Audio input

[burgy]

Question. I have several very old audio clips on very old cassette tapes I'd like to enter into my PC.

The last time I tried to do this, using a mike, I got WAV files which were very large even for 15 second clips.

Some of the clips are 30 minutes.

I'm looking for technical direction. Are MP3 files smaller? What is the best program to capture them?

Thanks for any advice

[Sheepdog]

WAV's are monstrosities. an MP3 would be much smaller, even at the same bitrate.

are you using Sound Recorder, a little app that is built into windows? there is a way to set it to save to MP3. you can go to propoerties, click onto the "convert now..." button (make sure the text in the selection area is either All Formats or Recording Formats). in the box that comes up, change the format from "PCM" to "MPEG Layer-3," and there you go. i'd also set it to 56kb/s.

or else, when you go to save, hit the "change..." button and it will take you to the same box.

unfortunately, the best you can save at is 24kHz, which is ok for voice but will sound crappy for music. if it's a music file, you should record it as a WAV, then convert it to a high bit-rate MP3. you can find converters on www.download.com and you should be able to find one for free (though, i may be mistaken about that). 44kHz should be sufficient for good quality sound.

[burgy]

Today @ 10:18 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=333176#post333176)
Sheepdog:

WAV's are monstrosities. an MP3 would be much smaller, even at the same bitrate.

are you using Sound Recorder, a little app that is built into windows? there is a way to set it to save to MP3. you can go to propoerties, click onto the "convert now..." button (make sure the text in the selection area is either All Formats or Recording Formats). in the box that comes up, change the format from "PCM" to "MPEG Layer-3," and there you go. i'd also set it to 56kb/s.

or else, when you go to save, hit the "change..." button and it will take you to the same box.

unfortunately, the best you can save at is 24kHz, which is ok for voice but will sound crappy for music. if it's a music file, you should record it as a WAV, then convert it to a high bit-rate MP3. you can find converters on www.download.com and you should be able to find one for free (though, i may be mistaken about that). 44kHz should be sufficient for good quality sound.


Thanks. You have helped. They are voice recordings, so "quality" is of little importance. I have printed out your answer and will work with it.

The Microsoft Sound Recorder I used was limited to a few seconds at a time. Perhaps there is a newer version; I'll have a look,

Thanks again.

jb

[Sheepdog]

actually, i have the same problem. it stops recrding automatically at 30 seconds. see if you find anything on that download site i linked to, or maybe www.tucows.com has one. don't get shareware or demos if you can help it, perhaps someone has been generous enough to build a free sound recorder.

[$cirisme]

Wow, I didn't know Sound Recorder would save MP3s. Cool

[burgy]

12-10-2003 @ 04:40 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=333563#post333563)
cirisme:

Wow, I didn't know Sound Recorder would save MP3s. Cool


I've looked on three PCs. One uses WINDOWS 3.1, one uses WINDOWS 98 and one uses WINDOWS ME.

The Sound Recorder on all three looks alike -- max recording time 60 seconds and only to WAV files.

Still looking. Meanwhile I'm capturing the old stuff to cassette and accepting the quality loss.

jb

[NSMinistries]

I you can find anyone who has Pinicle (sp) video capture card you can also use it to capture sound in mp3 format with out the video. I use this to dub over on some videos once in a while. I can capture about 45 mins worth of sound per file that way. Its amazing how you can make anyone say anything by splicing their words together.

[Paulbarbee]

The way I do that knd of thing is to plug the casette player into the line in jack on my audio card then use my recording application to record the sound off the casette tape. I'm currently using Audacity as my recording application. It works well for that. It allows saving in MP3 and control of the bit rate. MUCH better than MS Sound Recorder, IMO.

[burgy]

Thanks for all the help.

I found that Sound Recorder stops after 60 seconds but then continues on. There is a "telephone quality" option which gets the file sizes small enough to handle.

Audacity sounds interesting. I'll search for it.

Lots to learn -- as always.