I’m trying to turn some tape-recorded interviews into cd’s, by way of hooking up a tape deck to the mic line in on my laptop and recording as a wma or mp3, then burning it to a cd.
I’m running into a problem somewhere along the line that is resulting in unacceptably bad sound quality. The tapes aren’t the most clear to begin with. The voices are low-toned, and have that kind of faraway sound of an ambient mic recording. The files I’m ending up with are so indistinct you can’t make out the words.
I have a 1/4" to 1/8" adaptor, and a 1/8" cable running into my mic in port. That runs from the headphone jack on the front of the stereo. There is no other “out” line option, aside from the clamps that hold down the wires that would go to traditional stereo speakers. I have hooked up headphones to the adaptor, and it sounds fine when I do that, so the problem can’t be the connection alone.
I’ve used two different kinds of downloaded recording software, one freeware, and one shareware that I would pay for if I could get good results with it. They both turn out test files that sound exactly the same. I’ve tried fiddling with the volume on the stereo unit and the background noise filters on the software, but neither make a difference in the clarity of the spoken words.
What I need to know is: what’s causing the problem here? Is this just my laptop that has a crappy soundcard or whatever, and I might get better results with one of the desktops at work? Or is there a certain level of quality loss that’s going to happen no matter what, and it simply can’t be done the way I need? Am I just using the wrong software? Is there a better software someone can recommend? The ones I’ve tried are “audacity” and “power Mp3 recorder.” I’m not opposed to actually going to a brick-and-mortar store and buying a disk of software if it’ll do the job, but if I’m just going to get the same results then I don’t want to do that. Something else I’m not thinking of?
Thanks dopers. This is for work, by the way. My head won’t roll if I can’t get it done, but I need to be able to tell my boss at least what the problem is, and if it can be fixed, by 9 AM tomorrow morning.
When did you last clean the playback heads on your cassette deck?
Does your stereo have an equalizer that’ll let you emphasize the midrange between ~400 and a couple thousand hertz? That’ll bring out voice.
In addition to what Squink has suggested, do you have a ‘Tape Out’ jack or pair of jacks, perhaps on the rear of the unit? They may be RCA/phono connectors, so you’d need a phono wye to combine L and R channels. I’m not sure if the tape out level is higher than headphone or not.
Adjusting the volume on the mic made it marginally less scratchy, but I still can’t understand the words.
The stereo isn’t mine, so I don’t know when it’s been cleaned. I’m sure that if this doesn’t pan out, my boss will try and dig up another tape deck though. If the problem does turn out to be on the computer end, I’d rather solve it myself.
Adjusting the midrange sliders made the words more clear when I listen to the headphones. That will be useful if I ever get this to work. Thanks!
This laptop doesn’t have a line in. Desktops at work do. I’m going to punt for tonight, I think. Between emphasizing the midrange, using the line in instead of the mic, and just the possible better recording capability of the desktop, maybe I can get it to an acceptable quality level tomorrow.
Nothing “tape out.” Red and white no go out, they go in. I’ve looked all over this darned box.
A large part of your problem is that you are mismatching impedances by sending a headphone-level output into the mic jack. This is a no-no. You must send your audio from the stereo line outputs on the back of the tape deck to the line input on your sound card.
Oops, hit submit too soon. If there’s only one input jack on your laptop, there has to be a way to bring up the properties of the sound card and select ‘line in’ instead of microphone. And then you’d need to have a tape deck with red and white RCA outputs on the back. Use a stereo RCA to 1/8" stereo miniplug adapter, which goes into the computer. Let us know what you find!
If replay through headphones sounds “fine”, especially after midrange boost, then you are definitely going to be able to make this work. I suspect that the problems that you are seeing are in the laptop’s sound card: either it has the incorrect input setting (“mic” rather than “line”), or the drivers are not correctly loaded. You would probably be able to get this working with the laptop, but moving to the workplace PC should make things easier.
Although cleaning the tape heads may help somewhat, it shouldn’t be necessary since you say the current sound quality is sufficient when on replay through headphones.
You mention that you are “recording to WMA or mp3”. I usually record to WAV format first, then either burn directly as a music CD (so no mp3 step is necessary), or – if I want compressed files to save space – I do the WAV-mp3 conversion as a separate step, which can give better-quality results if the computer isn’t at the bleeding edge speed-wise.
I use Audiograbber, which is freeware, for line-in recording, then convert to mp3 using RazorLame (again freeware). However, other audio-capture programs should give just as good quality. I just happen to like freeware.
If you’re recording music CDs (rather than data CDs with mp3s), you don’t need to go through the compression (WAV->mp3) step since you’ll just be converting back when you make your music CD, and sound artifacts can result.
Thank you for the clarification, Antonius. I meant .wav and typed .wma before, so what you laid it is currently the plan. If time wasn’t of the essence, I’d get a better tape deck too, but as it is I’m pretty optimistic. Going in to work a little early tomorrow to make it work. Thanks everyone!
If things go well and her boss congratulates her, she can look at camera, smile and say, “I couldn’t have done without The Straight Dope” and then a sparkle will “ding” on her tooth.
As has been mentioned, the poor results you have gotten using your laptop are almost certainly because you are using its mic input to try to capture from the headphone out on the tape deck. You should get much better results from one of your desktop units at work, as long as it has a line-in jack. I don’t know the two programs you mentioned, however most “recording” software should have level meters that show you the input signal level. Be sure to adjust things (tape deck output and sound card line input) so that you get lots of signal, but do not let it clip.
As a side note, my laptop (Sony Vaio PCG-885) has a mic input jack but no line-in, even though the built in sound card has a line-in feature. The only way I can use the line-in would be to buy the docking station for it - and Sony doesn’t manufacture them anymore…
