Audio Cassette formats, was: RE: Recent Finds & Thoughts

From: cswiger <cswiger_at_wilma.widomaker.com>
Date: Wed Nov 25 14:12:09 1998

Mark[SMTP:mark_k_at_iname.com] sez:

>I have many old computer cassettes, and have been thinking of
>recording them onto a computer in order to preserve their
>contents. The signal from computer tapes oscillates between
>two levels, right? This being the case, it should be possible
>to record them using 1-bit sampling. Perhaps record with 8- or
>16-bitsampling and then convert down to single bit.
>
>Are there any programs to do this conversion? I imagine the
>equivalent of a Schmitt trigger (in software) would work. What
>about playing back a 1-bit audio signal? Are there any standard
>audio file formats that can be used to store 1-bit data?

Well, there were/are many formats to put data onto tape, the only
one I'm famalier with is as you said a FSK or frequency shift
keying, using one tone for a mark or '1' and another for a space
or '0'. See http://www.threedee.com/jcm/audio/index.html
for some work in this area.

>Actually recording tapes to audio CDs is quite wasteful since
>you can only get 70 minutes or so on a CD (an issue if you have

Yeah 44100Hz/16/stereo eats up space perdy quick, which is why
I'd like to try or hear from someone whose tried the various
levels of RealAudio or open std. MP3 compression - using those
one can get hundreds of hours of 'not bad' audio on a single CD.
(e.g., one 30 minute radio program = about 5Mb of MP3).

        Chuck
        cswiger_at_widomaker.com

        P.S. Nerds 2.0.1 on PBS tonight
Received on Wed Nov 25 1998 - 14:12:09 GMT

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