Changing from Tape to CD

Alan Robert Clark

24th June, 2008

Printable pdf version Ripping goode old fashioned tapes:

First get a working tape player! Its amazing how many non-working players we have!, then

yum install audacity

installs the absolutely awesome Audacity audio studio. It can do all sorts of things: multichannel stuff, effects, track alignment, generate sound, fades, reverse, you name it.

As a complete pleb, I use it to record, cut out the bits I don't want, export to WAV / Ogg/ MP3.

Hints:

Edit|Preferences Audio I/O tab: DESELECT Software Audio play through: it stuffs it up completely. Rely on the Hardware play thrugh.

Bloody difficult to get levels right:

On Tape push it fairly high up, about 75% then Microphone input and Front output also about 75%. That seems to get it. All else causes distortion on playback!!!! Wow.

REMEMBER: Turn off all cell phones including the internet connection!!!!! Da Kah Daa, Da Kah Daa etc!!

MUST Use Stereo under Audio I/O, and 16-bit for a CD. No other format will be accepted by

cdrecord -pad *.wav

even if the track is mono.

Once the track has been recorded, chop it up into bits if desired and save as seperate .WAV files. Can also export as ogg or mp3, obviously.

cdrecord does the rest!

Archive the .wav files on a DVD. They are rather large, but are primary sources, which Audacity can process, ie can be cut up and Ogged etc.

Thats it folks.
This document was translated from LATEX by HEVEA.