[ale] HOW2 burn reel2reel tapes to CDs ?

[Courtney Thomas]

Jeff,

Thank you for your help.

I have a TEAC X-300 and have audacity installed on a Debian box.

I'd very much like to hear what kind of audio card would be desirable 
for this, assuming it might be gotten off Ebay.

Cordially,

Courtney

Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> Yes; I've done hours' worth and still have more to do!
> 
> First thing you need, of course, is an R2R deck.  It's good to know 
> ahead of time if the tapes you're dealing with (I assume this is 1/4" 
> tape) are half-track (i.e., two channels across the whole width of the 
> tape) or quarter-track (i.e., two channels on one "side" of the tape and 
> two more on the other "side") because that will determine what kind of 
> deck you need.  You will probably not find a deck that has heads to play 
> back both, however, a quarter-track deck will properly play back a 
> half-track tape (not vice-versa unless the quarter-track tape is 
> recorded only on one side, in which case it will work but at roughly 6dB 
> worse S/N). 
> 
> I should tell you that it is difficult to find an R2R deck in good 
> working order.  I had my Teac (consumer Tascam) deck from c. 1982 
> serviced last Spring and it works very well, but almost any deck you'd 
> buy used today almost certainly needs attending to.  Many are likely 
> unserviceable.
> 
> Consumer decks typically run at 3-3/4 in/s and 7-1/2 in/s; some 
> portables that only take 3" or 5" reels went down to 1-7/8 in/s.  Pro 
> decks run at 15 and 30 in/s.
> 
> Different tapes of different ages shed oxide at different rates.  I've 
> had 40-year-old tapes hold up better than 10-year-old tapes.  You may 
> have to stop mid-reel for cleaning.
> 
> Depending on the quality of the recording, you may want to interpose a 
> compressor/limiter between the deck and the computer. 
> 
> You really should get a more serious audio input than your motherboard's 
> mic/line-in jack.  Used to be, you'd get an esoteric sound card, but 
> these days, audio I/O seems to be being moved outside the machine to a 
> Firewire or USB device. 
> 
> Lastly, you'll need editing and burning software.  Audactity appears to 
> be the app-of-choice in Linux-land;  I do my tape ripping in WinME 
> because my high-end ISA-bus sound card will likely never have a Linux 
> driver.
> 
> 
> 
> Courtney Thomas wrote:
> 
> 
>>Anyone successfully done this ?
>>
>>How, please ?
>>
>>Thank you.
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