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shmerek · Apr 16, 2003, 11:25 PM

Anybody who knows about audio recording on either platform I need your help.

I need to find a system, peripherals and software for mastering audio recordings from old reel to reel tapes onto cds. I suppose the mastering software would have to be able to clean the recordings up and be able to index track and all the rest of that jive. As you can tell I don't know diddly about this so I could use some advice. Any idea what the best software package would be? Pro-tools or something else?

Thanks

scottiB · Apr 17, 2003, 10:44 AM

What type of reels? 1/4", 1/2", 1" (in width)? How many tracks? 1, 2, 4, 8? What are the recordings, and on what are the reels being played back?

I'm doing something similar, I think: my father has an old, consumer 1/4" reel-to-reel from the 60s on which he recorded family public events (the Apollo moon landing, for instance). I'm fortunate because the machine has a single RCA-style output that I'm plugging into an iBook with a couple adapters (an RCA to 1/8" and Griffin's iMic).

I capture and reduce hiss, bounce the mono to two tracks, etc. with CD Spin Doctor (included w/Roxio's Toast), and master it using Roxio's Jam. With Jam, I can apply gapless track indexes.

Now, if your reels are multi-track (4 or 8) recordings of music or of anything else, you'll need something more elaborate--especially if you want to re-mix the tracks. I'm treading beyond my area of knowledge, so I'll stop here.

Spheric Harlot, I believe, is a music professional, and I've found his posts helpful in the past. Perhaps you can PM him, or he'll stumble across this thread.

dampeoples · Apr 17, 2003, 11:54 AM

I dabble with a few things, and therefore would probably steer you in the wrong direction, but can point you to www.osxaudio.com, they can help

Axo1ot1 · Apr 17, 2003, 01:40 PM

Get a mac and a protools MBox. The MBox is around $500, and comes with protools. It has really good audio I/O.

Don't bother with the griffin iMic, unless you want to add tons of hum and distortion to your recordings. I don't know much about the PC side, but I've never met anyone that does audio proffessionally that prefers PC. They don't use them at all at NYU film school (where I go).

shmerek · Apr 17, 2003, 05:42 PM

Hey thanks for the replies I will check out the link as well. All the recordings are single track, I am pretty sure of that but I don't know if it is 1/4 or 1/2 inch. I am actually looking for equipment for a classical cd distribution company that has a huge library of unreleased live opera recordings. The plan is to master then onto cd fro archivings as well as for commercial use.