[SundayDriver]

Originally Posted by dude87

It depends on the cassette - if it's not a master it's probably not worth doing a 24 bit transfer. If it is a master, how does it sound? When I rolled cassette (seemingly years ago) we eventually went with outboard dbx noise reduction units (as well as custom mic pre-amps), I think there's some real benefit in going 24 bit with most of those masters, some of the early cassette masters I did (when we didn't use the best mics, etc.) aren't worth the effort.

Even for cassettes that I think are worthy of 24 bit transfers I generally leave the sample rate at 48K rather than 96K - there's not enough high end on a cassette to make the extra samples worthwhile.

All just IMO, of course. And since a lot of people play back stuff on iPods, computer speakers, etc. it's really about whether you hear a difference or not.

I definitely agree with you re: some tapes not worthy of the high end formats. I had a cassette tape someone lent to me that was walkman recorded back in 1996. The thing had to be taped with the internal mics, as it didn't sound that great. In fact, it sounded awful, but this guy wanted it in digital format. So I did a transfer on my deck, but I also sent it to a friend who ran it through his nak rx-505 > apogee mini-me. My transfer equipment is good, but the nak/apgoee is a better combo. And you definitely couldn't hear a difference between the two transfers. There was no way the nak with it's excellent 20kHz range caught anymore high end than my deck did. So I think the same thing goes for bit rates...depending on the quality of your tape, 16 bit may be just fine.