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Old 2011-07-07, 04:42 PM
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Audioarchivist Audioarchivist is offline
Recording/Mastering Engineer
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Victoria, BC, Canada
Re: Whats the best altenative way to transfer my cassettes

I'd just go buy a "real" tape deck and trash that Ion crap! haha. Seriously, the flimsy workmanship on those things - think about it - how cheap and cheezy must that thing be built to have all the working parts of a tape deck and a full sound card in there, too...

You already had a sound card. Heck, you have an R-09HR!

What kind of resolution does that Ion thingy give you? Just 16 bit 44.1 khz, right? It's much better to capture at higher resolution (if you can), and your Edirol there does 24 bit 96 khz...

I would really just get a better tape deck and grab a plug to go from the tape line outs to a mini stereo plug for the line input of the R-09HR.Then you're golden again, plus you should find that your quality has improved a lot as well!

One thing I've found about tape transfers, you might want to / need to adjust the azimuth (tape playback head alignment) to maximize the recording. Different decks not perfectly aligned will make playback tapes that sound warbly or muffled (or worse!) - not going to open that can '0 worms here! Google it or search this forum about it - I'm sure you'll come up with some more good (but sometimes confusing) advice!!!


Good luck! I'd offer to do them, but I have an almost unlimited pool of masters to transfer of not just my own, but 3 or 4 taper buddies collections to work on...
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