, right?  That is, line out from the tape player comes from the headphones?  What about an external microphone? (another problem I ran into when looking for a digital recorder). That is, does it need to be preamplified? I have a SONY stereo mike (very good quality, also bought in 1984 with grant money for my dissertation research ;-) ; I've never run into such a good, small mike again, apart from the huge ones with weird, bulky connectors). By the way, the mike is extremely important, too. Mine gives a very precise sense of the speaker's position and distance, a great sense of ambience; when listening to tapes with big, cushy headphones, one could almost experience the scene again. This was very useful to transcribe multiparty conversations.

Last time I looked into digital recorders I wasn't convinced, but this thread makes me rethink it. Anyway, I would need one occasionally to record public events, not for academic research per se (I practically don't do any, don't remember how to ;-) ), but to build up a repository, a catalogued public archive of audio, video and text materials on language, culture and politics in which I'm involved.

Now, just one more point, to beat on a dead horse ;-) : recording in digital and converting from analog TO digital are different things and they may need different tools, not to mention processing the files. To me, at least, sometimes what in theory is the best resource (particularly software) turns out to be a pain in the neck. For audio and video editing, for example, I've used the most varied little applications. Sometimes it's easier to have a simple one for each task (trimming/cutting, cleaning noise, compressing to MP3, adding tags) instead of an integrated package.

Oh, an issue we had forgotten: The speed of the analog recorder vs. that of the (new) player. Unfortunately, not all cassette recorders run at the same speed. My SONY Pro Walkman, for example, is a bit slow (if you don't adjust speed with the little wheel in the back, which I soon realized I had to do), so that if I digitalize the tape using another player, it's a bit sped up. So, the ideal is to use the same device for recording and for converting the tapes.

Finally: Cataloguing and storing the files. I go by date (YYYYMMDD) followed by a one-letter code reflecting the type of event (conversation, meeting, lecture or speech, debate, etc.), and, if needed, followed by R for material recorded from the radio, or T from television, e.g. 20080523DT.wav (television debate from May 23, 2008). Then, storing it: backup copies, always. Huge computer hard disk, and automated backup of drive through network (Time Machine in Mac OS is just a dream).

May I add a small nifty tip for people in the field, but with Internet access, at least periodically?: Apart from pendrives etc. for backups, do you know Dropbox? (www.dropbox.com). It is an extremely useful free tool to synchronize files between computers (Mac's MobileMe is similar, I believe, but expensive). The free version of Dropbox gives you 2 GB of space, which is quite a bit; 50 GB for $9.99 a month. This is how it works, like a "virtual pendrive": You make a file (recording, photo, whatever), and you copy it or move it into your Dropbox folder in your computer, created by the program. When you connect to the Internet, Dropbox uploads a copy of the file without your intervention to a private space in the Net. When you get home/work, you turn on your main computer with Dropbox installed, too, and the program downloads and syncs everything to the Dropbox folder in your computer. File changes sync, too, so you have identical copies in as many computer as Dropbox is installed in. So, suppose you are away, your files have been updated with Dropbox, but you forget your portable in a crowded bus, and all of your pendrives burn in a fire ;-) : Well, all of your files are still in Dropbox, on the Internet. You can even access them from any computer with an Internet connection (login name and password needed, of course).  Or, you get back home, and voilà. The nice thing is that you don't need to do FTP to a server: You simply drag and drop files to a folder in your computer(s). Two added features: you may "share folders" with other Dropbox users for collaborative work; this could be useful to be sending files gradually to another person in a project. And you may also instantly make any file publicly accessible in the Internet (instead of sending it through email, for example) by dropping it into the Public folder, which gives you an URL.  I've installed Dropbox in 2 computers (home, work) and in a portable, and I've stopped using pendrives altogether.

-celso