In message <a06002000bbb9ab6681bd_at_[131.215.48.186]>
"John A. Dundas III" <dundas_at_caltech.edu> wrote:
> what format is best for archive and distribution, though I assume
> something like WAV or AIFF for archive and MP3 for distribution. I
> have no prior experience at this and would appreciate any suggestions
> on the best approach.
Get yourself a decent tape recorder - not one of those elcheapo things, a
proper full-size tape deck. I've been using a JVC TD-X335 to archive various
old tapes. Make sure the heads are nice and clean, though. Don't waste time
with those cleaning tapes - I lost a tape deck to one of those things. I'd
use the cotton-wool-and-IPA method.
Next, you'll need cables. Get the Line output from the tape deck hooked up to
the Line input on your machine's sound card. With that done, load one of the
tapes and set it playing. When the VU meter starts registering output, fire
up some sound editing/capture software (I use Audacity on Linux) on your
computer and start recording. Adjust the recording level on the computer
until the line/bar/block on the computer's pseudo-VU meter is just touching
the red segment of the meter. Stop the recording and rewind the tape. Start
the computer recording - IME you should be using a sampling rate of 44100Hz,
16 bit, mono for a speech. I usually set the recorder to stereo and adjust
the settings later (Audacity lets you split the left/right tracks, merge
them, etc). Save in a lossless format - AIFF or WAV (raw PCM compression).
44100/16/Stereo is basically the format used by CDs - most CD recording
software should happily burn these to a CD-R.
For distribution, either make copies of the master CD-R (preferably from the
CD image) or distribute them as OGGs. 64kbit should be more than enough for
speech. Just FYI, an Ogg (more properly, Ogg Vorbis) file is a patent-free
lossy compression format that's comparable to MP3. I'd use Ogg, simply for
the reason that it's opensource and tends to be slightly better in terms of
output file size vs. quality.
Later.
--
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Received on Mon Oct 20 2003 - 10:37:05 BST