tape transferring

[trustthex]

on the topic of dithering... i did not at all like what dithering in audition did to my masters. it added noise or something, maybe it was the plugin i used, i don't know....


i only use r8brain, it just sounds so much better.

[Five]

thanks zeek for the samples... I still have to pour over them in more detail & do some testing with r8brain vs audacity for resampling & dithering. main thing I'm realizing here is that the dither in Audacity is plain crap and that is at the root of my assumptions.

zeek, would it be possible for you to also share the source 24/48 file that you used to make your comparison? I'd like to try resampling and dithering it in audacity and see what a difference there is...

Aaron: did you know goldwave can do 64bit ? is there any hardware that can support it, I wonder?

[zeek]

Here ya go,

https://www.yousendit.com/download/W...NmM5RlpMWEE9PQ


Thats the 24/48.

A good rule of thumb for dithering/sample rate conversion software. if it's fast, it's not being done properly. Goldwave has one of the noisiest

Sample rate conversion is another beast all together. heres a cool comparison site if your interested in the mechanics of different software.

http://src.infinitewave.ca/

[dorrcoq]

I used Goldwave for dithering at one point, but it was crap.

[zeek]

If your serious about doing things to their most, this is a great deal

$400

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lgb...003574252.html

I don't know the seller, it's just hit off an RSS feed so do your homework, but $400 for that card is a pretty good deal. They sell for $800 to $1200 nes, unopened

[trustthex]

so this ableton live 7 program is the best then, its spectrals are off the map compared to anything else. r8brain looks pretty clean, if thats what we are going for?

[Five]

I would guess that ableton live 7 is optimized for electronic sounds, thus it performs very well on things like sine waves and such but not necessarily for traditional music.

r8brain free appears to throw everything out of phase (see the 'pulse' test) I'll double-check that with my own tests later...

zeek, thanks for the original btw how to compare the original test sample with the results on that site? generate your own at 48kHz? any tips on reading those graphs is appreciated thx.

[AAR.oner]

i use ableton...although great for electronic music & live sequencing [which is what it is geared toward], i've never found it to be lacking when it comes to "traditional music" or multitrack recording...used it a few times to mix live recordings i've made, and i find its EQ/compression/etc to be more than satisfactory for the task

just a fwiw

[zeek]

If you go down to the "help" icon, it gives a good breakdown of the graphs. It gets a little complicated and they probably do a much better job than I would

[desiderus]

I've been trying out transferring some tapes lately, but I've ran into some problems. I'm getting very low peaks (~ -15dB) and I can't adjust my tape deck or soundcard to add more gain. My tape deck hasn't got an adjustable master level, and I've set the analog mixer completely open in my soundcard mixer. I can't adjust the soundvolume in my control panel for the recording equipment. For some reason it stays blank.

Any ideas how to solve this problem? I rather not add that much gain post transferring and I was hoping there could be some sollution to add gain while transferring. I'm using wavelab 5.0 right now and I don't think it has an option to add gain while transferring. Are there any programs available to add gain while transferring?

I hope someone is able to help me out!

[zeek]

looking at your soundcard, not really familiar with it

here is the manual

ftp://ftp.steinberg.net/Download/Har...0_en_2463K.pdf

Look at page 9, it looks like there is a master volume control clear to the right, do you see that on your sc console?

[showtaper]

Do you have onboard (motherboard) sound? If so, you may want to turn it
off (if possible) in BIOS.

After doing so, reinstall the software for your card, and then update from the
manufacturer's website, if available.......

[showtaper]

Originally Posted by jameskg

if you plan for it to be burned to CD, transfer at 2ch, 16bit, 44.1kHz, as that is what it will need to be before torrenting, etc..

unless you aim for an archival-grade transfer.. in which case you' aim for something higher. but then you'll need to downsample for anyone to want it... and the quality of the dithering can adversley affect your audio, making it less-natural than if you;d tranferred at 44.1k/16b/2ch to begin with.

Instead of downsampling, why don't you just capture it at several different rates??

Most consumer software sucks at sample rate conversion & dithering.......

[GRC]

Originally Posted by showtaper

Instead of downsampling, why don't you just capture it at several different rates??

Because it would eat at least double the hard drive space that a single capture would....?

[showtaper]

Originally Posted by GRC

Because it would eat at least double the hard drive space that a single capture would....?

I thought we were talking quality here......

Storage is cheap. I'm slowly transferring several thousand analog masters
(audio and video) and am sampling at several rates and depths......